How rituals of faith became another casualty of war

Since the October 7 attacks and the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, no part of life in the region has been left untouched – least of all, the three great religions whose histories are rooted there.

While Israeli Jews struggle to celebrate holidays or even find common ground with one another, Palestinian Muslims and Christians are struggling to reach their holy sites at all.

Israel this year introduced some of the toughest restrictions on Ramadan prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest structures in the Islamic faith. Al-Aqsa, which sits atop an ancient plateau in Jerusalem that is sacred to Jews and Muslims, has long been a point of contention.

For decades, Israel’s government prevented Jews from praying on the grounds to avoid stoking tensions, and officially, it still does. But as Israel has exerted tighter control over the site, right-wing politicians and settler groups have repeatedly entered the area to pray, a move widely seen as provocative to Palestinian Muslims.

Palestinian Muslims, particularly those coming from the West Bank, have faced routine restrictions on access to Al-Aqsa for years. The Israeli agency overseeing policy for the territory, responding to a question from The New York Times about the number of Palestinians granted entry since October, said that it had issued no permits to West Bank residents, even for access to the mosque, except for “specific laborers.”

Israel is also placing tighter restrictions on the roughly 50,000 Christians who live in the West Bank.

During Easter, Israel limited access to what is known as the celebration of the Holy Fire, when a flame is taken from what is believed to be Jesus’ tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and used to light the candles of visitors. Israel cited safety reasons for the change, but Palestinians accused Israeli officials of curbing the centuries-old tradition as part of efforts to push them out of their ancestral lands.

In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Christian celebrations have also been forced to break with tradition. In April, a procession of Easter worshippers that usually winds through the streets of central Bethlehem was canceled and held inside the Church of the Nativity instead.

The growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are mirrored within Israeli society, in particular in the divide between secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, a group that is now about 13% of Israel’s population.

In Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv that is considered Israel’s ultra-Orthodox capital, the photographs of Israeli hostages captured on October 7 that are ubiquitous in more secular areas are notably absent. And some of the ultra-Orthodox celebrating Passover this year clashed with police over another traditional ritual: the burning of all the bread in their homes before the holiday begins.

Instead of burning their bread in trash bins, as legally required, many defied the police and went to do so on nearby hillsides, aggravating the risk of forest fires that are already plaguing northern Israel amid the daily strikes exchanged between forces in the country’s north and militants across the border in Lebanon.

For Palestinians, there is no retreat from the post-October 7 landscape. Many have lost jobs they once had in Israel, and those employed by the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, have seen their salaries cut as Israel has halted or slowed transfers of the funds that finance the territory’s operations.

The changes to the cultural and religious practices of Bethlehem’s Christians have not just dampened the mood but also devastated the economy. Tourism, which accounts for a major part of the town’s income, particularly during the holiday season, has plummeted since the start of the war.

Pilgrims no longer crowd Bethlehem’s cobblestone streets. Squares that echoed with the voices of butchers shouting out prices for their slabs of meat, or bakers selling holiday pastries, now are more likely to be silent.

During Ramadan, Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power, is one of the most important dates in the Islamic calendar. For Muslims, it marks the night when the Quran was sent down from heaven to the world.

In years past, families would shop for treats and clothes ahead of that night. This spring, many residents met at their local mosque empty-handed but eager to preserve the tradition of family gatherings of prayer, while children played late into the night.

On Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, families in the West Bank city of Nablus filled graveyards to offer early-morning prayers for loved ones there. When local fighters went to one cemetery to try to shoot guns in honor of their own dead, the families quietly asked them to move away, to avoid a potential crackdown by the authorities.

In the absence of visitors from the West Bank, many of those who traveled to Jerusalem for April’s holy days were Christian pilgrims from abroad. Yet their numbers, too, were much depleted, since tourism to Israel has plummeted more than 70% since the start of the war in Gaza.

While the devout of all religions push on determinedly with the practice of their faith, any feeling of celebration has struggled to survive. Those who come to Jerusalem find the long, ancient shopping thoroughfares that stretch through the city’s ancient quarters eerily empty.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.