BETHLEHEM — It was a sight sickening to hundreds of millions of Christians and the source of outrage among senior clerics across the world. A tower of smoke yesteday uncoiled high above the roof tops of Bethlehem, testimony to a fire burning hard by the church marking the place of Christ’s birth.
At the scene of the blaze, lay a corpse — that of a 23-year-old Palestinian policeman, shot through the head while he was inside a holy site. Khaled Syam was, said a colleague, picked off by an Israeli sniper as he was trying to douse the flames.
Fire and death reached the walls of the Basilica of the Nativity, one of the most sacred shrines in the Christian world which has become a sanctuary for more than 250 clerics, refugees, Palestinian security men, and armed fighters besieged by the Israeli Army for a week.
The basilica is the oldest continuously used church in the world. It has survived the Crusades, the looting Ottomans, a severe earthquake (in 1834), a devastating fire (1869), the Israeli invasion in 1967of the West Bank, and the first seven-year Palestinian intifada. Yesterday it narrowly escaped another calamity, although not without bloodshed.
Allegations were flying last night over who started the blaze, which was in a meeting hall above a courtyard at the entrance to a 19th century Roman Catholic Church — St Catherine’s — which abutts the basilica and is only a few dozen yards from the underground grotto where Christ is believed to have lain in the manger.
International correspondents who sought to establish the facts were driven away by soldiers, acting on censorship orders from their generals who have declared the area to be closed to the press. When we reached within 50 yards of Manger Square — within view of the church’s tiny ancient wooden door — five Israeli soldiers charged at us down an alley, bellowing angrily and firing their M-16 rifles into the air.
An earlier attempt to reach the scene was cut off by a Israeli Merkava tank, within 20 yards of the church, which turned its main gun on us.
Witnesses said that the fire burned unchecked for an hour destroying precious alter cloths and furniture before the Israeli Army allowed efforts to begin to put it out. Palestinian officials blamed Israeli troops for starting it, saying it was caused by a smoke grenade — another attempt by the army to force out the crowd inside the compound.
A spokesman for the Franciscans, who run St. Catherine’s, said that equipment from the Israeli Army, including several M-16 rifles, was mysteriously found inside the compound by monks — suggesting that the fire was part of a bungled attempt by the Israelis to smoke out the church’s occupants.
Locals say that at night, the army have been pressuring them by letting off terrifying sound grenades, coupled with loudspeaker demands appealing to them to leave.
“Last night the Israeli Army used ladders and threw grenades on the church,” the governor of Bethlehem, Mohammed Al-Madani told The Independent, speaking by telephone from inside the basilica. He, too, is holed up.
“They burned a priest’s room. The situation is very dangerous. Israel should withdraw from Bethlehem and the young men will go.”
The Israeli Army’s spokesman admitted that Israeli forces using smoke grenades but said Palestinian “terrorists” inside the church started several fires when they threw hand grenades and shot at army positions around the compound, injuring two Israeli border troops, one seriously.
He said that the army killed the Palestinian after its soldiers were fired on while trying to evacuate their wounded men. Whatever the cause, the incident, and the risk of the siege turning even nastier, was not enough to deter Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, from continuing with his tactics despite mounting international anger across the Christian world.
Hours after the early morning fire, he told the Israeli Knesset that his soldiers would carry on surrounding the church until the Palestinians inside the basilica surrendered.
That much was clear on the narrow wreckage-strewn streets all around. Once tramped by thousands of tourists and pilgrims every day, they are now a tragic mess. Their stone walls, so recently spruced up with European money and UN aid for the millennium celebrations, are torn with bullet and shell holes. The stores selling olive wood religious trinkets, and plastic Virgin Marys, are shuttered. Every few minutes yesterday, there was a burst of fresh shots.
Anyone approaching was at risk of suffering the same fate as the Basilica’s bell ringer, Samir Salman, who was shot dead walking to the church last week. Deafened by a lifetime of ringing bells, it seems he did not hear the army’s warnings.
The 60 or so clergy holed up inside the basilica — who include four Franciscan nuns — are from at least four denominations — Roman Catholic, and the Greek, Armenian and Syrian Orthodox churches. There are tourist police, forces from Yasser Arafat’s security forces, refugees and militia men — including Ibrahim Abayat, head of the regional branch of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
This strange crowd — many of them young men who sought refuge in Manger Square after the Israelis first stormed Bethlehem’s refugee camps last month — is surviving on sparse rations of rice and spaghetti, provided by the Franciscans. The electricity has been cut off. (The Independent)
