From Jerusalem, TIME'S Don Burke cabled:
This Christmas Week in the Holy Land, shepherds went armed, travelers to Bethlehem were shot at, and wise men stayed indoors. An atmosphere of fear, gloom and tense anxiety thickened. Man is against man, and over all Palestine there has been bitter fighting.
To see what Christmas Week was like this year, I toured the holy places. I started at Jerusalem's Old City. Unlike old-time pilgrims, I needed an armed escort of British police. We entered at Jaffa Gate, headed down through the ancient Jewish quarter, where for ten days the Arabs had besieged some 3,500 Jews. Sniping still goes on day & night.
Empty Houses; As we walked down the narrow, cobblestoned, smelly streets, our footsteps clattered loudly. At the sound frightened faces pressed against windows, were reassured by the uniforms. Along Jews Street, the quarter's center, only a few shops were open. Life in the Jewish quarter had ground to a shuddering halt as Arab violence flared up at the announcement of Palestine's partition. Those Jews whom we did see clung closely to their doorsteps, ready to flee inside at the slight est warning. The only Jew oblivious to it all was a turbaned Moorish Jew, who sat silently leaning against a building in the sun begging for baksheesh.
As we went on we entered a stretch of no man's land, a wide swatch of deserted houses left by Arabs and Jews who had lived side by side. The streets in front of these houses were littered with the debris of terror—old shoes, a battered wide-brimmed felt hat of an Orthodox Jew, an old scarf. One house's door hung slantwise on a twisted hinge, as though its occupants had plunged wildly through it in mad haste. On the rooftops were British sentries with Bren guns. Also to be seen were rooftop Jewish guards—young Haganah members; technically illegal, they were unarmed, but they kept arms within hand's reach.
On the Arab side of no man's land, the magnificent old stones of the Wailing Wall, worn smooth by centuries of kissing by devout Jews, shone brightly ; in the brilliant sunlight. There were no Jews there, and the three British constables guarding the wall said that none had visited the wall since trouble broke out. When we crossed the Old City to the First Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, crowds of Moslems were coming out from Friday prayers at an Arab holy place, the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock (often miscalled the Mosque of Omar). They all glanced sharply at me, but hurried on as they spotted my two constables.
"Some Excitement." Along the Via Dolorosa all was dead. An Arab youngster bounced a ball against the plaque denoting the Third Station. At the Sixth Station, where Veronica wiped Christ's face a Hebronite Arab brushed past silently, carrying an enormous tray of bread loaves. Christendom's greatest sanctuary, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was indeed as though it were a place of the dead.
In the church itself, there were only Coptic and Orthodox priests swinging censers over Christ's tomb, while in its dim reaches the Franciscans could be heard singing.