The Israeli attack on the Palestinian town of Bethlehem was launched in the dead of night on April 2, as helicopter gunships fired missiles into the old city around Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity.

IDF tanks and armoured personnel carriers thrust deep into the town. Witnesses described desperate close-quarter fighting, as Israeli troops went from house to house and broke into religious buildings in search of Palestinian fighters.

At about 9am, the Lutheran church, the pastor's home, and the church's international centre were hit by Israeli shelling. Tanks were stationed around the church, firing into the centre of the old town.

"The whole infrastructure is under attack. The beautiful stone-paved streets around Lutheran Christmas Church are devastated," said the Lutheran pastor, Mitri Raheb.

"I wonder, how long can the world watch Sharon destroying everything we try to build? ...This is the Nero complex of someone who rejoices when he sees cities in flames."

Two days later, 45 IDF soldiers entered the Lutheran church compound. For two hours they went from room to room, breaking down office doors and searching. The damage and destruction was extensive.

To begin with, the soldiers thought that Raheb was an expatriate. When they realized he was Palestinian, their attitude hardened. They detained him in a corner of his office and told him not to talk. To Raheb, they seemed out of control; their language was "vulgar and nasty, cursing Arabs and making threats".

Throughout the incursion, Raheb kept telling the soldiers that the church did not allow fighters of any kind to enter the premises, which were used only for helping people in need.

On April 3, Israeli border police came to the Lutheran-run Augusta Victoria hospital on the Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem, demanding to question two employees. Negotiations followed, involving hospital administrators, church leaders, international representatives, and UN officials. Augusta Victoria, the police were told, is an international hospital offering help to anyone in need, regardless of religion or nationality. They were reminded that international law forbade them to enter churches or hospitals. Eventually, they spoke to their commander and left.

Israeli soldiers

At mid-day on Sunday April 7, nine or ten soldiers came to the home of Rev Ramez Ansara in Ramallah, then in its eleventh day of re-occupation by the IDF and, like Bethlehem, under 24-hour curfew. They asked him to accompany them while they searched the Lutheran Church of Hope. As they walked down to the church, shooting was heard. The soldiers hid behind a nearby tank, leaving Ansara alone in the street. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked. "Sit down," they said. So for ten minutes Ansara sat in the street before the soldiers said, "Let's go."

To search the church complex, they used Ansara as a human shield. "They would push me first into each room and then would jump into the room with their weapons levelled." Ansara refused to allow them to bring any weapons inside the church sanctuary. They compromised: two soldiers left their heavy weapons outside with their colleagues, taking with them only a small gun.

On April 16, IDF soldiers blasted their way into the Lutheran School of Hope in Ramallah. Many tanks arrived on the scene, and neighbours reported the sounds of shooting, glass breaking, explosions, and pounding with sledgehammers inside. No one was in the school, which had been closed for more than two weeks because of the invasion. It was not the only Lutheran school to come under Israeli attack.

"The ELCJ school system has been built with sweat and blood over the past 35 years," said Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan on April 17, "and now we see much of it destroyed in just a few hours."

"There are times when I feel as if the Lutheran churches are being targeted by the IDF in a systematic way," Younan added. "We have now had six church buildings entered and damaged, even used as shooting posts."

"We need a full withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Palestinian cities and we need international protection as Palestinian people and institutions."

On May 10, the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was lifted. On Sunday May 12, Christmas Lutheran Church held its first service in over a month.

That same day, Ariel Sharon lost a vote in the Likud party to his arch-rival, Binyamin Netanyahu. After hours of debate, the Israeli prime minister's party voted overwhelmingly to reject forever the setting up of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories "west of the Jordan river".

The damage caused to Lutheran churches, schools and church property by the IDF invasion is estimated at US$1 million. This is just a small part of the total physical damage by Israel in the West Bank, estimated by the international donor community at US$361 million.

"It seems that this is not a war against terrorism," Bishop Younan says. "This seems to be a war against the hope and the future of the Palestinian people."

ELCJ/LWF/LWI