TEL AVIV, Dec 18: The head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land urged Palestinian and Israeli leaders on Wednesday to make peace or quit and said Christmas celebrations must go ahead in Bethlehem despite Israel’s military occupation.

In the latest violence, witnesses said Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian youth in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip after a crowd of young people ignored orders to disperse. Israeli media said the death followed shooting in the area.

Israeli security sources said a top Palestinian militant had been captured in Bethlehem, the West Bank city occupied by Israeli troops following a recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem as part of the Palestinian uprising for an independent state.

In a sign of the growing frustration with more than two years of violence, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah levelled unusually direct criticism of the leaders of both sides at a pre-Christmas news conference in Jerusalem.

“If present leaders do not succeed in making peace, there is only one solution — open the way to other leaders, perhaps they will succeed better where the present ones have failed,” Sabbah, a Palestinian, said in his annual Christmas message.

Christmas festivities have been overshadowed by Israel’s reoccupation of Bethlehem, celebrated by Christians as Jesus’ birthplace, following the suicide bombing which killed 11 Israelis on a Jerusalem bus almost four weeks ago.

Israel has said the troops will not leave Bethlehem until its intelligence agencies are sure the threat posed by militants there has been eradicated.—Reuters