← Covering Palestine

The Morning Call · Allentown, Pennsylvania · 2 December 1995

CP-1995-003

First Palestinian police open office in Bethlehem area

Nasser Shioukhi, Of The Associated Press, Beit Jala

First Palestinian police open office in Bethlehem area — The Morning Call, 2 December 1995
The Morning Call · Allentown, Pennsylvania · 2 December 1995

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIT JALA, West Bank — The first Palestinian police who will take control of Bethlehem from Israeli troops by Christmas raised the Palestinian flag on a hill overlooking the biblical city yesterday. About 400 people turned out to welcome the 12 officers who opened the Israel-Palestinian liaison office in this neighboring village. They raised the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag over the office. Residents clapped and chanted ‘We will sacrifice soul and blood for Palestine’ when the officers marched in, carrying handguns, flags and pictures of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. ‘This is the sweetest moment in my life,’ said Khalil Dakadeka from the nearby village of Beit Fajjar. ‘We have waited for this moment for many years,’ said Bethlehem merchant Nader Hidweh. As he raised the flag, Brig. Gen. Ziad Atrash, a senior police commander, announced: ‘Christmas will be under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, and Arafat will attend the ceremonies.’ Thirty thousand people are expected to attend Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, for the first Christmas under Palestinian control. In past years, visitors passed through Israeli metal detectors to reach Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity, and Israeli army snipers were posted on rooftops… Earlier yesterday, dozens of Palestinians tried in vain to block bulldozers clearing land for a bypass road around Hebron, 12 miles south of Bethlehem. The road cuts through cultivated olive groves and grape vineyards in Halhoul, a Palestinian village outside of Hebron. ‘This is my land, and it is the only thing I have,’ said Ali Akel, 45. ‘I understand that this peace is a peace for land, but the Israeli government has both the peace and the land.’ Soldiers pushed the protesters back and kept them from blocking the bulldozers.”

Context added by this archive

Three named Palestinians in one column: a man having the sweetest moment of his life, a merchant who waited, and a man watching bulldozers take his olive groves the same morning. The archive also holds the Jamestown Sun’s printing of this dispatch.

Cite this item

"First Palestinian police open office in Bethlehem area," The Morning Call, 2 December 1995. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1995-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1995-003

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1995-003.

See it in the archive reel · Full text of every clipping · Dataset