An exclusive interview from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

Bethlehem:

An exclusive interview from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem BY SILVIO CERULLI

When I met him three months ago, Salah Ajarma was setting up a community centre to keep the children away from tanks and missiles in his refugee camp, Aida. "It's our duty to build hope, dreams and a future for them," he explained. Now Salah won't see 'his' children again.

On the first of April, two days into the latest Israeli aggression of the West Bank cities, with some of his friends he survived Israeli Army artillery and found shelter in the Church of the Nativity in the heart of Bethlehem.

I have been speaking with him by mobile phone. "There's about two hundred of us, 40 Franciscan monks and some families with their children," he said. "Israeli fire burst the water pipes and drained the wells. We shared the poor food the monks had in the convent and until a few days ago we ate half a cup of rice each. Now it's more than a week without any food at all, for all of us. The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) don't allow in water, food or medical supplies but we are all fine anyway, the spirit is high.

We know that in three or four days some of us will start to die, one by one. And the army outside know that too. Yet they still attack us with machine gun fire, tossing stun grenades, using snipers, even if time is on their side." A huge crane outside holds a box full of speakers bombarding the town with noises from a horror film: scratching sounds, women screaming, dogs barking. Sometimes the other churches ring their bells to try to cover the white noise bombardment.

In the holiest place for Christianity, where Jesus is believed to have been born, more than 250 people will soon die, either by a bullet or through starvation.

I have spoken to Salah over the last few days and each time his voice appears more tired, words come out painfully. Breathing heavily, Salah continues: "Last week Sharon offered us the choice between a permanent exile away from Palestine and being prosecuted by an Israeli court. In other words, he asked us to surrender in two different ways. We will not. He can 'transfer' us to another country but we will be back; he can kill us here and someone else will take our place in the next church. We have been here for 21 days, now we are approaching the point of no return. No one can do anything for us."

For how long will you still be able to resist, in terms of defence and lack of food and water? "It has been raining heavily, we have managed to save some water, but the children need milk and bread and some of the elderly are getting ill. We have four people injured by IDF gunfire, the last one early this morning, and their condition is deteriorating. Yet, we are lucky to be still here, I mean alive, when so many of our children and women and comrades are being killed every day in Palestine."

Salah's voice weakens again: "I think they want to exile us, push all the Palestinians out of our land; those who refuse, like in Jenin or Nablus, will be shot. I don't feel sad because I'm here and the Israelis are firing at us, but you know how many friends I had in Hebron, Jenin, Gaza, Ramallah and I can't find any of them. They are all dead. My brothers are dead, my country is dying and it's everyone's duty to stop the ethnic cleansing."

"There is strong evidence that the Israelis may be preparing to remove the source of the problem, in their own way. Who will be surprised if they attack even Arafat or this holy place? We don't know how many Jenins Sharon is prepared to plunder to see the Palestinians out of this land once and for all. We are the hostages, the Middle East is his hostage, the UN and the Americans are his hostages. He can act above the law and kill as many as he wishes."

After the last bombardment, those in the church are holed up in the darkness: soon mobile phone batteries will be gone and they'll have no more contacts with the world outside. Like a soldier leaving for battle, Salah wants to thank everyone for their support. "We are not fighting alone here. Whoever believes in freedom is fighting with the Palestinian people."

I don't know if I will ever hear Salah's calm and tired voice again. I think of 'his' children in the Bethlehem rain, trying to save something from the ruins of his centre, now partially destroyed by the tanks. The Israelis are still firing into the church.

On Thursday evening, ten international peace activists from the United States, Ireland, Canada, Denmark, and Sweden, managed to enter the Church after having successfully coordinated with the approximately 180 Palestinians insides the besieged Church of Nativity. The activists carried food and other supplies critically needed by those inside the Church. Thirteen other activists who carried placards denouncing the Israeli occupation, managed to distract the Israeli soldiers occupying Manger Square, but were subsequently detained. The activists have been able to provide the international media with the first detailed third-party account of conditions inside the Church. They have been able to refute the malicious Israeli claims that the civilians are being held ³hostage² in the Church.

Jenin:

If the Israelis had nothing to hide, he argued, they would have let humanitarian workers and journalists into the camp as soon as the fighting was over, and they would have agreed to co-operate with a proposed UN fact-finding team.

The extensive, systematic, and deliberate leveling of the entire district was clearly disproportionate to any military objective that Israel aimed to achieve. Establishing whether this devastation so exceeded military necessity as to constitute wanton destruction-a war crime-should be one of the highest priorities for any future U.N. fact-finding team, said Bouckaert. Human Rights Watch also documented cases in which Israeli troops used Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice prohibited under international humanitarian law. In one case, IDF soldiers forced eight civilians to shield them by making them stand on a balcony while the soldiers fired at Palestinian gunmen. Kamal Tawalba and his fourteen-year-old son were among them. Tawalba described how the soldiers kept them for three hours in the line of fire, and used his and his son's shoulders to rest their rifles as they fired.

During most of "Operation Defensive Shield," the IDF blocked emergency medical access to Jenin camp. Soldiers repeatedly fired on Red Crescent ambulances, and in one case shot to death a uniformed nurse, twenty-seven-year-old Farwa Jammal, who had come to the assistance of a wounded man. In another case, fifty-eight-year-old Mariam Wishahi died in her home thirty-six hours after she was injured by shrapnel; IDF soldiers repeatedly prevented ambulances from reaching her home, located just a few hundred meters from Jenin's main hospital. During the period the IDF had control of the camp, the Israeli authorities had responsibility under international humanitarian law for the welfare of the civilian population. Yet Israeli authorities denied humanitarian organizations access to the camp during their offensive, and continued to prevent humanitarian access to the refugee camp for days after military operations had ceased, despite great need.

The tanks and artillery are now outside Jenin, Nablus and the West Bank, besieging the towns. The occupation continues.

How come that other countries are directly faced with embargo or military action and total isolation when they do even a small fraction of what Israel is doing on daily bases? All through the years, Israel committed one massacre after the other, Deir Yassin, Qubia, Kafr Kassem, Suez, Hanin, Sabra, Shattila, Qana, and now Jenin, not to mention the systematic murder of civilians and children that Israel executed on daily bases. The history of Israel is that of committing atrocities. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are its two strongest pillars, and the history of the international reaction on Israeli atrocities is that of silence and complicity. In Europe today voices are raising for a balanced position towards the struggle between occupier and freedom fighters. Europe wants to be neutral and not pro-Israeli and we are supposed to welcome neutrality. Maybe because we are used to the unconditional western support of Israel they expect us now to cheer the fact that Europe is equating the murderers and the murdered, the butchers and the victims, the F16 and the kalashnikov, the Tank and the Molotov cocktail. Neutrality in Jenin is a crime against humanity, neutrality in Jenin is complicity. But Europe has a history in saying, "WE DIDN'T KNOW".

Ibrahim Haleifa went out to work in the morning, riding on his donkey. The soldiers opened fire from the armored vehicle at the edge of the village. They were strictly forcing the curfew, even in this remote village, even against this stray youth. The neighbors say that it took half an hour before they could get the bleeding young man off the street and into the house, because the soldiers fired at anyone who tried to approach him. It took another hour to reach the hospital.

But no one cried over Haleifa this week. His town, Dir al-Rusun, was too preoccupied with the lifting of the curfew after 26 days, blinking as it emerged again into the light, very hesitant after all that time. Its narrow alleys were not filled with people, the stores were not bursting with customers, no great joy was evident. Some of the residents were afraid to leave the house. The army vehicles could return at any moment and open fire. Others had no reason to go out - they didn't have any money to buy anything. The few who did venture out stayed close to the walls, looking scared, tired and poor.

Fayed Hairi, the village poet, at the pharmacy: "Tell [Prime Minister] Sharon to let the two peoples make two states here, two paradises instead of two cemeteries." There is no water in town. Jamil Abu Ali, the head of the local council, says that the pump, in the council building, which was in the IDF's hands, is broken.