Hopes for peace in the Holy Land seemed as empty as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's seat at Bethlehem's midnight mass after Israel barred his Christmas pilgrimage to the town where Jesus was born.
Showing no goodwill toward a man it branded ``irrelevant,'' Israel ignored international appeals -- including one from the Vatican -- to lift the ban, and demanded Arafat first arrest Palestinian militants who killed an Israeli cabinet minister.
Bethlehem, rocked by 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has turned tourism into a ghost of Christmas-past, again celebrated the holiday in a somber mood with Israeli troops parked just outside town.
``It is wonderful to be here with the underdogs,'' said Deirdre, an Irish woman among a scattering of foreign pilgrims who braved Israeli checkpoints, or winding dirt roads that circumvent them, to reach Bethlehem.
Further north in the West Bank, an Israeli settler was critically wounded in a roadside shooting that a group belonging to Arafat's Fatah faction said was retaliation for Israel's treatment of their president.
The settler shot dead one of the gunmen in an exchange of fire, just a little over a week after Arafat -- under intense international pressure to rein in militants behind suicide bombings in Israel -- called for a halt to attacks on Israelis.
Saying his ``heart is heavy with sorrow,'' Arafat told the Palestinian people in a televised speech from the West Bank city of Ramallah that Israel had committed a crime by preventing a ``believer in God and peace'' from traveling to Bethlehem.
ARAFAT STRANDED
Arafat has been stranded in Ramallah since Israel destroyed his helicopters in the Gaza Strip, stationed tanks near his Ramallah office and launched air strikes against symbols of his power in retaliation for suicide attacks earlier this month.
He had attended Christmas midnight mass in Bethlehem's Roman Catholic Saint Catherine's Church, adjoining the Church of the Nativity, since the town came under Palestinian rule in 1995.
This year, a checkered Arab headdress, a symbol of Arafat's struggle for a homeland, was draped over his empty seat, marked by a sign in English reading: ``H.E. Yasser Arafat, President of the State of Palestine.''
In his midnight mass sermon, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Catholic Church's senior representative to the Holy Land, said that despite Arafat's absence he was closer to the Palestinians than at any other time.
Sabbah said peace was conditional on an end to Israeli occupation.
``The Israeli people have to ask themselves what the Palestinian people really want, and they have to realize they don't want killing or hatred, but they seek freedom and for the Israeli people security and safety, the fruit of their freedom,'' the patriarch said.
Palestinians who attended the mass said Arafat's presence would have symbolized unity. ``People are sad. There are not many people here. Arafat means unity of our nation among Christians and Muslims,'' said Rania Zait, as she ushered her young relatives, wearing Santa Claus hats, into the church compound.
CHRISTIAN MINORITY
Christians are a minority among the three million mostly Muslim Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but they make up about 35 percent of the 140,000 people in Bethlehem and its satellite villages.
In his speech, Arafat said the ``cement checkpoints and the aggressor's oppressive guns have prevented my participation with you at our annual celebrations on this holy occasion.''
Israeli tanks and roadblocks circle Palestinian cities in what Israel calls a security measure and Palestinians describe as collective punishment. Bethlehem is some 12 miles from Ramallah.
The 72-year-old Arafat said: ``The location where Jesus was born is under siege from all sides.''
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Arafat owed ``penance to his people'' for their suffering in the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.
Gissin said Arafat had failed to arrest militants who assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in October. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it killed Zeevi to avenge Israel's killing of its leader in August.
At least 791 Palestinians and 233 Israelis have been killed since the uprising erupted.
``I submit to you on this holiday of peace, wouldn't it be the proper thing for Mr. Arafat to act on his words of peace and to stop his terrorist activities? Had he done that, we would have removed the restriction,'' Gissin told CNN.
Christmas lights and decorations in Bethlehem were far fewer than in the years preceding the Palestinian uprising. Arafat, a practising Muslim, was present only in portraits hung on the walls of historic Manger Square and in posters held aloft.
Earlier, Israeli troops, suspecting Arafat might try to sneak into Bethlehem, stopped and searched a convoy carrying Sabbah and other Christian religious leaders to the town after a solidarity visit to his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
(China Daily December 25, 2001)
