BETHLEHEM, West Bank, Jan 1 -- Two thousand "doves of peace" took wing and fireworks lit the midnight sky over Bethlehem on Saturday as 20,000 revellers saw in Christianity's third millennium in the town where Jesus was born.

The birds -- in reality pigeons -- soared into the air to the recorded strains of Pink Floyd rock music and an eruption of fireworks ignited on Manger Square and over the Church of the Nativity.

Eight km (five miles) down the road in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died, the religious mingled with the profane.

Partygoers popped champagne corks and set off fireworks on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, associated in biblical scriptures with the coming of the Messiah.

He stayed away, leaving those present to savour the view over Jerusalem's walled Old City and party into the night.

Many Christian pilgrims held private prayer services and silence prevailed in mainly Jewish areas of the city as the devout passed December 31 the way they always spend Friday night, quietly observing the Jewish Sabbath.

Security was tight, with thousands of police on a millennium alert in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for suspected doomsday cultists drawn to the Holy Land by visions of the end of the world.

In the end, fears that fanatics could use violence to try to hasten the apocalypse proved as seemingly unfounded as the global scare over the potential ravages of the Y2K computer bug.

"We hoped tonight would not be the end of the world because we are young and want to live," said Thibault Nange, a French Christian student who danced with friends in Manger Square.

In Jerusalem, where a combustible mix of the world's three great monotheistic religions can easily explode into violence, Israeli police reported hardly any incidents.

Spokeswoman Linda Menuhin said police had taken two foreign pilgrims to hospital for psychiatric checks after they appeared to have been afflicted by religious delusions.

"He was speaking insensibly, saying things no one could understand, that God had spoken to him," Menuhin said of one of the pilgrims, an American.

For observant Jews, Friday was the 23rd day of the month of Tevet in the year 5760 by the Hebrew calendar.

It was also 23 Ramadan 1420 for Moslems, 400,000 of whom packed the al-Aqsa compound at midday on Friday for prayers.

FEW FOREIGN TOURISTS IN HOLY LAND

The number of foreigners visiting the Holy Land over Christmas and the millennium New Year has fallen far short of expectations.

Many tourists were apparently scared off by a global U.S. State Department warning of possible extremist attacks and worries about Y2K computer glitches at home.

In Palestinian-ruled Bethlehem, police estimated that the crowd of 20,000 included no more than 300 foreign tourists.

Six of them -- two Africans and four U.S. citizens -- were briefly detained to check whether their faces fit descriptions provided by Israel of doomsday cultists.

All were released after the checks proved negative.

The festivities in Bethlehem also had a distinctly political ring, with attractions such as a film of a modern-day Mary and Joseph trying to reach the town through Israeli checkpoints.

Hours before midnight, there were also raucous celebrations of the 35th anniversary of PLO leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and his plans to declare an independent state in 2000 regardless of the outcome of peace talks with Israel.

"We came here from Tel Aviv because it's nicer to celebrate with our oppressed Palestinian brothers," said Tamar, a left-wing Israeli university student.

A rabbinical ban on parties in hotels that would desecrate the Sabbath made Jerusalem arguably one of the least lively cities for the new millennium. But Tel Aviv, Israel's "sin city" on the shores of the Mediterranean, was awash with partygoers.

Celebrations there included fireworks set off from the top of the Azrieli complex, the tallest building in the Middle East.