WORLD
Page 14
THE BATTALION
Thursday, Ma
Pope completes controversial iournev to Bethlehei
i ■
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Journey
ing to the cradle of Christianity on Wednesday,
Pope John Paul II knelt at the
traditional spot of Jesus’ birth
and kissed a golden bowl of
Palestinian soil — a highly
charged gesture seen by
Palestinians as a recognition
of their dreams for statehood.
As a beaming Yasser
Arafat looked on, the pontiff POPE JOHN PAUL ti
proclaimed Palestinians’
“natural right to a homeland” and visited a camp
for refugees exiled from their homes since the
1948 Mideast War. Soon after he left, Palestinian
frustrations turned violent: 1 lundreds of camp res
idents hurled stones at baton-wielding Palestinian
police in a battle that lasted for nearly halfan hour.
Police at the Dheisheh camp pushed the pro
testers back, but then retreated under a hail of
rocks. Some minor injuries were reported in the
melee, a show of dissatisfaction with Palestinian
leadership and the slow pace of peace. Earlier in
the day, John Paul called for international action
to end Palestinian suffering.
“Your torment is before the eyes of the world,”
he declared. “And it has gone on for too long.”
However, the day in Bethlehem—the city John
Paul said was at the heart of his pilgrimage — also
had a strong spiritual note. In Manger Square, near
Jesus’ traditional birth grotto in the Church of the
Nativity, a golden-clad pontiff leaning on a silver
staff celebrated Mass before thousands of faithful.
Later, he descended into the grotto and knelt
before the star marking the spot where Mary is
believed to have given birth. In the soft glow of
candles, the pope sat in silence as his aides re
spectfully slipped out of the grotto.
Despite the Vatican’s portrayal of the papal
trip as purely spiritual, the pope touched on con
tentious issues of clear consequence to the region.
He kissed a bowl of Palestinian soil — a gesture
normally reserved for sovereign states — and
walked hand-in-hand in Dheisheh with Arafat, the
Palestinian leader. The Palestinians, in turn, lost
no time driving home the message of their aspi
rations of independence.
“Welcome to our land,” Arafat told the pope
at a formal reception that kicked oft'the only day
the pope was spending in Palestinian territory.
He called the pope an “esteemed guest of Pales
tine, and its eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
Israel claims all Jerusalem as its capital,
while Palestinians want the city’s eastern sec
tion as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
After meeting Arafat, the pope traveled in
his bulletproof popemobile to Manger Square
for an ecstatic welcome. Along the route, Pales
tinian girls hurled flowers, festooning the hood
of the popemobile. In the square, draped with
Palestinian and Vatican flags, shouts of “Viva
Baba!” rang out. Baba is the Arabic adaptation
of the word pope.
Clad in a golden robe, John Paul waved his
hand in greeting and blessed the crowd, saying
“Peace be upon you” in Arabic. As organ strains
signaled the start of Mass, he leaned heavily on
his silver staff, bowing his head in solemn prayer.
Hands trembling as he preached from a tent
like altar between an ancient church and a mod
em mosque, the pope said Bethlehem lay “at the
heart” of his millennium pilgrimage — a visit he
had hoped to make as far back as Christmas
1978, two months after he assumed the papacy.
“This is a place that has known the yoke and the
rod of oppression,” John Paul said. “How often has
the cry of innocents been heard in these streets?”
As the pope finished his homily, the Muslim
call to prayer rang out from a mosque in the square,
the first such interruption of a papal Mass. The
crowd and the pontiff alike waited silently for the
call to prayer to end. A few fidgeted uncomfortably,
and a nun shook her head in apparent disbelief.
A moment later, the crowd applauded when
Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch, Michel Sabbah,
spoke of the juxtaposition of Islamic and Chris
tian prayers as symbolizing unity between the
two faiths. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navar
ro-Vails later said the overlapping of prayers in
the square was “mutual and respectful.”
Earlier, the Palestinians greeted John Pai^l
with conscious symbols of statehood as his Is
raeli Blackhawk helicopter touched down under
chilly gray skies near Arafat’s presidential palace.
The Palestinians presented him with a golden
bowl of soil, to which the pontiff bit'
to his lips. Along with the Vaticanantks
played the Palestinian national song.
In his arrival speech, the popes
“legitimate Palestinian aspirations
need for peaceful negotiations to real:
“The Holy See has always recogt
the Palestinian people have a natural:
homeland,” the pope said, speaking:,
voice — a symptom of Parkinson’s!
progressive neurological disorder.
Navarro-Vails parried suggestionsl
was endorsing a Palestinian state, sayn
state has not yet been proclaimedandte
icon would consider the issue when tot:
The visit sounded a cheerful note.,
of several hundred, gathered in acoitny
boys’ school, cheered and applaudedasi
and Arafat walked hand-in-handotitole
But the violence erupted aflertkeylelt
Abdel Rahman Ahmar, a leaderofarakj
faction, said the camp’s anger was fell
Arafat and at the Israeli-Palestinianpa;
from which he said refugees havereapefcia
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Activists criticize
water forum’s
joint declaratio
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)
— Activists criticized a joint declara
tion by water officials from 130 coun
tries Wednesday because it didn't
classify access to water as a human
right, and lacked any concrete mea
sures to ensure a
clean world water
supply.
In their four-
page closing decla
ration, government
officials at the Sec
ond World Water
Forum agreed that
every person
should have “ac
cess to enough safe
water at an afford
able cost.”
“If you say it’s
a human right you
change the whole
framework,” said
Maude Barlow of
the Canadian
itor International, an Americani
organization promoting thepri
tion of water resources.
The officials stressed the
for institutional, technologicalj
nancial innovations’' fromthef:
sector.
“If you say it's a
human right you
change the whole
framework. Then
you can't trade it
[water] as a
commodity and
make a profit.”
— Maude BaHow
Canadian Council
Somfi
gates at i
rum
declaratr
will pit
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tion of it
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“Foot
pie are
ing to pr(
the profil
tract the
vate set 1
said
mem del
Mike i
Ri
Phot
wrea
Rang
stan<
Council, a civil rights interest group.
“Then you can’t trade it [water] as a
commodity and make a profit.”
Officials discussed recommenda
tions from the 4,500 environmental
ists, business people, scientists and
water experts attending the confer
ence, but did not endorse them.
They listed challenges for their
own governments to address, such as
securing food supplies, protecting
ecosystems and managing risks in
cluding floods, drought and pollution.
“It’s a shame the governments have
not adopted the most simple pledge,”
said Lisa Borre, vice president of Mon-
Director General of the South At
Department of Water Affairs
Forestry.
“We are democraticallyek
governments and cannot leave of
majority of our people.”
With the world’s
peeled to double in the next 25)<<
many experts believe the i
needed for water will have to® 1
from private investors.
The water congress was
the largest meeting everofesp
and government officials. Thei
world water forum will
Japan in 2003.
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