In Jesus’ Birthplace, Respite for a Palestinian Fugitive

Loitering in the incense-scented shadows of the Church of the Nativity, the pale, bearded young Palestinian was no ordinary tourist or pilgrim.

A fugitive from Israeli authorities, he was visiting the fortress-like basilica for the first time since spring, when, together with dozens of Palestinian militants, clerics and peace activists, he spent 39 days holed up inside the ancient church, built on the spot where tradition says Jesus was born.

On Christmas Eve, as muted holiday celebrations began in Bethlehem, the 26-year-old gunman, a Christian born and raised in this West Bank town just south of Jerusalem, felt safe enough to come back for a second -- if wary -- look.

Between clandestine meetings with friends, family and associates, he was spending most of his brief visit inside the church, where he said he felt secure, despite all that had happened there.

“This place was part of my childhood, my growing up -- I was baptized here,” said the gunman, who would allow only his first name, George, to be used for publication. “Not for a single moment did I feel I was not entitled to shelter here.”

What made it possible for him to slip back into Bethlehem for Christmas was the fact that Israel, in deference to the holiday and under international pressure, had pulled its troops back to positions at the edge of town and declared that worshipers were free to enter.

But Palestinian Christians, in protest of the continuing military hold on their city -- and the fact that they expected the army to again impose tight curfews on Bethlehem’s 28,000 Palestinians as soon as the holiday is over -- pointedly refrained from any actions that would appear overtly celebratory.

The giant Christmas tree that normally adorns Manger Square was missing. The usual parade did not take place. Displays of Christmas lights and decorations on Palestinian homes were discouraged.

“This is just a short respite for us,” said the Rev. Mitri Raheb, the Palestinian pastor of Bethlehem’s Lutheran Christmas Church, nodding toward the shoppers in the crowded central market who were buying spices and vegetables. “Soon we will be prisoners in our homes again.”

In public, only the strictly religious elements of the holiday were observed. The Latin patriarch, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, led a traditional procession of churchmen and seminarians into Bethlehem and through the low door that leads into the basilica.

Later, the patriarch presided over the traditional Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, with far fewer dignitaries in attendance than in past years. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, banned from Bethlehem for a second straight year by the Israelis, sent a delegation led by his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat. Arafat, who has been confined for months to his battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 12 miles away, bitterly protested his exclusion.

The latest Israeli incursion into Bethlehem, the third since the siege of the Church of the Nativity in April and May, followed a bus bombing in Jerusalem that was carried out by a suicide attacker from Bethlehem. Eleven Israelis were killed, and dozens were hurt.

In a pattern that has been in force throughout the West Bank for months, a Palestinian city, town or refugee camp from which a serious attack against Israelis originates is likely to feel the repercussions for many weeks to come.

Israel says the continuing encirclement of Bethlehem by troops and tanks is due to intelligence information pointing to the threat of more terror attacks, and it insists that the town remains a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups.

Palestinians familiar with the events of the church siege said George was among the gunmen who were there the entire time.

George openly acknowledged his membership in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Arafat’s Fatah faction that has been a driving force behind the nearly 27-month-old intifada, or uprising. The group has been responsible for many attacks on Israelis, including shootings and suicide bombings.

Like many other young Palestinian men in Bethlehem, Christians as well as Muslims, George took up arms against the Israelis during a sweeping offensive throughout the West Bank in April that was brought on by a wave of suicide attacks. He was one of a group of gunmen who ran into the church compound when Israeli troops and armored vehicles approached Manger Square, in the heart of the city.

The siege trapped nearly 200 people inside the church, including the gunmen, plus monks, priests and, later, peace activists who pushed their way inside.

George, who is from a well-known Bethlehem family, spoke of the cold, hunger and fear that plagued them all, but also of the comfort he drew from the familiar surroundings -- the Grotto of the Nativity, the cave-like enclosure beneath the thick foundation stones; the candlelit basilica; the courtyards and corridors of adjoining monasteries.

He pointed out the cistern-like enclosure where those trapped inside elected to store the decomposing bodies of two dead gunmen before priests were finally allowed to carry them outside, and the spot where a fellow gunman was shot in front of him by an Israeli sniper.

“I don’t want to die,” George recalled his comrade telling him as he bled to death. In all, eight people were killed in and around the church during the standoff.

As he spoke, a young monk brushed past and recognized him with a start, a wanted man in broad daylight. “Be careful!” the monk whispered.

George was not among those who were sent into exile overseas or to the Gaza Strip as part of the settlement that ended the siege, but he said the Israelis warned him at the time that he was a marked man, subject to arrest or worse if they found him. The Israeli military refuses to discuss the status of Palestinian militants it is hunting.

The basilica and its surrounding compound, filthy and stench-ridden by the siege’s end on May 10, now look much as before, save for pockmarks left by bullets.

Before the start of Midnight Mass, clerics said they hoped the first celebration of Christmas since the siege would help put memories of it to rest.

“Even though there are no displays of joy this Christmas, we are privileged to celebrate it once again inside these walls,” said Father Giovanni Batticelli, the regional superior of the Franciscan order.

George had a holiday reunion with his wife and child, but he wondered how long he could sustain himself in hiding elsewhere in the West Bank. He planned to slip out of Bethlehem as soon as there was any sign that Israelis were preparing to move back into the city center.

Earlier this month, he said, an officer of Israel’s Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence agency, obtained his mobile phone number and called to tell him to give himself up or prepare to die.

“We’ll find you -- I’ll catch you,” he said the Israeli officer promised him. “You’re like a dead person already. How long can you run?”