First masses held at Nativity Church following siege

BETHLEHEM (AFP) - The first masses since the end of a five-week Israeli siege were celebrated Sunday at Bethlehem's Nativity Church where a senior clergyman blasted Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory as "the root of evil" in the Middle East.
"As long as the root of evil is there, the violence will stay. The root of evil is the Israeli occupation," the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Monsignor Michel Sabbah told a special mass to reconsecrate the Saint Catherine Church, which adjoins the Church of the Nativity.

The Nativity Church, revered by most Christians as the birthplace of Jesus and one of the holiest in Chirstendom, was the scene of a bloody 39-day siege by Israeli occupation forces chasing Palestinian resistance activists which ended peacefully Friday under a deal brokered by the European Union and the United States.

"More important than condemnations, it is action which is necessary," Sabbah said. "We need for the two partners, Israelis and Palestinians, to show their courage and pull out the roots of evil and put and end to the occupation."

Sabbah was speaking to nearly 1,000 worshippers gathered at the church at one of the first special masses being held to reconsecrate the holy ground after the standoff which claimed the lives of eight Palestinians.

But his words were likely to spark fresh controversy over Bethlehem, where the deal which saw 13 Palestinian activists exiled and 26 others transferred to the Gaza Strip ended a tense standoff which was the last flashpoint of the Israeli occupation army's six-week military offensive in the West Bank.

A special envoy of Pope John Paul II, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, delivered a more conciliatory sermon at the Saint Catherine Church, calling for all sides to "see beyond Bethlehem" to achieve peace.

"Peace between men, peace between peoples can only grow if it exists first in each man, in each people," he said, adding that: "We have to see beyond Bethlehem and embrace the whole of the Holy Land."

"Everything for justice, everything in dialogue: the path is long and steep. The door which leads to this door is even more narrow than the low door of this Nativity basilica," he said in French.

The first mass to be held inside the sixth-century Nativity Church complex since the end of the siege was celebrated by Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irineos I, the joint custodian of the basilica.

According to the head of the Greek Orthodox parish for Bethlehem, Father Speridon, it was a reconsecration mass since the Nativity Church had been desecrated during the siege.

When the 123 Palestinians who had been holed up in the church finally left on Friday, the Israeli went inside to defuse what they said were booby traps left behind by resistance activists, prompting the Palestinian leadership to accuse the occupation army of desecrating the church and breaking the terms of the deal ending the siege.

The Franciscans, who had several monks inside the church during the siege, and the Amrenian Church also have custody over the site, where priests and parishioners have been cleaning up the buildings, littered with clothes, garbage and mattresses, after the end of the standoff.

"Exchanges of fire" between the Palestinian activists and Israeli soldiers also caused major damage to the Greek Orthodox Monastery also adjoining the basilica.

The Jordan Times -- Monday - May 13, 2002