Two Palestinians shot, two surrender in Bethlehem church crisis

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, April 23, 2002

By Ibrahim Hazboun

Associated Press

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Two Palestinians inside the Church of the Nativity compound were shot Wednesday and one of them died as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators gathered next door for a second round of talks to end the standoff at one of Christianity’s holiest sites.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress he had no evidence of an Israeli massacre of Palestinians at the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank. Powell has sought to mend deep divisions between Israel and the United Nations over the composition of a U.N. team dispatched to investigate the actions of Israeli troops in the camp, where Palestinian claim there was a massacre.

“Clearly, innocent lives may well have been lost,” Powell testified. But, he said, “I have no evidence of mass graves. I see no evidence that would support a massacre took place.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has ordered the team to arrive in the Middle East by Saturday. But Israel has balked, saying it wants the mission to include people with military and anti-terrorism experience. Israel has not said what it will do if they are not added to the team.

The trouble at the church, built over a grotto where Christian tradition holds Jesus was born, began about dawn, when a Palestinian was shot and seriously wounded by an Israeli sniper. The Palestinian was standing by a window inside the church, the army and Palestinian witnesses said. He was armed, according to the Israeli army, and was evacuated to a Jerusalem hospital.

A few hours later, two Palestinians surrendered, walking out of the church with hands up and turning themselves over to Israeli soldiers. The two men were wearing civilian clothes but were Palestinian police, according to a Palestinian journalist who recognized them. The two men said they were ill.

The Palestinian who died was hit in shooting that erupted about 5 p.m., as the Israeli and Palestinian delegations were arriving to start the second day of negotiations at the peace center next to the church.

Afterward, one of the Palestinians negotiators and a priest emerged from the church, carrying a badly wounded man on a stretcher. At one point, the bloodied man fell to the ground. He was taken to a Jerusalem hospital, but died a short time later, the hospital said.

After the shootout, Israeli soldiers briefly detained five journalists, including an Associated Press photographer, and confiscated their press cards.

About 200 armed Palestinians – with several dozen others – have been holed up inside the church since April 2, when they entered to escape advancing Israeli troops.

In the negotiations that opened Tuesday, Palestinians have proposed the gunmen be escorted to the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip. Israel insists they surrender and be tried in Israel or deported.

In other violence, at least five Palestinians were killed – two in an Israeli military raid near the West Bank town of Hebron, and three in the Gaza Strip in what appeared to be a bomb-making accident.

And at Yasser Arafat’s besieged compound in Ramallah, the Palestinian leader played host to a European Union delegation led by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Arafat stressed “the importance of the immediate Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories,” said Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh.

Israel has pulled its troops out of most West Bank cities and towns after a three-week incursion but remains encamped around Arafat’s compound and is present in many parts of Bethlehem.

In the ongoing dispute over the recent fighting in the Jenin refugee camp, Annan rejected the Israeli demand to hold up the arrival the fact-finding mission.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the commission should not travel to the region until it is expanded to include military and anti-terrorism experts. He said Israel intends to cooperate with the U.N. team, but demands that it also look into suicide bombings by Palestinian militants. He said 137 Israelis had been killed in one recent four-week period, the majority in suicide bombings.

An Israeli team planned to fly to New York to try to persuade Annan to add more members to the team. Annan has not ruled out adding advisers, but is not prepared to discuss the choice of team members, the U.N. said.

Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters fought a fierce weeklong house-to-house battle in the camp. Palestinians charge the Israelis massacred civilians. Israel, which lost 23 soldiers, said the Palestinian death toll was in the dozens, and most of them were gunmen. So far 48 bodies have been found, most of them young men, according to the Jenin hospital.

In renewed violence Wednesday, two Palestinians were killed and seven arrested in the Israeli military operation near Hebron, the two sides said.

According to Palestinians, the army blew up a cave in which the men were hiding, near the village of Bani Naim. The army said it had tracked down suspected Palestinian militants, and two Palestinians were killed and seven arrested after an exchange of fire.

Also, three Palestinians were killed in an explosion inside a house in the Jebaliya refugee camp near Gaza City. The house belonged to an activist, Said Mabhouh, Palestinian witnesses said. Palestinian officials declined to comment, while the Israeli military said it had no operations in the area.

Witnesses suggested the blast may have occurred while the trio was preparing an explosive.

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