wfn.org | Negotiations underway over besieged Bethlehem church

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Note #7139 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

23-April-2002

02156

Negotiations underway over besieged Bethlehem church  
  
by Ross Dunn
Ecumenical News International
 
JERUSALEM - A meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials over the stand?off at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem got underway today, as reports emerged of the growing distress of clerics inside the sanctuary.  

Three Armenian monks managed to escape from the shrine, where Palestinian gunmen remain barricaded, along with priests and nuns, for almost three weeks.  

Israeli troops have surrounded the church, built over the spot where tradition holds that Jesus was born. The soldiers are under orders not to evacuate until they have arrested wanted Palestinians, who are refusing to surrender.  

Canon Andrew White, an envoy sent by the Anglican church, said that the conditions inside the shrine were becoming intolerable. 

"The situation is getting steadily worse," he told reporters. "There is no food. The people are getting water from a well. The sanitary conditions are terrible. Several people are sick and some are injured."  

White said that about 35 nuns and priests from various denominations were staying on voluntarily to ensure no harm came to the shrine.  

He wants to mediate an end to the crisis, although a spokesman for the Israeli army said that no international intervention would be welcomed.  

"There will be no third party," the spokesman said. "It is a strictly military matter."  

Among the Palestinian negotiators at Tuesday's meeting were Bethlehem's mayor, Hanna Nasser, and tourism minister, Mitri Abu Aita. The Israeli delegation was believed to have consisted only of security officials.  

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed that the gunmen surrender and go on trial in Israel or go into permanent exile, a choice the Palestinians have so far rejected.  

The result has been a stalemate, with Sharon refusing to give any order to storm the church because of the obvious sensitivities.
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