ISRAEL: Efforts to resolve the Bethlehem siege intensified yesterday, writes David Horovitz from Jerusalem.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, is set to fly to Italy today to try to persuade Rome to play host to some or all of the 13 Palestinians alleged by Israel to have been involved in bloody attacks on Israeli targets. Their uncertain fate is delaying a resolution of the 38-day siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
For the umpteenth time yesterday, reports that the standoff had been resolved proved premature.
Israel sent buses into Manger Square, ready to evacuate the 100-plus Palestinians who have been holed-up in the church since April.
Metal fences were removed from the compound. Israeli tanks pulled back. And a crane, from which Israeli cameras had monitored the church, was driven away.
Under the tentative deal, 26 Palestinians wanted by Israel - but evidently not desperately wanted - were to have been escorted to Gaza.
Some 80 more Palestinian policemen and civilians were to have been questioned by Israel and then freed.
And only the final 13 were to have remained in the church, presumably for only a short time, until arrangements were finalised with whichever European country or countries could be persuaded to take them in.
The hitch, of course, was described differently by the two sides.
The Palestinian version had Israel backtracking on its earlier consent to allow for an EU official, Mr Alistair Crooke, to stay with the 13 in the Church of the Nativity and help guarantee their safety.
According to the Israeli account, the Palestinians wanted the 13 to be moved to a nearby hotel, a demand Israel rejected. Wherever the truth lay, the deal was off, the buses drove away empty and the crane was brought back.
Mr Peres's trip to Italy represents an attempt to circumvent this latest dispute by getting the 13 deported right away.
But the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, is unlikely to be easily won over.
He said yesterday that Italy could not be the only country to which the men were sent but, rather, that a wider EU solution was needed.
But Mr Berlusconi then also raised objections that, presumably, every EU member-nation would share, asking: "How can we host some Palestinians who have been accused of serious terrorist acts, but who having been neither judged nor sentenced and would, therefore, be considered free men in Italy?"
No European country, he added, would be able to jail them. And, equally, no European country could grant them asylum.
The Italian Reforms Minister, Mr Umberto Bossi, had said on Wednesday that the previous day's Palestinian suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv, in which 15 Israelis were killed, had bolstered Italy's determination not to play host to the 13 - a position that underlined precisely why Israel wants to be rid of them, but also why nobody else is yet offering to take them in.
According to Israeli officials, one of the men killed two Israelis and an American, and two others orchestrated two Jerusalem suicide bombings. Israel has not issued details of its allegations against most of the other 10 beyond describing them as Hamas members.
The EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, is offering to try and find an EU nation or several ready to play host.
Mr Peres speculated that Spain might take in three or four of the 13 - a claim that the Spanish conspicuously failed to confirm. As far as The Irish Times could establish, Irish officials had not been sounded out on the issue as of last night.
In principle, both the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, have agreed to the kind of arrangement that seemed set to be implemented yesterday.
However, Mr Arafat has been condemned by Hamas leaders, and even by members of his own Fatah faction of the PLO, for consenting to a "precedent" in which Palestinian "fighters" are deported with the sanction of their own leadership.
Mr Arafat has already been taking heat from opponents and loyalists over the accord that saw him released from a month-long Israeli siege of his Ramallah headquarters last week in exchange for the jailing, under British and US supervision, of six men, including the alleged assassins of the Israeli tourism minister, who were with him in the besieged building.