I know all about what is called looting and wanton destruction” in the West Bank This is not new to

I know all about what is called “looting and wanton destruction” in the West Bank This is not new to us. We dealt with hundreds of such cases in the past and won cases of looting against the Israeli army in the Israeli courts.”Mr Sourani has completed the duplication of all his human rights records. “And when the Israelis come, we shall keep on working here for human rights. We will not allow ourselves to be panicked or become paranoid. We learnt something from the Israeli occupation in the past: to be professional and to be strategic.

They made our bones strong.”In the coming days – or weeks – Mr Sourani’s words may well be put to the test.. Hundreds of people, hungry and exhausted, crouch in corners of the echoing church as gunfire rips through it. A group of young men sleep in the grotto where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born. All of them have been surviving on tiny rations of food which are running out. A ninth is still being held for questioning.Mahmoud Najjar, a 17-year-old, told us how he had been forced to survive on herbs boiled in salt water. “If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be alive to speak to you now”.

His stomach had shrunk so much from his time inside the church that when he tried to eat a small plate of food, he doubled up with cramps.Israeli troops have besieged the church for some three weeks now Gunfire regularly breaks out around it. Only yesterday, Israeli troops shot and wounded two Palestinians inside the compound. They were evacuated for medical treatment.Inside the church are some 200 Palestinians who took sanctuary there when the Israeli army launched its assault on Bethlehem. With them are around 30 monks who have vowed to stay to prevent a “bloodbath”.As many as 50 of those inside are unarmed civilians, according to the accounts now emerging for the first time. The bulk of the rest, say those who have come out, are from the myriad of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian security services, who are armed but are not suspected of any involvement in suicide bombings on Israelis.Mahmoud told us how he had to flee to the church when he went to Manger Square to look for his brother, who is mentally handicapped, as the Israeli army attacked. He was with a friend of his, Hamze Ammash, the 17-year-old who was last night still being held by the Israeli army for questioning. The young men were blocked from their path home by Israeli gunfire and a Palestinian policeman advised them to take shelter inside the Church of the Nativity.”Those of us who managed to reach the church door got there by a miracle,” he said.