MIDDLE EAST: Militants fired an AK47, a gift from their supporters, to celebrate, David Horovitz writes from the Gaza Strip
In the hazy, early morning sunshine, almost six weeks after they fled Israeli troops and escaped into the Church of the Nativity, the Palestinians wanted by Israel began emerging into Manger Square.
The first man out was Mr Abdullah Daoud, Mr Yasser Arafat's intelligence chief in Bethlehem.
Like all those who would follow him, he passed through two metal-detector gates, satisfied Israelis troops that he had no explosives hidden under his clothing, was questioned by two soldiers and then escorted to an Israeli bus.
The men who followed him waved and flashed victory signs at Palestinians who had gathered on the rooftops around Manger Square.
These were the hard-core, the 13 men alleged by Israel to have "blood on their hands" - something Mr Daoud denies.
Apart from him, they are members of Hamas, and of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades who pledge loyalty to Mr Arafat. Two allegedly oversaw suicide bombings in Jerusalem; a third allegedly shot dead two Israelis and an American.While they were taken away for questioning, and then to Ben Gurion Airport for the short flight to Cyprus, 26 more alleged Palestinian gunmen were filing out of the church - again escorted by clergymen, again clearing the metal detectors, flashing the victory signs and boarding the buses.
But they had resisted deportation, and were taken instead to the Gaza Strip, where a rapturous welcome from locals contrasted sharply with the low-key arrival scenes of the preceding 13 in Cyprus.
Handed an M-16 as their bus entered the Gaza Strip, Hamas member Naji Abayat fired deliriously skyward from a side window, then passed the rifle to one of his colleagues, who repeated the act.
With all the alleged gunmen now gone, dozens more Palestinians - policemen and civilians - ducked through the low Gate of Humility, the main exit from the basilica, and out into the fresh morning air. And after 38 days of siege, that should have been that. Except that 10 international activists, who had evaded Israeli soldiers and dashed into the church last week in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians, now refused to come out.
From among the dozens of journalists who had been watching the morning's exodus from the flat roof of the Bethlehem Municipality building, a suggestion emerged that reflected the reporters' rather derisive opinion of these 10 would be do gooders: "Tell them," several journalists chorused to the Israeli army spokesman who was issuing periodic updates, "that you'll kill a dolphin every hour until they come out." The dolphin threat was presumably not issued, but the 10 did eventually emerge - brought out by Israeli troops who said they encountered no resistance. And now plainclothes CIA agents entered the church, as dozens of monks and priests and a few nuns milled outside, embracing and waving.
The CIA men catalogued the weaponry the gunmen left behind. Israeli army officials were later to say that 40 explosive devices had also been found - a claim that could not be verified.
At the holy site desecrated by siege, gun battles and the occasional fire, clerics were reluctant now to have dozens of TV crews, photographers and reporters marching through. And so a press "pool" was arranged. A handful of reporters escorted into the building to record the squalor - the strewn bedclothes, the discarded food tins, the saucepans, last scraps of food and garbage.
They reported relatively little damage to the church itself, built over the traditional birthplace of Jesus. A few smashed windows, some bullet holes in a 900-year-old fresco. But there was much heavier damage in the adjacent parish hall, where a fire that broke out just six days into the siege on April 8th was said to have blackened the room and destroyed Franciscan robes and parts of a new pipe organ. Typically, both Israeli and Palestinian officials claiming to have emerged with the upper hand - the Palestinians because no one had been handed over to Israel, and because so many of the wanted men had been allowed to leave for Gaza; the Israelis because they had persuaded Mr Arafat, unprecedentedly, to agree to deportation.
But while the Vatican and President Bush led the chorus of praise for the peaceful, if belated, resolution to the siege, many of the clergymen who had suffered through it, resolutely honouring their religious commitment to protect the holy places, were less optimistic, blaming both sides for shattering the church's sanctity - the Palestinian gunmen for shooting their way into the building, and the Israeli troops for shooting into the compound, and killing seven Palestinians there in the course of the sporadic gun battles over the past weeks.
The church bell-ringer was also killed early in the siege. The bitter legacy of this unhappy episode is that, for many of the clerics, it has proved that neither Israel nor the Palestinians can be trusted to properly protect such sites.