wfn.org | ACNS: Youth is Slain in Bethlehem, and Passions Flare

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ACNS 2743 - MIDDLE EAST - 23 October 2001
The ACNSlist is published by the Anglican Communion Office, London.

Youth is slain in Bethlehem, and passions flare

By James Bennet

21 October 2001

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The spot in Manger Square where Johnny Thaljieh fell
has already become a shrine, or perhaps an exhibit. His blackening blood on
the cobblestones is surrounded by rocks and blue metal barricades, to honor
his memory and to shield the evidence of what his family said was a random
slaying by Israeli soldiers after church on Saturday.

An Israeli Army spokesman said that Palestinians had been shooting from that
area and it was possible someone might have been killed in the cross-fire.

Israel is embarked on its biggest military strike in many years against the
Palestinians, in what it describes as an effort to protect its citizens and
to compel Palestinian leaders to arrest militants. During the last four
days, it has blockaded eight Palestinian cities or towns in the West Bank
and invaded six of them, seizing some buildings and answering Palestinian
shooting with machine-gun fire and shelling by tanks.

Both sides say that the invasion has gone the farthest, and met the fiercest
resistance, here in Bethlehem. Of at least 24 Palestinians killed since this
phase of the fighting started, 14 died in and around Bethlehem, Palestinian
officials said. Three of them were killed today. Eight Israeli soldiers have
been wounded in fighting throughout the West Bank, the Israeli Army said.

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News Analysis: Israel debates the cost of dealing with Arafat (October 21,
2001)
Mideast: Israelis invade Bethlehem for first time in year (October 20, 2001)
Mideast: Israeli's slaying ignites clashes and new fears (October 19, 2001)
Far-Right Leader is slain in Israel (October 18, 2001)
The death in one of Christianity's holiest places of Johnny Thaljieh, a
16-year-old Christian, caught the attention of Pope John Paul II. Saying he
was saddened by the killing, he urged Palestinians and Israelis today to
stop the violence. The Holy Land, he said, should be "a land of peace and
fraternity once again."

Johnny was eating sunflower seeds and carrying a 4-year-old cousin, Michael,
as he left the Church of the Nativity here Saturday evening, said Michael's
father, Elias Thaljieh. Johnny put the boy down, then suddenly screamed and
collapsed to the ground, rolling over three times. A bullet had struck him
in the right side and exited his left, passing through his heart, his family
said. "There were no armed people around us," Mr. Thaljieh said. "We thought
the Manger Square was a safe place."

When he was hit, Johnny had just crossed into an area with a clear line of
sight through the buildings that border the square to the Israeli tank
positions on nearby hills. Israeli soldiers are under orders not to fire at
any holy place, even when fired upon from one, said Jacob Dallal, an army
spokesman. But Mr. Dallal said Palestinians had been shooting from the area
of Manger Square. "We are not aware of anyone being hit in the cross-fire,"
he said, "but we can't say for certain."

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, came under growing international
pressure today to withdraw Israeli forces. During a cabinet meeting, Mr.
Sharon said that while the army did not intend to remain in Palestinian
areas, its departure depended on whether Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian
leader, cracked down on Palestinian militants. Israeli officials and foreign
diplomats say that Mr. Arafat has repeatedly failed to jail Palestinians who
have planned or committed attacks against Israel.

Mr. Sharon set three conditions for a return to negotiations: a complete end
to "terrorism and incitement"; the arrest of terrorists and the disbanding
of their organizations; and the extradition of those behind the killing of
Rehavam Zeevi, Israel's right-wing minister of tourism, who was shot dead
last Wednesday. The Palestinian News Agency reported today that Mr. Arafat o
utlawed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which took
responsibility for the killing.

A senior Israeli military officer said that a goal of the current operation
was to push Mr. Arafat to make arrests. Although some cabinet ministers have
called for banishing Mr. Arafat and dismantling his Palestinian Authority,
the officer, interviewed Saturday night, said that those were not goals of
the mission.

"There is no political decision I know of to do anything personally to
Arafat or to bring down the Palestinian Authority," said the officer. But,
he added, "This is something that we might have to do in the future."

With Mr. Sharon's coalition government internally divided over the invasion
and a possible international campaign to undermine Mr. Arafat, pressure is
growing within the Labor Party to withdraw from it. Labor Party legislators
are to meet Monday to discuss their conditions for staying in the
government.

Of the more than three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, only 1.7 percent are Christians, said Bernard Sabella, associate
professor of sociology at Bethlehem University. Those Christians are seen by
both sides as having having a special standing internationally. Israeli
officials have been at pains to emphasize that the army does not fire on
churches. Some Palestinians have drawn the attention of foreign reporters to
the fact that Christians have died in the conflict, though, including at
least three in the recent fighting. One was a 24- year-old woman shot while
fetching diapers for her children, Israeli radio reported.

Parishioners and priests in the Church of the Nativity, beside the square,
said Israeli bullets fired this afternoon had knocked splinters from the
wooden roof and chipped the stone floor, which was laid in the 12th century
by crusaders. A Palestinian security official said he had no conclusive
proof of that claim.

Johnny Thaljieh was not a member of any militia fighting the Israelis, his
family and Palestinian officials said, but at his funeral today a
competition was under way to claim him. Some marchers carried the red
banners of the Popular Front, while Al Fatah, Mr. Arafat's faction,
distributed fliers mourning the death of its "son."

One man in a New York Yankees cap who belonged to the Tanzim, a group
affiliated with Al Fatah, fired shots in tribute from his M-16, until
another man restrained him, warning he could draw Israeli fire. As the
funeral procession passed the site of the shooting and approached the Church
of the Nativity, several men drew handguns and fired in the air.

The reaction of the Thaljieh family and friends appeared to be profound,
nonpolitical grief. As the men began to shoot, a cousin of Mr. Thaljieh
fainted in a heap to the cobblestones. And when the procession left the
church a little later, it was led by a young man carrying the lid of the
open coffin. He wept bitterly, paying no attention to the gunmen flanking
the cross bearer behind him.

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