Palestinians Stand Defiant in Bethlehem

The siege of the shrines of Bethlehem entered its second day Wednesday with about 100 Palestinian fighters holed up in the Church of the Nativity, defying Israeli soldiers positioned outside the 4th century church built on the site revered as Jesus’ birthplace.

Intermittent gunfights continued in this shattered holy city. Palestinian and Israeli officials said that five more Palestinians were killed but that the death toll was preliminary because some bodies hadn’t been recovered. That would bring the total to an estimated 14 killed here since the Israeli military swept into town early Tuesday.

There was no shooting at the Church of the Nativity, however. Late Wednesday, an Israeli military commander approached the front doors of the church and began telephone negotiations with a priest inside acting as a mediator, according to a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces. Negotiations were continuing this morning without a resolution.

As the Bethlehem standoff continued Wednesday, Israel widened its reoccupation of the West Bank, taking control of Nablus, the sixth major Palestinian population center seized and the largest city in the West Bank. Alarmed by the escalating violence, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in Washington that he is considering holding talks with Israeli and Arab leaders during a trip to Europe next week.

In Bethlehem, seven Greek Orthodox clergymen have remained voluntarily in the besieged church on Manger Square, until recently a thriving tourist attraction. The clerics were providing medical care to nine wounded Palestinians, one of them severely injured, and sharing meager supplies of coffee, tea and biscuits with the fighters, a priest said in a telephone interview.

To the extent that anyone sleeps, the fighters, mostly members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, bunk in the basilica and the priests in their adjoining living quarters, he said.

“They are agitated and nervous, but they respect us very much,” said the 33-year-old Canadian priest, who identified himself as Father Parthenius, the chant of prayers resounding in the background. “The Christians among them are joining us in prayer. There is a lot of shooting outside. We heard two tank shells fired today.”

But the priest said that Israeli soldiers refrained from firing at the church and that the Palestinians inside weren’t shooting either. Another standoff at a house of worship ended earlier Wednesday when about 80 Palestinian fighters fled out the back door of the Santa Maria church, leaving behind the corpse of a uniformed Palestinian policeman with a bullet wound to the head, officials said.

The Palestinian governor of Bethlehem said the gunmen managed to sneak out and escape into the historic city center, a labyrinth of winding streets and narrow alleys. An Israeli military spokeswoman said troops didn’t engage the fleeing Palestinians in a firefight to ensure the safety of a priest and nuns who had been inside with them since Tuesday.

“We don’t want any trouble around a church,” the spokeswoman said.

Information was imprecise, but Palestinians were reported to have been holed up in two other churches. They abandoned one, the Lutheran church, sometime Wednesday afternoon, according to Bethlehem Gov. Mohammed Madani.

The Israelis say the Palestinians are exploiting the churches by taking refuge in them.

Father Parthenius said the priests in the Church of the Nativity don’t regard themselves as hostages. Rather, they fulfilled a sacred tradition of providing sanctuary, he explained.

“We’ll never ask them to leave,” the cleric said of the fighters. “To make war is easy. In order to make peace, we must all pray together.”

The standoff at one of Christianity’s most hallowed sites dominated world attention, spurring public comments and diplomatic contacts involving the Vatican, Israel and other governments.

Clerics here were still coming to grips with the unthinkable: Men of war have taken over places of peace. Nonetheless, several priests said they were less concerned about the fate of the church buildings than about the long-suffering people of Bethlehem.

“The dignity of human beings is more important than the historical center,” said the Rev. Maroun Lahham, director of a Catholic seminary here. “These are men we are dealing with, not stones.”

And the harsh human costs of the battle in Bethlehem were on display just a few blocks from Manger Square.

Two men bled to death Wednesday in the Fawagrah neighborhood, residents said, because ambulances couldn’t reach them through streets filled with sniper fire, destroyed cars and water gushing from broken pipes. As a wide-eyed little girl watched, Abdel Kader’s agony ended Wednesday afternoon on the kitchen floor of a family whose members were strangers to him.

Kader was wounded by shrapnel in the street during the Israeli military offensive Tuesday morning, witnesses said. The family of Fatheyeh Mousa, a stout woman wearing an Islamic head scarf, carried Kader into its ground-floor apartment, a humble place with peeling walls facing a small courtyard.

“He was from a refugee camp in Jordan,” said Issam Isis, crouched in a daze next to the dead man on the kitchen floor. “He was just here visiting relatives. Nobody from the hospital was able to pick him up because of the fighting.”

Mousa’s family tried to tend to Kader with the help of phone instructions from doctors at the hospital, which is only a few minutes away.

“He has been bleeding there since 7 in the morning yesterday,” Mousa exclaimed. “Today he said, ‘I’m dying, my blood, I’m going to die soon.’ He kept bleeding from a big hole in his waist. We tried to find any kind of medicine to help him. We don’t know who he is, but we feel as if he was family. We feel as if we have lost a loved one.”

Mousa let loose a tirade of curses against Israelis. Her home and the adjoining courtyard reverberated with the wails of enraged women, some of whom also shouted anti-American sentiments, and the agitated chatter of hard-eyed men smoking cigarettes.

The anguish and tension increased when a siren wailed outside. People appeared on balconies; people spilled out into the street. They were jumpy after two days hunkered down in a combat zone, and a false report that a tank was rounding the corner caused a brief stampede for cover.

Finally, an ambulance operated by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society arrived, men frantically clearing debris out of its path. It was the first ambulance allowed into the area since Tuesday morning.

Surrounded by people appealing for help, a bearded paramedic named Jamal Balboul forced his way into Mousa’s apartment, took a quick look at Kader’s corpse and declared that there was nothing to be done.

Despite Mousa’s pleas to remove the body, Balboul said he had no time and no room. The International Committee of the Red Cross had negotiated on behalf of the Palestinians with the Israelis, who granted the ambulance 30 minutes for its mission, the driver said.

Balboul drove back to the hospital through an eerily deserted Pope Paul VI Street, the siren mixing with the occasional gunfire in the distance and the persistent drone of a store burglar alarm. He drove past walls plastered with the posters of local men slain in the intifada, tires crunching over a carpet of rubble, broken glass and spent cartridges.

The ambulance carried a grim cargo: two wounded men riding on top of three cadavers. The dead included a slain woman and her adult son, whose bodies had lain in a home for 27 hours with five frightened children.

Asked about the restrictions on ambulances, the Israeli military spokeswoman said that ambulances pose special problems in the slow-motion war here.

Israeli troops once discovered an explosives belt of the kind used by suicide bombers in an ambulance carrying a sick child, she said. Red Crescent ambulances have been used to transport Palestinian fighters, and one suicide bomber was a medic, she said.

Certainly, not all the casualties in the Fawagrah neighborhood were innocent bystanders. Residents said a dead man wrapped in a blanket on the second floor of a street-front mosque was a fighter who had died a few hours earlier; the white medical gauze wrapped around his wrist suggested that someone had administered first aid.

And several wounded combatants were on hand as well. A lean fighter slumped in a chair in Mousa’s apartment with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

On a hillside overlooking the city, another fighter, who identified himself only as Khaled, sported a bandage on an eyebrow. His forehead was spattered with dried blood. He wore an oversized leather jacket and carried a cell phone in one hand and red worry beads in the other.

“I was injured in an exchange of fire with the Israelis,” Khaled said, green eyes sweeping warily across faces and rooftops. From the urban hillside where he stood, he could see Israeli soldiers taking prisoners on a street below.

Asked which Palestinian armed faction he belonged to, Khaled flashed a half-smile that exposed prominent front teeth.

“I’m just a Palestinian defending my land,” Khaled said. “I have hidden my gun. I am confident the Israelis will not be able to find it. I will be able to use it again.”