Gunmen in
Bethlehem church offered trial or permanent exile
Peter
Beaumont in Bethlehem and
Jonathan Cook at Ketziot detention camp
The Guardian
Monday April 15, 2002
The Israeli
prime minister, Ariel Sharon, yesterday offered scores of Palestinian gunmen
trapped in an armed standoff in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity the choice of
surrendering and being tried in an Israeli military court, or going into exile
"forever".
As
negotiations continued behind the scenes between the gunmen in the church and
Israeli military negotiators, Ra'anan Gissin, Mr Sharon's spokesman, said Israel
had given the proposal to the US secretary of state, Colin Powell.
The
Palestinian governor of Bethlehem, Mohammed al-Madani, who is among about 100
Palestinians, including gunmen, inside the church, rejected the Israeli
proposal.
But he said
the Palestinians in the church, surrounded by Israeli tanks and troops for
nearly two weeks, would abide by any solution endorsed by the Palestinian
leader, Yasser Arafat.
"We totally
reject these proposals," Mr Madani told Reuters, before adding: "Any solution
concerning the besieged is up to President Arafat and the besieged will abide by
his decision."
Despite
efforts at mediation by the Christian churches to end the standoff, senior
Israeli military officers directing the siege insisted that it was a matter that
would be resolved by the Israeli military.
"The
terrorists will have two choices: either they will stand trial in Israel and
serve a sentence here [if] found guilty ... [or] they will be expelled from
Israel forever and from the territories," Mr Gissin said yesterday. There was no
official Palestinian comment on the proposal.
Those trapped
inside the church, with little food, water or communication with the outside
world, are also living with the bodies of at least two Palestinian policeman.
The first of
hundreds of Palestinians who have already been arrested in the West Bank were
being transferred to Ketziot detention camp in the Negev desert, which the
Israeli army reopened at the weekend.
Ketziot was
closed seven years ago after the last prisoners from the first intifada were
freed. It can hold up to 7,000 inmates in a series of huge compounds of tents.
Last week Mr
Sharon secretly asked the army to rush the camp back into service. Hundreds of
reservists will be needed to staff it.
The Israeli
army has said that it has arrested more than 4,000 men and yesterday was
continuing its house-to-house searches in West Bank villages. Many detainees are
currently being held in temporary interrogation centres, such as Ofer camp near
Ramallah.
Hassib
Nashishibi, of the Palestinian legal rights group Law, said the prison's
resurrection was a death blow to the Oslo peace process. "We are back to the
mass arrests policy of the first intifada - it's a reoccupation by other means."
