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This Is The Truth about Nativity Church Siege: U.S. Writer
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International peace activists walk toward the area of Manger Square
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BETHLEHEM, West Bank, May 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A U.S. peace activist who managed to slip into Bethlehem's besieged Church of the Nativity denied Friday Israeli allegations that Palestinian activists were holding clergy hostage in the building.
Kristen Schurr, 33, a freelance writer from New York, said that only two or three dozen of about 180 Palestinians in the church along with 30 clergy were armed, many of them Palestinian police, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Schurr, nine other pro-Palestinian peace activists, and a press photographer managed, Thursday, to enter the church, built over what Christians believe was Jesus Christ's birthplace, taking in food for the besieged.
She insisted that nobody was held hostage inside.
Describing her first night there, Schurr told AFP by mobile phone, "We slept in the base of the church, in the grotto where Jesus was born. It was a bit cold, but they (the Palestinians) gave us a blanket, a pillow and a mat to lie on."
On Friday, as the siege entered its second month, Schurr said she attended three services held by the three religious orders which have custody of the church, including celebrations ahead of Orthodox Easter on Sunday.
"They sang. There were candles everywhere. It was beautiful," she said.
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Israeli soldiers, behind a barbed wire barricade, besieging Nativity
Church. |
However, Schurr said that in 24 hours, she swallowed nothing more than a cup of tea. "For several days, they (the besieged Palestinians) had been eating boiled leaves from the garden," she said.
Schurr said the sacks of food the activists brought in were rationed to brace for a prolonged siege, as negotiations to end the standoff yielded no results so far.
"They are currently preparing a very large pot of rice. Everyone is eating together, in three different shifts," Schurr told AFP. “Those inside the basilica could draw water from a well to wash dishes and clothes.
"They cheered 'thank you, thank you' and 'welcome, welcome'. They are so kind to us," she said, describing the reaction of the Palestinians when the group joined them in the church.
Schurr, preparing a doctorate in political science, said she visited the entire complex, including the Franciscan and Orthodox convents which were damaged by fire Wednesday, guided by Palestinians who showed them where to tread to avoid Israeli sniper fire.
She said that the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary inside the cloister at the entrance of Saint Catherine's church, adjoining the Church of the Nativity, was chipped by a bullet and there were other signs of impacts.
Schurr had seen no sign of the booby-traps the Israelis allege the Palestinians placed at the entrances to the church complex.
She is accompanied by four other U.S. citizens, including a photographer for the Los Angeles Times, by two Swedes, a Canadian woman, an Irish woman, a Dane and a Briton.
An AFP photographer on the scene said he saw the pacifists, loaded with food, jump the coils of barbed wire and bolt across Manger Square to the church, where the door was opened as they approached on Thursday.
Meanwhile, talks in Bethlehem to end the siege broke down "and it doesn't look encouraging," the town's mayor Hanna Nasser, one of the three main Palestinian negotiators, said Friday.
An Israeli army spokesman said they "cannot comment on the negotiating process" but added that talks were supposed to start Friday afternoon. "If they haven't, they will soon," he said.
Five rounds of talks failed to end the standoff at the church where the Palestinians and some 30 priests, monks and nuns are surrounded by Israeli troops. The last session was held Sunday, April 28.
The deadlock forced local Orthodox Christians to flock to other churches to mark Good Friday, commemorating the death of Jesus, after the basilica was closed off.
"This is the first time in my life I had to pray for this occasion outside the Nativity church, the mother of all churches," lamented Iman Qaiseer, 43
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