Arafat Forced to Miss Mass in Bethlehem

In a centuries-old tradition, worshipers congregated here Monday where Jesus is believed to have been born and ushered in a joyless Christmas made all the more somber by Israel’s refusal to permit the participation of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon--ignoring pleas from the Vatican, the United States, Russia, Europe and even the president of Israel--refused to rescind a decision to block Arafat from making his annual pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

Arafat, a Muslim, has attended Christmas Eve Mass and other Christmas ceremonies here every year since Bethlehem came under Palestinian control in 1995.

Sharon says Arafat must arrest the suspected assassins of an Israeli Cabinet minister who was gunned down in October before the Palestinian leader will be allowed to leave Ramallah, the besieged West Bank city where he has been under virtual house arrest for weeks.

At the traditional Christmas Eve midnight Mass in St. Catherine’s Church, an annex of the Church of the Nativity, a chair with Arafat’s name on it sat empty, draped with a black-checked kaffiyeh, his trademark head covering. Outside, in Manger Square, which just two years ago was packed on Christmas Eve, crowds were thin.

Arafat had vowed to reach Bethlehem even if he had to do so on foot, but in the end he did not challenge the formidable Israeli army roadblocks that now cut off most Palestinian cities and villages.

Instead, he went on Palestinian TV on Monday evening and addressed his people “with a heart full of sadness and sorrow” because of Israel’s “crime” in blocking his movements.

“The Israeli tanks, the barriers and the rifles of the oppressors have prevented me from sharing with you our annual celebration on this divine and blessed occasion,” Arafat said. “The site where Jesus was born is now besieged from all directions. . . . The whole world that has seen what happened . . . has to know what kind of terror the worshipers in this Holy Land are facing.”

Israeli officials insisted that they were not impeding freedom of worship but attempting to put more pressure on Arafat. In the wake of a string of deadly suicide bombings, Israeli forces have systematically targeted symbols of his power, and the travel ban is part of that effort to humiliate him and deprive him of a platform for political redemption, officials said.

The decision, however, drew embarrassed criticism from a wide spectrum of Israeli public opinion, including a right-wing deputy public security minister. The Vatican said the travel ban was “arbitrary,” while Western diplomats called mixing security matters with a religious event a mistake.

Christmas in Bethlehem was already going to be a low-key affair. For the second straight year, the deadly fighting that has engulfed this region for 15 months overshadowed celebrations. Bethlehem’s tourism-based economy is devastated. Tight Israeli blockades, intended to stop suicide bombers and terrorists, made it difficult Monday for Palestinian Christians from elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to reach Bethlehem; Christians in the territories are a shrinking minority who make up less than 3% of the Palestinian population.

And so the crowds parading over the ancient stones of Manger Square were small and mostly local. Franciscan friars, priests in flowing scarlet robes and a Palestinian bagpipe band led a procession of religious dignitaries into the Church of the Nativity, a 4th century structure built at the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.

Under customs dating back to the Ottoman Empire, the ruling entity in the Holy Land always sends a representative to Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem. This is the role that Arafat has been filling, as did the Israeli army and officials of the British Mandate when they constituted the governing body.

“It is difficult to feel very happy,” said Maha Bannourah, a 21-year-old sociology student at Bethlehem University who stood in a front row to glimpse the procession. “So many people have been killed. There isn’t much to celebrate.”

Bannourah said Israel’s ban on Arafat added insult to injury.

“It means they [the Israelis] don’t respect our country and they don’t respect our president at all,” she said. “Because of this, we cannot feel we live in freedom. We are occupied.”

Several people held aloft posters of Arafat that read, “The year of the Palestinian State: 2000.”

Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the highest-ranking representative of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land, presided over the midnight Mass and was sharply critical of Israeli occupation as an obstacle to peace, saying it “feeds terrorism.”

Arafat’s attendance was so touch-and-go all day Monday that Sabbah’s prepared text included a paragraph with an asterisk, tacked on to the end of his homily, to be read in the event that Arafat did not reach Bethlehem.

“We ask that Israelis have the wisdom to see that the road to Bethlehem, if President Arafat had come here, would have been a step that would lead to peace,” it said.

Sabbah, the first Palestinian to hold such a high church position, visited Arafat earlier in the day in Ramallah, along with a delegation of leaders of most of the Christian denominations present in the Holy Land.

He said they were there to show solidarity with Arafat.

“The dignity of President Arafat is the dignity of all Palestinians, Muslims and Christians,” Sabbah said.

When the delegation left, its members were stopped by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Ramallah and their cars were searched. The soldiers opened the trunks of several of the vehicles, apparently checking to see if they were trying to smuggle Arafat out of the city. Sabbah cited his diplomatic status and refused to open his trunk. A flurry of telephone calls eventually gained the convoy’s passage back to Jerusalem.

For many Palestinians, the Arafat Christmas episode underscored their feelings of impotence and frustration. The restrictions on Arafat have further eroded his legitimacy and raised questions about whether he can ever effectively deal with the Israeli government. If he can’t get a pass to Mass, can he possibly ever get a peace deal or other important achievements for the Palestinians?

Many Israelis felt Sharon handed Arafat a public-relations victory while squandering some of the gains Israel has made in international support for its own “war on terrorism.”

“Sharon’s behavior indicates bad judgment, if not downright irresponsibility,” the influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in Monday’s main editorial. “Sharon is wrong if he thinks he will continue to enjoy domestic public support and international understanding, when he so blatantly tries to provoke the Palestinian leaders.”

But Danny Ayalon, an advisor to Sharon, said Israel has to show Arafat and the world that he can no longer operate the way he has for years.

“Letting it appear that things are normal would send the wrong message,” Ayalon told Israeli radio.

Israel wants Arafat, as part of a larger crackdown on militants, to arrest two alleged assassins of hard-line Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was killed in October by the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after Israel assassinated the group’s leader.

Israel also wants the two top leaders of the PFLP, Ahmed Saadat and Jihad Ghoulmi, arrested. Israel accuses them of ordering the Zeevi killing and of dispatching another suicide bomber just this week, and it says they can be easily found in Ramallah.

The Palestinian Authority maintains that it has arrested dozens of militants. But Israel says most are of minor rank.

On Dec. 16, Arafat went on Palestinian TV to order a halt to violence against Israel, and the number of attacks has dropped off significantly since. On Monday afternoon, however, a Jewish settler was seriously wounded when ambushed by Palestinian gunmen in the northern West Bank. One of the assailants was shot dead. News agencies reported receiving an anonymous telephoned claim of responsibility from a militia associated with Arafat’s Fatah movement that said it had acted in revenge for Israel’s having grounded Arafat. The authenticity of the call could not be verified.