BETHLEHEM, West Bank, 6 May — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reached a deal to end the siege at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, a Palestinian official who asked not to be named told AFP yesterday.

Under the deal, six Palestinians holed up inside the church will be exiled and another 35 will be sent to Gaza where they will be put on trial in Palestinian courts, the official said. The rest will be allowed to go free.

In another development, Israel has decided not to dismantle Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories despite international criticism and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who left for the United States yesterday, will propose abandoning Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner. Sharon will also propose the establishment of a Palestinian state without Arafat. The Israeli premier is scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush tomorrow, Israeli radio said.

Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat said Sharon will submit a “peace plan based on the principle of long-term interim agreements” to Bush.

The Palestinian leadership said Sharon would not succeed in convincing Bush. “Sharon has only one plan for the region, which is the continuation of his war against the Palestinian people. This will lead to chaos,” said Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

In Washington, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the US administration had not seen but would examine documents Sharon is reportedly bringing with him to prove Arafat’s connections to financing terror, and would consider the evidence.

President George W. Bush will hear Sharon and will seek to assure him the United States is bringing new force to bear on the Palestinians as partners in Middle East peace-making, Rice said yesterday.

“We are going to call on Arab allies, the Europeans and others to press Arafat and we are going to be very clear that the Palestinian leadership that is there now, the Authority, is not the kind of leadership that can lead to the kind of Palestinian state that we need,” Rice said. “It has got to reform.” Rice’s statement drew sharp criticism from the Palestinians. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat lashed out at the “unacceptable arrogance and interference” of US national security adviser.

To press home his point, Sharon took with him a 100-page file attempting to prove that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is financing attacks out of its own budget, which is funded in large part by the European Union and the Arab world.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian mother and her two small children near Jenin yesterday, just hours before tank fire killed a Palestinian boy in Tulkaram, also in the northern West Bank.

Israeli troops killed Fatma Ibrahim Zakarneh, 30, her son Bassem, four, and daughter Abir, three, near an Israeli Army base where an explosive device had just been detonated near an armored vehicle, hospital officials in Jenin said. Witnesses said Fatma, a vineyard worker was feeding her children when they were shot.

They said that three-year-old Abir was found with bread still in her hand, while Fatma’s 10-month-old baby survived the shooting.

Just a few hours later, however, machine gun fire from Israeli tanks killed eight-year-old Tamer Abu Sirriyeh, hit in the chest in a refugee camp near Tulkaram, southwest of Jenin.

Israeli troops infantry units, backed by around 20 tanks and other armored vehicles had raided Tulkaram the night before with the support of helicopter gunships.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher following talks with Yasser Arafat yesterday ruled out a US-proposed Middle East peace conference without the Palestinian leader.

Their talks in the West Bank town of Ramallah showed “identical views (between Egypt and the Palestinians) on the issue of this conference,” Maher told a press conference at Amman airport on his way back to Egypt.

“The Palestinian Authority and its president (Arafat) must not be excluded from this conference, in which all the Arab countries concerned — Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — must take part,” said Maher. “Nobody can put in doubt the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority or that of Mr. Arafat as elected president at the head of this authority,” said the foreign minister. Maher also said Arafat had no current plans to travel abroad.

The head of the Palestinian team which negotiated the end of the siege of Bethlehem church yesterday accused the Israeli Army of planting weapons in his house.

Salah Al-Taamari told AFP that Israeli troops had searched his house in the West Bank town early yesterday and said they found a variety of weapons stashed there.

“The only weapon that actually belongs to me is a Kalashnikov. It is registered with the Palestinian Authority and was under lock and key,” he said. As for the other weapons that Taamari said the army claimed to have found, “they are not mine. My neighbors told me that the army planted them in my house and brought journalists to photograph them.”