Preparing for the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to be lifted, Ibrahim Abayat telephoned his mother Tuesday to ask forgiveness.
Abayat, one of 13 Palestinian gunman in the church awaiting deportation, was not apologizing for having taken up weapons against the Israelis. His mother, Fatima, had offered her son the gold she received by tradition on her wedding day so he could buy an M-16 assault rifle and avenge the deaths of two cousins at Israeli hands.
Abayat’s regret was that he had taken refuge in the historic church rather than fight it out in the open.
“Being deported from your homeland is a serious precedent. I would have rather died fighting,” he said over a cellular telephone from inside the church.
“But we are accepting this deal because our being here has caused the people of Bethlehem to be under curfew so long. We don’t want them to suffer anymore,” he told his mother.
37 days and counting
The people of Bethlehem cannot yet celebrate the end of the deadly standoff at the Church of the Nativity, which entered its 37th day on Wednesday. A deal to do so foundered Tuesday when negotiators inexplicably failed to clear a key provision of the plan–the exile of the 13 gunmen–with Italy, the country every negotiator agreed would take in the suspects.
Western diplomats admitted that negotiators from the United States, the Vatican and Israel never sought approval from Italy to move the gunmen there. Italian leaders said they needed far more details about the transfer before they would agree to house the 13 militants.
The deal also would send 26 gunmen to the Gaza Strip. The remainder of people trapped in the church since April 2 were to be released without delay, according to Israeli military sources.
The breakdown in negotiations came just as the Israeli army was moving into Manger Square for a televised release.
“There seemed to be some kind of disconnect,” a diplomatic source said somewhat sheepishly. “[The Italian reaction] was not expected.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke twice Tuesday with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to try to smooth over the flap.
Whether any of the Palestinians would be liable to Israeli prosecution remained unclear. A group of Israeli families who lost loved ones in suicide bombings asked an Israeli court late Tuesday to block the deportations in order to allow prosecutions of the gunmen.
Israel accuses several of the gunmen of involvement in bombing and shooting attacks. Ibrahim Abayat, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and Abdullah Daoud, the Bethlehem intelligence chief, are high on Israel’s wanted list.
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The prospect of an end to the ordeal made those inside the church hug each other not only with joy but also with sadness.
“All the weapons are now being collected, but we have mixed feelings,” said non-combatant Khaled Salhab on a cell phone from inside the church.
“We civilians know we can go home soon, but the others are being sent into exile abroad or to Gaza. Over those five weeks a lot of friendships were forged here, and people often behaved very bravely,” Salhab said.
Others trapped in the church say that from the beginning, the militants inside fought their own factional battles. Fighters from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim, the armed wing of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, shouted and argued with each other over leadership and strategy.
Fighters have falling out
“They were jealous who was getting more food than the others,” said Omar Habib, 16, who spent 25 days inside the church before he was allowed to leave with eight others last week. “Ibrahim screamed at the others when they were late for guard duty. Often they just ignored him. No one accepted anyone as leader.
“Each group had its own power structure, and the civilians were divided between them. Sometimes the leaders met. There was a lot of screaming. The Fatah were the noisiest. The monks hated them. They would negotiate only with the Hamas, who were the most disciplined,” Habib said.
The church with the grotto where Jesus is believed to have been born in a manger probably was selected as a last-ditch refuge even before Israeli troops arrived. The incursion into Bethlehem was part of an offensive across the West Bank that Israel said was needed to arrest Palestinian militants and prevent new terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
Habib was on his way to buy medicine for his mother when the Israeli raid on Bethlehem began. He took refuge in the mosque next door to the Church of the Nativity until a loudspeaker in the mosque announced, “If you don’t want to die, go to the Christian church.”
He slipped in through a side door and found some 200 civilians pacing up and down, disoriented and scared.
“The fighters took charge and told us to find safe corners,” Habib said. “The monks were very nice. They begged us however, `Please respect the sanctity of this church, that’s all we ask you.'”
The once-a-day meal was monotonous: Rice and spaghetti with water. Sometimes a brave person would crawl into the church courtyard and pluck ferns or beans from the monks’ garden. The teenager said he lost 22 pounds in 25 days. Others, he said, lost even more weight.
Habib said he learned two important lessons: “To eat everything offered to me without complaints and that people who I looked up to because they had big names and big reputations turned out to be really nobodies.”