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VATICAN CITY, Dec 24: The Vatican on Monday led criticism of Israel’s ban on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attending Christmas services in Bethlehem and pushed for the Jewish state to reverse its decision.
Vatican representatives have undertaken diplomatic steps to “help create a less tension-filled climate in the region”, said Vatican spokesman Joaquim Navarro-Valls.
“A diplomatic demarche has been made by the state secretariat to prevent this ban imposed arbitrarily,” he said.
Israel told Arafat on Monday to jail the killers of a minister by Monday midnight or miss Christmas mass in Bethlehem, in an ongoing war of nerves between Arafat and Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Arafat has vowed to attend the mass, as he has done every year since 1995, when the town where Christians believe Jesus was born came under Palestinian self-rule.
But military roadblocks have been reinforced around Ramallah, the West Bank town where Arafat has been trapped by Israel for the past three weeks after banning him from travel and knocking out his three helicopters.
The Palestinian Authority sought Pope John Paul II’s help after the ban by Israel, which last week cut all ties with Arafat, declaring him “irrelevant” to peacemaking, although contacts between the two sides have since been held.
A Palestinian official said on Sunday that Arafat could reach Bethlehem using the car of Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, who is due to meet Arafat in Ramallah on Monday.
France also called on Israel to allow Arafat to visit Bethlehem, which has been devastated during the 15-month Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Most recently, the town endured a deadly 10-day invasion by Israeli forces after the Oct 17 killing of far-right tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi by Palestinian extremists.
“It would be to Israel’s honour if it did not prevent the president of the Palestinian Authority from attending a religious ceremony which by the nature of the gathering is particularly symbolic for the Holy Land,” said France’s deputy foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.
On Friday, the ministry had said it did not believe it would be “useful” to bar Arafat from Bethlehem.
GULF PRESS: Gulf newspapers blasted the ban as part of a strategy to humiliate the veteran Palestinian leader.
“Israel is punishing not only Arafat (...) but all Palestinians,” United Arab Emirates’ newspaper Al-Khaleej said.
“It goes beyond humiliation to give the impression that it is the Jewish state which decides the personal activity of the Palestinian leader,” it added under the headline “Facing up to the strategy of humiliation”.
Al-Khaleej charged that the United States “shares” the Israeli approach and had tolerated “all the humiliation inflicted upon Arafat”.
Dubai government daily Al-Bayan warned of “a new crisis which may worsen the intifada by Palestinians who see the (Israeli) decision as a provocation”.
The newspaper urged Arabs to “support the Palestinians and their intifada with money and guns in the face of the tyranny of the enemy.”
Saudi daily Al-Nadwa said the Israeli ban was part of the “criminal policy of the (Sharon) government ... (and) confirms the belief that this government is not capable of restoring peace in the region”.—AFP
