| International News

Each year hundreds of people come to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in St. Ives in Cambridgeshire to see the live sheep, a cow and donkey, and actors who occasionally have brought their newborn babies to play the role of Jesus for the Nativity scene.

But this year visitors will be staring up at an imposing gray replica of a portion of the wall built by the Israeli government in 2002 to keep Palestinian suicide bombers at bay.

Father Paul Maddison, the parish priest, made the decision to cancel because he wants to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people suffering as a result of the wall.

In place of the manger crib will be a grim assemblage, 24 feet high and 7 feet wide, of painted polystyrene stuffed with floor insulation materials. The wall will be flanked by protest banners and "stark photographs" to show how "desperate and ugly the situation is in the Holy Land," said a Dec. 11 statement by the priest.

The aim is to make the replica almost identical in appearance to the nearly 27-foot-high section of wall encompassing Bethlehem. The wall will eventually will become a 400-mile-long barrier of concrete slabs and barbed wire fences separating Israel from the West Bank.

The wall was to be built Dec. 15 in the church where the crib would have been.

Father Maddison said in the Dec. 11 statement the wall has devastated the lives of the ordinary citizens there.

"Friends and family are separated, earning a living becomes more and more difficult, access to health care is severely restricted all in the town of Bethlehem that we sing about at this time of the year," he said.

The display also invites churchgoers to give money to buy food and medical supplies for the people of Bethlehem.

The priest said Dec. 11 that he could understand Israel's need for security but said it was wrong to build the wall on Palestinian land.

"Israel has the right to live within safe and secure borders," he added. "No one can dispute that."

He said the plan was announced to "spontaneous applause" at Sunday Masses Dec. 10.

However, a spokesman for the Israel Embassy in London called the wall a cheap public relations stunt.

"In 2005 over half of the Israelis who were killed in terrorist atrocities were killed by terrorists who came from or through Bethlehem," he told CNS Dec. 12. "Today Bethlehem is ruled by the terrorist Hamas government whose extremist Islamic doctrine is an affront to many in the town, especially the Christian community.

"The security fence, which is less than 4 percent wall, has meant an 93 percent decrease in terrorist attacks," he said.

The wall is "to prevent the snipers, who regardless of the wishes of the Christian inhabitants, use the town as a launching pad for attacks against Israel," said the spokesman.

He said he hoped the St. Ives community would "engage with the concerns of both Israelis and Palestinians and join the international community in their calls for Hamas to recognize Israel and end terrorism," he said.

"Then there will be no need for fences at all," he added.

Father Maddison, whose parish is paired to support the Catholic parish in Aboud in the West Bank, has made regular visits to the West Bank since 2003 and said he has watched the situation of the Palestinian people grow gradually worse.

The Diocese of East Anglia is paired to support the Latin-rite Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Father Maddison's wall has the support of Bishop Michael Evans of East Anglia, who plans to visit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in February.

Bishop Evans said “it is a dramatic way of highlighting the fact that in Bethlehem today in particular the ordinary people still suffer in all kinds of ways as they did in Jesus' day.

"I have seen the serious problems the wall is causing for the Palestinian people while being seriously concerned that the Israeli people can live in peace," he said.