Israel lifts Bethlehem curfew for a few hours a day at most

Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

“BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Mounir Sansuor lay dead more than three days after a fatal heart attack before his family was able to bury him Wednesday when Israel finally gave permission to break the Bethlehem curfew that was last lifted on the day Sansuor died.

Fifty people were allowed to attend the funeral, walking through the deserted, shuttered streets of Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity, which would otherwise have been overflowing with mourners for the 39-year-old Sansuor. ‘It is sadder than a regular funeral, because his friends and beloved can’t attend this man’s funeral,’ said the Rev.

Amjad Sabara, the Roman Catholic priest who led the funeral Mass. Israeli troops occupied Bethlehem, as well as six other major West Bank towns and cities, after Palestinian attacks killed 31 Israelis between June 18-20.

The Palestinians have demanded the Israelis leave, but Israeli officials say they’ll stay as long as it takes to end attacks — enforcing curfews and hunting down suspected militants. The army has lifted the curfews in most towns for a few hours every day or so to let residents stock up on food, visit family members and take care of business.

But in Bethlehem, the curfew was last lifted for all residents for four hours on Sunday and before that on Thursday. ‘They are denying the citizens from going to their churches and mosques during this incursion,’ Mayor Hanna Nasser said from the home he is unable to leave because of the curfew. ‘This is very dangerous.’

He appealed to world governments to pressure Israel to leave the town, saying Bethlehem residents were growing increasingly frustrated at being cooped up in their homes with Israeli tanks rumbling outside. ‘The citizens are depressed.

The citizens are frustrated, and I don’t think that this tolerance which has been shown until now will continue for good,’ Nasser said. Ranaan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the Bethlehem curfews were necessary because Israeli field commanders had received ‘continuous alerts’ about planned attacks on nearby Jerusalem.

‘The orders the commanders on the ground receive is, any place we can ease the curfew and allow to open up, we open up,’ Gissin said. ‘Now, if the authorities in Bethlehem will take real action to prevent suicide bombers, we will consider lifting the curfew altogether.’ For Sansuor’s family, the curfew came at a particularly difficult time.

It took them four days to get permission from the army to allow them to bring his body to the Church of the Nativity for the funeral. During that time, they managed to obtain a casket and flowers, despite the restrictions.

On Wednesday, they walked slowly and silently through the streets behind the casket and joined in singing hymns, as his body was taken to a cemetery near the Nativity compound. ‘Thank God we managed to bury him, because this person died four days ago,’ Sabara said.”

Context added by this archive

One page, two sacraments, and a curfew across both. Mounir Sansuor, 39, died of a heart attack and lay unburied for more than three days while his family sought permission to carry him to the Church of the Nativity. Fifty people were allowed to the funeral of a man whose church would otherwise have been overflowing.

The priest who said the Mass: it is sadder than a regular funeral, because his friends and beloved can’t attend. Beside that story is a photograph of

Jala Abu Ajamia, 16, in her veil, marrying her 27-year-old cousin the same week. More than half her guests could not come, and the ones who did were not fed, because the shops were shut or empty.

Bethlehem’s mayor gave his quotes from a house he was not permitted to leave, and what he objected to was religious: they are denying the citizens from going to their churches and mosques. The Palestinians in this story are Christians, and the wedding and the funeral are the two things the curfew reached.

Cite this item

"Israel lifts Bethlehem curfew for a few hours a day at most," The News-Times, 11 July 2002. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2002-030. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2002-030