Posted on 05/01/2002 7:25:44 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
Israelis End Siege of Arafat, Fighting at Church
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops ended their siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters by agreement but fierce fighting broke out at Bethlehem's besieged Nativity church.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would call off a U.N. mission to investigate Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp and Palestinian allegations of a massacre there, after failing to secure Israeli cooperation.
Israeli forces completed their withdrawal from around Arafat's compound early on Thursday.
The Palestinian leader, newly freed from a month of virtual house arrest by Israeli forces, angrily condemned Israel's stranglehold on the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where gunfire crackled and Israeli flares lit up the Church of the Nativity.
Palestinian gunmen in the church are surrounded by Israeli troops. "It is not important what happened to me here. What is important is what is happening in the Church of the Nativity. This is a crime," Arafat, trembling with fury, told reporters in his offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Hundreds of whistling and cheering Palestinians surged to the compound to celebrate the Palestinian leader's freedom as he made his first public remarks since Israeli troops moved out.
Under the U.S.-brokered deal to end the siege, Palestinian, U.S. and British officials escorted six men into armored vehicles which took them out of Arafat's compound to detention in Jericho, which will be supervised by a U.S. and British team.
Israel originally demanded that the men be handed over for trial in Israel for the assassination of an Israeli minister.
The pullback should improve Israel's image abroad following the month-old military offensive in the West Bank it launched after a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis. It should also boost Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hopes of a smooth visit to the United States, the Jewish state's main backer, next week.
"It means as we've agreed in the compromise that he's (Arafat) free to leave and we hope that he'll use this opportunity to fight against the terror...from his own society," Israeli Foreign Ministry official Mark Sofer said.
U.N. CANCELS JENIN MISSION
Annan said he canceled the U.N. mission to probe Israel's assault on Jenin camp after Israel frustrated the United Nations with a series of conditions it was unable to meet.
In a letter delivered to the U.N. Security Council as it began deliberations on the Middle East, Annan regretted that aborting the mission meant "the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain."
Israel, which denies Palestinian charges that a massacre occurred in Jenin, said the mission was flawed from the start and that the grounds for conducting it no longer existed.
"The whole notion of a fact-finding group was born out of a fundamental lie that Israel committed a massacre in Jenin," government spokesman Dore Gold told CNN.
Abandoning the mission will send home a 20-member team, headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, that had gathered in Geneva to await a green light to go to the region.
Israel says Palestinian estimates of the death toll in Jenin are exaggerated and that its troops killed fewer than 50 people, mainly militants responsible for suicide attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, in fierce fighting.
International political and human rights officials have said initial findings do not support claims of a massacre at the camp, where 23 Israeli soldiers were killed, while expressing concern about serious breaches of humanitarian law by the army.
DISPUTE OVER WHO SHOT FIRST IN BETHLEHEM
The deal to end the Ramallah siege followed an initiative by President Bush. Israel has also gradually pulled troops out of the cities it reoccupied in its West Bank offensive following repeated appeals by the United States.
In Washington, U.S. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said the United States was headed toward a joint strategy with Saudi Arabia to pressure Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the current Middle East crisis.
"We do hope that this result or this conclusion will lead to a real negotiation with the Israelis, to go back to the political track," said Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Amr.
The fire in the Church of the Nativity died down not long after it started but at its height smoke billowed from the compound as flames licked out from buildings near the church.
Palestinians inside the church accused the Israelis of attempting to storm the compound and said three people had been hurt by the fire.
An army spokesman said soldiers surrounding the church shot back after gunmen fired at them first and that the Palestinians had started the fire.
Bethlehem governor Mohammed al-Madani, who is inside the church, said the fighting was some of the worst since the standoff began.
"There is shooting everywhere, firing from all around us," he said. The gun battle subsided after less than an hour.
In other violence, Palestinian police said a pipe bomb was thrown at the gate of a British cultural center in Gaza overnight. Four Palestinians, including a baby girl sleeping in her home, were killed by Israeli troops as clashes broke out in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
At least 1,332 Palestinians and 458 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000 after peace negotiations stalled.
Nothing Christian is holy to Islam...Islam SPITS on the essence of Christianity by denying the Truth that Christ is the Savior and Son of God. They say he is merely a prophet yet have the GALL to claim OUR holy sites are holy to them? The utter nerve...
Please fellow freepers, pray for our brethren in the Holy land. My family has a close friend who is an arch preist in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia who was physically attacked recently by a gang of Palestinian Muslims...for NO reason other than that he is a Russian priest...he is OK but the situation there is NOT good...
Tomorow is Holy Thursday on the Julian calendar, which is the calendar of the Orthodox Church...it is the day when the Last Supper is remembered...Friday is Good Friday; the rememberence of the Crucifiction of Christ...and Sunday is the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior - Pascha - Easter...How sad that the Paschal bells may be silenced by the evil fighting that is going on in this most sacred of lands...
Pray for peace...
I caught that,too. The World has gone mad.
Give me a kiss Kofi.
I don't know, the way he put it is a kind of unique twist on the old war horse...so to speak. Could become kind of a special FR linguistic twist: like cheese, moose, showers and "All your base are belong to us".
That's just ballsh!t.
Arafat will keep the stand-off brewing for as long as possible hoping the IDF makes a mistake and he will try something (like today's fires) that he will be able to blame the IDF for.
He will allow a few hostages to be released every day or so, and creat incidents where the Pali gunmen open up to try and draw fire from the IDF. The only way this will end is when those starving inside come out even against Arafat's orders.
Hey, guess what, raghead - Israel is now no longer responsible for your "Security".
<< snigger... > >
"cmeeer, Yasser... come on out into the pretty sunlight, where we can get a... real... good... look at you..."
< < CRRAKKK!! > > < < THUd.... > >
And they're going to regret it, very soon. Watch for the homicide bombings to resume.
How much longer is that disgusting slug going to pollute this planet by walking on it?
Time and time again when muslims move into an area, especially Palestinians, you will find them either dismantling a church or building over one. In Isreal and the mideast, there are hundreds of archealogical sites that are off limits in muslim controlled because they are afraid that anything uncovered will contradict islamic doctrine or claims. The same cannot be said about Isreali controlled areas.
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