Posted on 04/10/2002 2:52:46 AM PDT by Khepry
The Vatican has issued a stern warning to Israel to respect religious sites in line with its international obligations, following a gun battle around Bethlehem's besieged Church of the Nativity.
Spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Vatican was following events "with extreme apprehension" and trying to establish the truth about the fighting that flared early on Monday.
This is an act of indescribable barbarity, a violation of every law of humanity and civilisation
Father David Jaeger
Franciscan spokesman
Israel says its troops are under orders not to fire at holy places and blamed Palestinian militants for a fire near the church, which is revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Several hundred Palestinian gunmen and civilians fleeing Israeli tanks have been holed up in the church complex for nearly a week, along with a group of monks and nuns.
A spokesman for Catholic monks in the Holy Land said earlier that Israeli soldiers were guilty of an "indescribable act of barbarity".
Israel had broken its international obligations and risked "long-term and incalculable" consequences, Father David Jaeger said.
Christian clerics from Jerusalem were kept by Israel from entering Bethlehem on Monday
Speaking from Rome, he said monks at the church had reported damage to "sacred spaces" and evidence that Israeli troops had entered the church.
The Pope, who has urged people to pray for peace in the Middle East, on Monday described the violence in the Holy Land as having reached "unimaginable and intolerable" levels.
Click here for a guide to the Church of the Nativity
The Israeli army says Palestinian gunmen provoked a fire which broke out near the Church of the Nativity on Monday.
Gunmen had opened fire from a belltower, wounding two Israeli border policemen in a nearby rooftop look-out, an army officer told Reuters news agency.
Palestinian civilians in Bethlehem have to contend with an Israeli curfew
He said the Israelis returned fire and a smoke grenade started the blaze in a second-floor meeting hall overlooking the Basilica of St Catherine, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity.
One Palestinian gunman was shot dead in the battle, the Israeli source said.
But a priest inside the church, Father Amjad Sabbara, told the BBC that the Palestinian killed was a police officer who had been trying to douse the flames.
He said the blaze had burned for an hour, destroying a piano, chairs, altar cloths and ceremonial cups.
Father Sabbara estimated that there were 240 people in the church. Some were armed, he said, but they were "not using their arms".
The Mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, told the BBC that mosaics inside the Basilica of St Catherine had been "affected by the bullets".
Staying put
The Israeli army has been conducting a major military operation across the West Bank for over a week, in response to a wave of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants.
The army will remain in their place and prevent them [the militants] from evading justice
Ariel Sharon
Israeli Prime Minister
"It really involves going through the cities and refugee camps and taking out the infrastructure of the terrorists: weapons, documents, explosive material, laboratories," army spokesman Captain Jacob Dalal told the BBC.
Israeli troops have been using loudspeakers to demand the surrender of the Palestinians inside the Nativity complex.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Monday that his soldiers would not "defile the holiness of the site as the [Palestinians] have" but added that the troops would remain in place until the gunmen inside were captured.
In Britain, Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw described Israeli actions in the area as "totally unacceptable".
The Vatican is reported to be working out an agreement with the Israelis on safe passage for the Palestinians inside the church to the Gaza Strip.
But in the end, isn't there two sides to this conflict? Isn't the Vatican responsible for not defining one side or the other, let alone take a side, save for God's side? A militantist Vatican is an evil that is asking for it.
Urging the world to carry out consequences, death threats on Israel. What a bunch of barbarians.
Nice to point the violence at the Holy Land, without pointing the violence in the Vatican and Europe itself, this savagery of definitional politics and media lead Jerry Springer like revolutionary body slams.
"Free Barabas".
Look! The RCC is accusing the Israelis of barbarity. My, my, my!
Like the violence of the Inquisition or the Hundred Years War - right.
Or perhaps a little closer to our time the Nazi Holocaust or the cleansing of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Germans - sort of let's round up the Jewish rebels who no longer obey the Jewish police when they tried to march their brothers onto the Death Trains.
Opps, I broke the cardinal rule of civilized behavior - Thou shalt not compare Israel and the Germans lest the Lord God Almighty note the hypocrisy and start to chuckle at the blindness of the Chosen race. Those guys were Barbarians, now we are Warriors against Evil, no matter who we have to repay.
1. The actions of the Israelis at the church are reprehensible...it is putting me over the impartiality edge.
2. The whole priest scandal is horrible...but its only connection to this is that it takes away from the church's moral authority to deal with issues where its former moral authority could help.
I deplore the loss of life, Jewish, Christian, Arab, unaligned. And no one life is any more or less important than another. The world situation is horrible. And rhetoric that denigrates all Palestinians and maligns their decency and aspirations as a national group is not helping the situation.
(Done with those taxes?)
The church didn't have much sucess in keeping the jews alive in WWII, so it really needs to keep it's mouth shut, except if it wants to condemn the killers of innocents with suicide bombers, and let the Israelis make the place safe for them to live in.
BUMP
Since the Sabra and Shatilla massacres (1982 about 1000-2000 murdered by Phalangist with IDF cooperation), Kibya villiage (1953 where Fore 101 under Sharon's command drove 53 civilians into their homes before blowing them up) and Dier Yassin massacres (1948 about 254 dead including 145 women, 35 who were pergnant were murdered by Menachem Begin's terrorist group) all tend to suggest that the IDF has a track record of barbarism and murder.
Why can't Sharon pull out of the West bank now? Gotta make good and sure that those rotting bodies seen lying in a sheet get good and buried this time.
Given that Palestinean terrorists are occupying the Church of The Nativity, this statement is completely insane.
The vast majority of Catholics and Christians know who's at fault here, and that the Vatican is out to lunch on this one.
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