RAMALLAH, West Bank (REUTERS) — Israeli troops ended their siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters by agreement, but fierce fighting broke out at Bethlehem’s besieged Nativity church.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would call off a U.N. mission to investigate Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp and Palestinian allegations of a massacre there, after failing to secure Israeli cooperation. Israeli forces completed their withdrawal from around Arafat’s compound early Thursday.
The Palestinian leader, newly freed from a month of virtual house arrest by Israeli forces, angrily condemned Israel’s stranglehold on the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where gunfire crackled and Israeli flares lit up the Church of the Nativity.
Palestinian gunmen in the church are surrounded by Israeli troops. “It is not important what happened to me here. What is important is what is happening in the Church of the Nativity. This is a crime,” Arafat, trembling with fury, told reporters in his offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Hundreds of whistling and cheering Palestinians surged to the compound to celebrate the Palestinian leader’s freedom as he made his first public remarks since Israeli troops moved out.
Under the U.S.-brokered deal to end the siege, Palestinian, U.S. and British officials escorted six men into armored vehicles, which took them out of Arafat’s compound to detention in Jericho, which will be supervised by a U.S. and British team.
Israel originally demanded that the men be handed over for trial in Israel for the assassination of an Israeli minister.
The pullback should improve Israel’s image abroad following the month-old military offensive in the West Bank it launched after a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis. It should also boost Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s hopes of a smooth visit to the United States, the Jewish state’s main backer, next week.
“It means as we’ve agreed in the compromise that he’s (Arafat) free to leave, and we hope that he’ll use this opportunity to fight against the terror. . . from his own society,” Israeli Foreign Ministry official Mark Sofer said.
U.N. Cancels Jenin Mission
Annan said he canceled the U.N. mission to probe Israel’s assault on Jenin camp after Israel frustrated the United Nations with a series of conditions it was unable to meet.
In a letter delivered to the U.N. Security Council as it began deliberations on the Middle East, Annan regretted that aborting the mission meant “the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain.”
Israel, which denies Palestinian charges that a massacre occurred in Jenin, said the mission was flawed from the start and that the grounds for conducting it no longer existed.
“The whole notion of a fact-finding group was born out of a fundamental lie that Israel committed a massacre in Jenin,” government spokesman Dore Gold told CNN.
Abandoning the mission will send home a 20-member team, headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, that had gathered in Geneva to await a green light to go to the region.
Israel says Palestinian estimates of the death toll in Jenin are exaggerated and that its troops killed fewer than 50 people, mainly militants responsible for suicide attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, in fierce fighting.
International political and human rights officials have said initial findings do not support claims of a massacre at the camp, where 23 Israeli soldiers were killed, while expressing concern about serious breaches of humanitarian law by the army.
Dispute over who shot first in Bethlehem
The deal to end the Ramallah siege followed an initiative by President Bush. Israel has also gradually pulled troops out of the cities it reoccupied in its West Bank offensive following repeated appeals by the United States.
In Washington, U.S. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said the United States was headed toward a joint strategy with Saudi Arabia to pressure Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the current Middle East crisis.
“We do hope that this result or this conclusion will lead to a real negotiation with the Israelis, to go back to the political track,” said Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Amr.
The fire in the Church of the Nativity died down not long after it started, but at its height smoke billowed from the compound as flames licked out from buildings near the church.
Palestinians inside the church accused the Israelis of attempting to storm the compound and said three people had been hurt by the fire.
An army spokesman said soldiers surrounding the church shot back after gunmen fired at them first and that the Palestinians had started the fire.
Bethlehem governor Mohammed al-Madani, who is inside the church, said the fighting was some of the worst since the standoff began.
“There is shooting everywhere, firing from all around us,” he said. The gun battle subsided after less than an hour.
In other violence, Palestinian police said a pipe bomb was thrown at the gate of a British cultural center in Gaza overnight. Four Palestinians, including a baby girl sleeping in her home, were killed by Israeli troops as clashes broke out in the Gaza Strip Wednesday.
At least 1,332 Palestinians and 458 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000 after peace negotiations stalled.
