The New York Times · 26 April 2002

CP-2002-113

In Grim Cortege, 9 Arabs Carry Dead From Church

By C.J. CHIVERS

Scan 794 × 1058 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

BETHLEHEM, West Bank, April 25 — Nine Palestinian youths were evacuated today from the Church of the Nativity, ending their involvement in the siege by forming a bizarre funereal processional out of the church and into a gantlet of leveled Israeli guns. The youths carried two coffins holding the bodies of Palestinians who had been killed earlier in the siege.

The procession, which began at the entrance to the compound built on the site where Jesus is believed to have been born, could hardly have been stranger: a slow-moving column of weary Muslim teenagers, led by robed Christian monks, carrying bodies in front of Israeli tanks and paratroopers.

… “I saw how they treat my people and what they think of my people when they let that happen to our bodies,” said Shefah Saman, a Red Crescent volunteer, who later in the day asked visitors to look inside the coffins and examine the badly decomposed remains at the Beit Jala Hospital.

Israel took a milder view, saying the evacuation was a promising sign and meant that the two sides might soon be able to end the siege peacefully. The dead men were identified as Khalid Abu Suihan, 24, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s national security force, and Husan Nusman, 27, a civilian. Both were from the Gaza Strip. Israel has said the dead were gunmen.

But Dr. Peter Qumri, director of the hospital, said that one had been shot in the head while fighting a fire inside the compound, and that a sniper’s bullet had struck the other in the shoulder and burrowed into his chest when he bent over in the compound garden to pick lettuce. “He was hungry,” Dr. Qumri said. Neither version could be independently verified.

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from a scan of the printed page. The page carries no masthead, running head or folio, so the date is not fixed from a printed date line; it rests on the slide label, corroborated by a dateline of 'BETHLEHEM, West Bank, April 25', by the Church of the Nativity siege being described as in its fourth week (the siege began on 2 April 2002), and by thirty more youths being expected to leave 'by Friday morning', 26 April 2002 having been a Friday. The newspaper is identified from the photograph credit 'Photographs by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times'. A separate check established that this is a different article from the two others on the same slide. 'BETHLEHEM' above the headline is a department flag, not a deck. THE EXCERPT CONTAINS AN ELISION, marked with an ellipsis. The page prints Israel's claim that the dead were gunmen, the hospital director's contradicting account, and its own sentence that neither version could be independently verified; all three are in the transcribed text. The Times's spelling 'gantlet' is as printed. Read from crops magnified to between thirteen and sixteen times page scale.

Cite this clipping

More from The New York Times

• The Maine Colony in PalestineThe New York Times · 12 November 1866
• Jewish Colonization in PalestineThe New York Times · 9 December 1883
• Jewish State in Palestine OpposedThe New York Times · 9 July 1897
• ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASELThe New York Times · 31 August 1897
• ROME FEARS THE ZIONISTSThe New York Times · 12 September 1897
• PROGRESS OF ZIONISMThe New York Times · 16 December 1901
• 852 more from this paper in the full text →

More from the 2000s

• Don’t forget it’s an Israeli occupationThe Daily Press · 1 January 2002
• Soothing Israel’s FearsThe New York Times · 7 January 2002
• Israel, in Reprisal for Killings, Razes Gaza Refugee HomesThe New York Times · 11 January 2002
• Refugees and Reparations in the MideastThe New York Times · 13 January 2002
• Israeli missiles strike naval baseThe Greenville News · 13 January 2002
• Friendship of Palestinian, architect defies oddsThe Bismarck Tribune · 17 January 2002
• All 516 clippings from the 2000s →