Negotiators have reached an agreement intended to end a five-week-old armed standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, one of the negotiators confirmed on Thursday.
"It's a done deal," Canon Andrew White, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special representative to the Middle East, told reporters. He did not say when people would start leaving the church, one of Christianity's holiest shrines.
He said 26 militants would be sent to the Gaza Strip and all civilians would leave the church, marking the spot revered by Christians as Jesus' birthplace, but 13 men on Israel's most-wanted list would remain in the church for the time being.
The 13 would eventually be sent to another country, possibly Spain or Italy, White said.
The militants took refuge in the church with security men and civilians on April 2, when Israeli troops entered Bethlehem as part of a sweep of the West Bank launched after a series of Palestinian suicide bombings.
(China Daily May 9, 2002)
