A second day of talks aimed at ending the three-week-old siege on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem ended without progress late Wednesday, after a tension-filled day at the church.
Two Palestinians inside the Church of the Nativity compound were shot Wednesday and one of them died.
The trouble at the church began about dawn, when a Palestinian was shot and seriously wounded by an Israeli sniper. The Palestinian was standing by a window inside the church, Palestinian witnesses said. He was armed, according to the Israeli army, and was evacuated to a Jerusalem hospital.
A few hours later, two Palestinians surrendered, walking out of the church with hands up and turning themselves over to Israeli soldiers. The two men were wearing civilian clothes but were Palestinian police, according to a Palestinian journalist who recognized them. The two men said they were ill, reported AP.
The Palestinian who died was hit in shooting that erupted about 5 p.m., as the Israeli and Palestinian delegations were arriving to start the second day of negotiations at the peace center next to the church.
Afterward, one of the Palestinians negotiators and a priest emerged from the church, carrying a badly wounded man on a stretcher. At one point, the bloodied man fell to the ground. He was taken to a Jerusalem hospital, but died a short time later, the hospital said.
After the shootout, Israeli soldiers briefly detained five journalists and confiscated their press cards. Israel said one of its soldiers was moderately injured in the firefights.
Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating inside the church, with food running low. The Israeli army has also cut off electricity and telephone lines.
In the talks, Palestinians have proposed that the gunmen be escorted to the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip. Israel has been insisting that they must surrender and either be put on trial in Israel or deported. Palestinian lawmaker Salah al-Tamari said the talks Wednesday focused on evacuating those wounded in the exchange of gunfire.
"We were consumed by the shootings," al-Tamari said, noting that the fact the wounded were evacuated represents "progress."
And at Yasser Arafat's besieged compound in Ramallah, the Palestinian leader played host to a European Union delegation led by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Arafat stressed "the importance of the immediate Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories," said Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeineh. He said Solana recalled the EU's demand for an immediate Israeli pullout from Palestinian towns seized in their nearly month-old offensive on the West Bank.
An EU spokesman said Wednesday's meeting was "positive and productive ... Arafat appeared calm and satisfied that at least the European delegates were allowed to visit him."
The talks included a discussion of "how the European Union could help secure implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions" calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and movement towards a ceasefire, the spokesman said.
After the meeting, Solana said that he was "shocked" by the conditions in Arafat's headquarters, and said that he did not believe that subjecting Arafat to such conditions could bring about any positive results.
"I was very, very shocked to see the situation in which Arafat finds himself. I do not think that this leads to a resolution of any problems," Solana told reporters after meeting Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv.
On arrival earlier in the day, Solana told reporters he would try to help resolve the Israeli siege around Arafat's headquarters and the standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
In Brussels, meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique and EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten called for an investigation into an alleged Israeli massacre in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
The Palestinians allege hundreds of people were killed in Jenin; the Israelis contend dozens, mostly armed Palestinian fighters, were killed. So far, about 50 bodies have been recovered.
"We need to find out the exact dimensions of this episode," Pique told the European Parliament. "The European Union must join in an international inquiry, an impartial inquiry." (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
