BEIT SAHOUR, West Bank (CNS) — Fadi Bannoura sits at his desk in front of rows of shelves filled with images of Jesus and the Holy Family carved out of olive wood.

His father worked in the woodcarving business for 40 years; Bannoura, 31, began learning the craft some 10 years ago.

Now he is the sole member of his family left to run the workshop. Eight years ago, at the outbreak of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, his parents and two brothers left for the United States. But Bannoura, who is Greek Orthodox, was not given a visa, so he stayed behind.

With the tourist industry not yet fully recovered from the slump caused by the intifada, Bannoura — like the other hundreds of olive woodshop owners in the Bethlehem area — relies primarily on international sales to make his living.

Outside his workshop, cut olive branches that have been soaked in water pile up, left to dry before they can be carved. The whole process from preparing the wood, usually taken from pruned trees, to the final carved product normally takes about six months, said Bannoura.

“Olive wood is expensive; life is expensive,” said Bannoura. Even in 2008, a year when the tourism level was relatively high, he has barely managed to break even and pay his eight employees, he said.

“There is a lot of competition and it is hard to sell our carvings. Usually the Christmas markets in the U.S. are good for us, but this year the world economy has had a bad effect on the sales,” he said. “This year I have not sold anything in the USA.”

The area has few other employment opportunities, he added.

Fellow artisan Osama Abu Saadeh, 32, runs his family workshop in Beit Sahour with his father and younger brother, while his mother in the United States sells their handiwork. Even if they do not sell anything, every month he must pay his seven employees, said Abu Saadeh, a Catholic.

“This is not just work; it is an art, and this is the Holy Land,” said Abu Saadeh, considered one of the top olive wood artisans in the area.

His favorite carvings are of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt because of the detailed work they require, he said, adding that it takes about 12 days to complete the carving for such a statue. A bust of Jesus takes him about a week to complete.

“The stores in Jerusalem used to take all of my work,” he said. He gestured to shelves filled with wooden statues yet to be sold and shrugged his shoulders.

Olive carving always has been one of the traditional crafts practiced in the Bethlehem area, said George Ghattas, vice president and country representative of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation. He said that in the last 10 years it has become one of the key industries in the area because of Bethlehem’s isolation from the West Bank and other employment opportunities.

Nearly 300 registered olive woodcarving workshops, most of which belong to one of four cooperatives, are in the area, Ghattas said. There are dozens more uncounted basement workshops that churn out carved items, he said. The competition is stiff and sales opportunities are low even in relatively good tourism years like the past two years, said Ghattas.

“Tourists spend very little time in Bethlehem, and usually when they have a chance to go shopping they go to large souvenir shops whose main interest is making a profit. They aren’t interested in maintaining the tradition of woodcarving. Many products they sell are not even from local handicrafts, and they may be imported from China because they are cheaper,” he said.

Several years ago the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development, established the Turath Center to showcase Palestinian handicrafts through the local cooperatives and to work on issues such as quality control and competition. A network of volunteers in the United States continues to organize sales in churches and malls not only as a way to generate revenue, but also as a form of advocacy to share the artisans’ story, he said.

Bannoura and Abu Saadeh are two of 36 olive artisans who belong to the Holy Land Handicraft Cooperative, created in 1981. The cooperative is a member of the International Fair Trade Organization. The U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services also assists the cooperative through its fair-trade program.

“Fair-trade products from the Holy Land help us remember the origins of our faith and to put our faith into action today,” said Katy Cantrell, CRS fair-trade program adviser in Baltimore.

But with the burgeoning world economic crisis, sales forecasts for the program are not as good as they were in 2007, said Cantrell.

“We want to be sensitive to difficulties many families in the U.S. are experiencing right now, but at the same time we recognize that this is a critical time for artisans overseas who are also affected by the economic climate and (live) in much more fragile situations than most Americans,” she said.