The Saga of the Siege
The inside story of the standoff at the Church of the Nativity—and how the deal was struck to get the Palestinians out

The Church of the Nativity, one of the world's oldest working churches, has never been an especially peaceful place. The holy men who run it—Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic clerics—bicker over who gets to clean which piece of sacred wall and who can walk in which aisle. Seized and besieged by a host of armies over the centuries, the church has even inspired bickering among scholars, who argue about whether Jesus was born here at all.

But holy places still have special power. Muslims are specifically ensured the right to pray in the Church of the Nativity, a privilege dating back to a.d. 638. Two hundred forty gunmen and bystanders took refuge in the church but in time agreed to leave it. Israeli soldiers, swarming into Bethlehem in April as part of the campaign to crush the machinery of Palestinian terror, surrounded the church compound but did not storm it. The end of the siege, after long negotiations that nearly went off a cliff several times, brought relief to officials on both sides: to the Palestinians, who had feared a violent end, and to the Israelis, who were increasingly embarrassed by the presence of their troops around one of Christianity's most venerable shrines.

The church bells rang out at last on the morning of May 10, as the sun came up and the men left the church that had been their haven for five weeks. U.S. embassy officials later found more than 90 rifles and other guns left behind, and Israeli troops said they found 40 explosive devices. The 13 gunmen most wanted by Israel were flown to Cyprus, on their way into exile in Europe and possibly Canada. Twenty-six others were handed over to Palestinian authorities in the Gaza Strip.

That outcome had taken weeks of negotiation. When Israeli and Palestinian authorities agreed to the deportations as a way to defuse the standoff, Israeli hard-liners and Palestinians of every stripe complained that it was a sellout. But the situation had grown desperate. The city of Bethlehem had been in lockdown since April 2; food inside the church compound had virtually run out. Eight Palestinians had been killed by Israeli gunfire, and an Armenian monk had been wounded by an Israeli sniper.

HOW THE SIEGE BEGAN

For weeks Manger Square had been a refuge for Palestinians like Jihad Ja'ara, a top gunman from al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. By day they lounged on cheap foam mattresses in the spring sunshine, believing this was one place the Israelis would not dare to strike. By night they sneaked out to the edges of town to shoot across the valley at Gilo, a suburb of Jerusalem built on occupied land. On April 2, Ja'ara and his gang clashed with the Israelis in the Fawaghreh neighborhood of Bethlehem's Old City. A bullet shattered Ja'ara's leg three inches below his knee. His comrades carried him to Manger Square. As Israeli soldiers converged, the gunmen, anticipating that the Israelis would not hesitate to enter the square this time, fled into the church with members of the Palestinian Authority's security forces, a group of Hamas gunmen and about 100 bystanders.

The Israelis knew they could not storm one of the holiest sites in all of Christianity. But there were dozens of accused terrorists inside, including Ibrahim Moussa Abayat, head of the Tanzim militia in Bethlehem, who was convicted of murdering a fellow Palestinian by a Palestinian court two years ago but was released after a few weeks because his clan rioted. Israel blamed him for the June 2001 shooting death of Lieut. Colonel Yehuda Edri. They were not about to let him walk away.

NEGOTIATIONS PICK UP

On May 2, when a similar siege at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah finally ended, negotiations over Bethlehem picked up. At a May 3 meeting in Ramallah, Arafat's Cabinet ministers questioned his willingness to accede to U.S. and British proposals that some of the men inside the church be deported. "What can I do? This is what the Americans want," Arafat complained. "I can't continue saying no to the Americans. You should show some understanding of my situation."

The basic framework of a deal was pounded out by May 7. One last wrinkle came from, of all places, a group of international "peace activists" who marched into the church the week before, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians inside. "They wanted to be dragged out by Israeli soldiers on camera," says an official who helped negotiate a resolution to the siege.

The 13 men facing deportation were the first to leave the church. "They sacrificed themselves so the siege could end," says Mazin Hussain, 28, an officer in the Palestinian Authority's drug-prevention unit. And though the men were greeted as returning heroes, all the celebrations in Gaza could not disguise the fact that men most Palestinians consider fighters on their behalf had been sold out by Arafat. "After weeks and weeks of the siege, Arafat has basically given in to all the Israeli demands," charged Hosam Hillez, a 27-year-old Gazan. "So what was the point of dragging the whole thing out for so long?" As the monks began to clean up the squalid interior of the basilica, they were no doubt asking the same question. —TIME, May 20, 2002

Questions

1. When and why did the siege occur at the Church of the Nativity?

2. What was Arafat's position on resolving the siege? How did Palestinians react to Arafat's stance?