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Newsweek: Inside The Siege Of Bethlehem

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  • Newsweek: Inside The Siege Of Bethlehem

    INSIDE THE SIEGE OF BETHLEHEM

    Newsweek
    May 20, 2002 Issue

    Snipers, Militants, Vandals And Priests: Everyone Had A Story From
    The Siege Of Bethlehem. Here Are The Tales Of Four.

    Inside the Basilica of the Church of the Nativity, the stench of
    150 unwashed human bodies mingled with the reek of fecal matter. The
    halvah, cans of lentils, chocolate bars and Marlboro Lights had run
    out days before, and the food stocks ransacked from the Franciscan
    compound were nearly gone. Weakened men boiled soup made from the
    leaves of lemon trees picked in the Greek Orthodox compound--gathered
    under the menacing sight of a remote-controlled sniper rifle bolted
    to the top of a crane at the edge of Manger Square.

    In the southern corner of the basilica, Ibrahim Abayat paced the stone
    floor, a mobile phone in his hand. Pale, plagued by migraines, hungry
    and weak, Abayat was a man transformed. Gone was the confidence of the
    gunman who once strutted around Bethlehem, boasting about how he'd
    orchestrated the killings of Israeli settlers in the occupied West
    Bank. At that time the 29-year-old leader of Bethlehem's Aqsa Martyrs
    Brigades had vowed to "go out either as a winner or a martyr." Now
    Abayat was feebly pleading for exile. He would gladly move to Italy,
    he told NEWSWEEK during a brief phone conversation. "They've got
    spaghetti there, so I'll be OK."

    Moments later Abayat's mother--sitting beside a NEWSWEEK correspondent
    at her home in Bethlehem--got on the phone. "Abu Atef," she said, "may
    God bless you. You haven't received food? We hope God will send you a
    table of food like they did to the prophet Moses in the desert." When
    Abayat told her that his last meal had been two spoonfuls of macaroni,
    eaten the previous day, she began to weep. Her son, a top figure on
    Israel's wanted list, calmed her, then begged her to let him hang
    up. "I'm too weak to talk," he said.

    Ibrahim Abayat's ordeal would soon be over, and he'd neither be a
    winner nor a martyr. Thirty-nine days after Israeli tanks and troops
    surrounded Palestinian gunmen inside the Church of the Nativity,
    the standoff at Manger Square wound to a close last Friday morning
    with an emotional homecoming for some who were trapped in the church,
    and indefinite exile for others. It had begun as a sideshow to Prime
    Minister Ariel Sharon's West Bank invasion in March, but the closing
    act of Operation Defensive Shield became both a media extravaganza
    and a powerful metaphor for the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    The test of wills, on one of the world's most sacred sites, had the
    feeling of a slow war of attrition. During the siege, Israeli snipers
    killed eight people in and around the church, including a mentally
    retarded bell ringer, and injured 22, among them an Armenian monk; an
    Army spokesman claimed that all the dead men except the bell ringer
    were "terrorists." Trapped between the two antagonists were the
    Christian clergymen--many of them Palestinian--who had given refuge
    to the gunmen and now found themselves obliged to suffer along with
    them. As the siege dragged on, it seemed to capture the essence of the
    Mideast struggle: a prolonged, seemingly insoluble dispute between
    two stubborn and deeply distrustful enemies. Even the on-again,
    off-again negotiations over the terms of the release--conducted
    through intermediaries ranging from the Vatican to the CIA--spoke
    volumes of the larger inability of the two sides to settle their
    differences without foreign pressure and help.

    Over 39 days inside the church, snipers killed, monks pleaded,
    militants abused a sacred sanctuary, soldiers vandalized,
    politicians threatened and cajoled, and everyone made a claim to
    righteousness. This is the story of four people intimately involved
    or caught up in the mayhem: Abayat, the gunman who had made it his
    mission in life to kill Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank;
    Mike Aviad, an Israeli reservist and son of a leading peace activist;
    Father Paul Delalande, a Franciscan priest and historian, and Omar
    Habib, a 16-year-old student from the Terra Santa School in Bethlehem,
    who found himself caught between Israeli and Palestinian combatants as
    he was trying to pick up a prescription for his diabetic mother. After
    nearly 40 days of warfare, negotiation, brinkmanship and capitulation,
    all four survived. At least two expected to fight again another day.
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