Peace Center Completes Rehabilitation of Manger Square for Year-Long Bethlehem 2000 Observances

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

When the Israeli army withdrew from Bethlehem in December 1995, officially ending 28 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank town, news services carried the story worldwide. Photos showed Palestinian police unfurling the Palestinian flag on top of the old Israeli police station, adjacent to the fourth-century structure of the Church of the Nativity.

For a year following the Israeli withdrawal, the police building, built in 1938 during the British Mandate, was used as a Palestinian police headquarters. Then it was demolished in 1997 to begin construction on a new facility to house the Bethlehem Peace Center, a joint venture of the Swedish government and the Bethlehem Municipality.

On Dec. 9, exactly four years after the historic withdrawal, officials from the Palestinian Authority, the Bethlehem Municipality and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) gathered outside the new Bethlehem Peace Center for an inaugural ceremony to officially open Bethlehem’s first cultural center. Before a packed auditorium inside the center, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser said that a peace and cultural center in Bethlehem was part of the Bethlehem 2000 plan of rehabilitation for Nativity Square.

“The aim of this center is to promote and enhance peace, which the Palestinian people have been seeking for a long time,” he said. He called the center a “vital project, the first public building in Bethlehem for cultural and religious events, significant to the millennium celebration and important to the whole international community.”

The mayor said the generosity of the people of Sweden had played a major role in realizing the dream, which began in 1996 with an agreement to hold a design competition for Palestinian and Swedish architects. He said that 24 designs were submitted and judged by an international jury, which selected Snorre Lindquist of Stockholm as the winner.

“This place is for the people of Bethlehem,” Lindquist said. He explained that the center would be a “cultural house” with exhibit areas for Palestinian artists, two large halls for music and dance performances, a theater, a public library with special holdings on Palestinian history and culture, a play and storytelling area for children, offices for tourism services, a gift shop, a restaurant and a fast-food cafeteria.

A museum in the basement area would include visual access to a large Byzantine mosaic uncovered in 1998 during the site excavations. The total cost of the center was $2.3 million.

Lars Jonnson, the consul general of Sweden in Jerusalem, said that the center was part of other Bethlehem 2000 projects supported by SIDA. He said that the building design called for something “contemporary in nature that would take the traditional structures of the surrounding environment into consideration.

“The idea behind the architecture was to substitute the police station with something congenial to the environment,” Jonnson said. “The name summarizes its purpose and will be what peace is all about, a state of mind, not of conformity but of diverse beliefs.”

He said that in addition to providing a public building that will help preserve Palestinian culture and heritage, the center also helped in creating jobs in the construction business and would have a positive impact in the future. “The next millennium has to be a better one for the Palestinians and the world,” he concluded. “It is for our children to make this dream come true.”

The grand opening of the Bethlehem Peace Center completed the rehabilitation of Manger Square. Inauguration of the Bethlehem 2000 millennium celebrations occurred on Nov. 28 in Manger Square, with over 5,000 people attending to witness the lighting of the Christmas tree by President Yasser Arafat. This officially launched Bethlehem 2000 and a full year of organized events which include four Advent choirs, outdoor concerts in Nativity Square, religious services, a Christmas Market, an International Youth Camp, educational and interfaith conferences, and a number of events focusing on children.

Sr. Elaine Kelley is development officer for Bethlehem University, P.O. Box 9, Bethlehem.