wfn.org | Bethlehem residents say this latest siege is designed to crush hope

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Note #7120 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05-April-2002
02136

Bethlehem residents say this latest siege is designed to crush hope
	
"This situation," says one priest, " ... is not just another invasion."

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Majdi Siryani hasn't conducted a mass since the day after Easter.

In fact, he hasn't been outside the walls of his church, Our Lady of Fatima, which sits alongside what are called the Shepherd's Fields, just outside of Bethlehem, where, according to the gospel accounts, the angels appeared to shepherds on the night of Christ's birth.

"This situation," he said, during an interview on his cell phone, "is extremely critical.  It is not just another invasion. They (the Israeli soldiers) are vandalizing everything."

He knows that three men from his parish were arrested yesterday.  A cousin was shot in the head.  He is sure that no members of his Roman Catholic congregation are dead.  He has heard that soldiers executed three men in the town, put their bodies in a car and ran over the car with a tank. 

But even though the tanks pulled away from his parish this morning, he still can't go outside to check on anyone because he can see snipers outside. 

So, he uses his cell phone to gather as much information as he can for himself, another priest and for the approximately 25 Palestinian policemen who are holed up inside the church. According to Siryani, the men tossed their weapons - which were licensed by Israel - outside when they sought sanctuary inside.

"The Israelis have one message.  They want to tell us that they are the mighty ducks and we'd better shut up.  They are doing everything to scare us.  That," said Siryani, "is why they are here."

Bethlehem and nearby towns like Beit Sahour, where Siryani's church sits, is a closed military area under a 24-hour curfew, like at least six other central Palestinian towns and a few smaller ones as part of Israel's offensive against Palestinian militants who have conducted deadly suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. There were seven suicide bombings in the past week.

Since the Palestinian uprising began 18 months ago, it isn't the first time that sections of this the tiny biblical city has been under siege by helicopters or tanks. 

But it is, by far, the worst. 

Zoughbi Zoughbi, a Palestinian conflict mediator, has 11 of his neighbors inside his Bethlehem house - a form of quiet resistance against the isolation that the occupation imposes.  The electricity is out.  But Zoughbi has run an extension cord from another neighbor's home and alternates plugging it into the refrigerator and the television, the latter to watch what he calls "our own destruction," something he cannot step outside to witness.

Zoughbi did plant two flowers in dirt yesterday morning as a symbolic act 

"We have to resist against oppression, fear and paranoia ... to try to build a community," he told the Presbyterian News Service, stressing that, trapped inside, he's been occupying the children - and grownups, too - by kicking a ball around the house, singing loud, telling jokes, playing cards, drinking too much caffeine, smoking and eating leftover Easter sweets.

"We're going to go a different route than the Israeli occupation wants us to go,"  said Zoughbi, who, in the same breath, added:  "But it is not easy."

The seeming randomness of the violence is what is most disarming for residents, many of whom are outraged by the army's refusal to allow ambulances inside the city to gather the dead and wounded.

The Lutheran pastor of the Christmas Church in Bethlehem was detained for nearly two hours in his church compound Thursday while soldiers broke down doors and searched drawers and files, even though he assured them that no armed people were inside.

The Rev. Mitri Raheb said that the soldiers refused to accept a cell phone call from a deputy commander of the Israeli Defense Forces, who was told about the incursion by the Lutheran bishop in Jerusalem.  (Raheb had telephoned the bishop before he was denied access to the phone.)  A commander came to the compound later and ordered the soldiers out and marked an outside wall to indicate that the site had been inspected.

"You know," said Raheb of the ordeal underway in Bethlehem, "this is hate in action.  They want to kill every sign of hope we've built with so much compassion over the last five years."

A school at the site was vandalized one month ago when soldiers rounded up Palestinian men from a refugee camp that sprawls along the hill below the compound.  The hilltop provided a strategic view of the camp for tanks and snipers.

Raheb - who has seen few members of his parish since they packed the church Easter morning - said that many have had their homes searched. Cars owned by two families were destroyed. He said that an Israeli commander also confirmed that mines were planted by soldiers in the Old City, which borders the Church of the Nativity, the cathedral that sits atop the grotto where Christians believe that Christ was born.

"The soldiers know that gunmen are not here.  Most have escaped.  They are terrorizing the civil population," he said, adding that many Bethlehemites are talking openly about emigrating so that they may build lives elsewhere that cannot so easily be destroyed.  Others, he said, talk angrily about revenge - if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can destroy what they've worked to build, then there will be payback.

"Through this invasion, Sharon has planted the seeds for so much still to come," he said, adding that it seems that the message behind the violence is that the Sharon government has "the upper hand" and will continue the settlement policies that require confiscating more Palestinian land to make way for all-Jewish housing.

Raheb said he has been unable to clean up the destruction at the church office because shooting resumed again this morning.

A woman who has stayed huddled inside her Bethlehem house - warned by soldiers not to even look out the windows - said, too, that the consequences of the past few weeks are dire.  "This is a tragedy for everybody here.  It is going in the wrong direction.

"And how do you come back from the brink of insanity?" she asked. 

"The army will eventually withdraw.  People will catch their breath," she said, adding that  trouble will begin again because the violence of the past few months is no solution, just a symptom of the larger problem.  "After this, the hatred of Palestinians for Israelis will be magnified 100 times," she said, noting that she thinks the enormity of the assault is designed to crush the spirit of the people.

"But I don't think it will work," she said, explaining that it is almost impossible to squelch deep convictions.  "These people believe they've not been treated fairly ... the fact that they've never reached equality is one of the problems."

Although his apartment is in Bethlehem, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker Doug Dicks has temporarily moved to Jerusalem so that he can continue working for Catholic Relief Services, whose offices are there.  Dicks went to church in Jerusalem Easter morning, but saw the tanks lining up at the checkpoint upon his return. 
He opted to gather some clothing and return to Jerusalem.

"I'm trying to do everything I can from here.  Get the news out.  Get e-mails out.  It seems like precious little and it is," he said, but, said it enables him to do something other than be confined to his Bethlehem apartment - a place that violence has seldom required him to vacate in the past five years.  "We just have to wait until whatever is coming passes," he said.

Siryani said that Bethlehem is less than three square miles in diameter, but, he is estimating that there are currently 300 Israeli tanks there, 5,000 soldiers and at least four Apache helicopter gunships.

Over 200 gunmen remain within the Church of the Nativity in a standoff with Israeli forces. 
Sources in Bethlehem say that the crowd inside the church includes unarmed residents of the city as well.
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