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American Morning

News That Standoff at Church of Nativity Close to Being Over

Aired May 07, 2002 - 08:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: As we've been reporting this morning, there is news today that the standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is close to being over. Once the details are ironed out, the nearly five-week occupation of Bethlehem will also, presumably, come to an end.

CNN's Carol Lin joins us now. She is standing by in Gilo. That's a neighborhood outside Jerusalem, and she has the story of one man who was once an infamous Israeli general, who is now a man of peace.

Good morning, Carol. It's nice to have you with us.

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Good to be with you, Jack.

Right now, I'm standing in a Jewish neighborhood. And behind me, that cluster of buildings there is Bethlehem. That is where the Church of the Nativity standoff is taking place. And all the surrounding buildings there are Palestinian neighborhoods. This gives you an idea of how closely people live together in this region. The man you're about to meet has dedicated most his adult life to joining these two sides, trying to get people to mix together.

But when we talked to him, he really surprised us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LIN (on camera): Hello.

AMRAM MITZNAH, MAYOR, HAIFA: Hi.

LIN: Good morning.

MITZNAH: Good morning.

LIN: Thank you for picking us up.

(voice-over): Nearly 10 years after he left the Israeli army, Avram Mitznah looks more buttoned-down grandfather than battened-down field general. Today, instead of a tank, he drives a Chevy Malibu.

MITZNAH: Most mayors don't drive their own car, right? I like to drive, I like to be behind the steering wheel. LIN: Every morning, Avram Mitznah, mayor of Haifa, takes stock of his city. Haifa sits like a jewel on the Mediterranean Sea, a multifaceted place, where Jews, Arabs, and Christians have lived in relative peace. It is a world away from the life Mitznah knew in the West Bank.

1987: Mayor Mitznah was General Mitznah of the Israeli Army Central Command during the first intifada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks at security forces.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: A commander who fought in the six-day war and Lebanon was criticized for not being hard enough on the rioting Palestinians.

CNN covered him 15 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITZNAH: Now, a lot of organizations are trying to jump on the platform.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MITZNAH: December '87.

LIN (on camera): You remember it?

MITZNAH: Oh, yes. I remember it quite well.

LIN (voice-over): Even as bad as it was then, he remembered how he used to believe that day Palestinians and Israelis would live in peace.

MITZNAH: You know, in a way, it sounded romantic, intifada, only stones, only burning tires. Today it's a completely different story.

LIN: Now, the story is about bombs, not burning tires. In Haifa, just in the last two months, suicide bombers blew up a bus, then a restaurant, killing 15 Israelis.

MITZNAH: People have a very heavy feeling. You don't go out into the streets if it is not necessary.

(on camera): Three times, Mitznah has called Muslims, Orthodox Jewish and Christian religious leaders together, asking them to keep the faith. This scene is almost unheard of in Israel.

But faith is one thing, security is another. Now Haifa combs its beaches every morning for explosives. Summer tourists, if any show up, will see beach security armed are guns, and a mayor, famous for building bridges, now talking about building walls. You're the mayor of an integrated city talking about physical separation between the Palestinians in the West Bank and Israelis in Israel.

MITNZAH: I told you, level of hatred, mistrust, no confidence, between the parties is at such level, which, in order to be good neighbors, you need a fence.

LIN: It was astonishing to hear this man, who fought the first intifada believing in peace, now saying it's going to take drastic steps to stop the violence, violence that must end before Palestinians and Israelis can even ever hope to talk about peace.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: So what is Avram Mitznah talking about? Here in Gilo, this is just one small example, a wall that the community here built -- I'm going to get out of the way so you can see it. It runs the extension of this street here. This is a neighborhood that you might recall about 15 months ago, at the beginning of the Intifada was fired upon from those Palestinian neighborhoods below that I showed you earlier.

This was one small solution for them, physical separation, one, to stop the bullets, but also, you don't do something like this in this region without making a statement. You don't put up a wall without saying, this, in effect, is not only for protection, but in a way, it's a form of a border, and that situation is where it stands today, almost two years later, as these residents of Gilo now feel that they have to physically protect themselves from the Palestinians right across the Hill, as well as making a statement about territory -- jack.

CAFFERTY: It's amazing, carol. There's talk that, ultimately, the solution, or at least part of the solution to the West Bank situation may lie in the very kind of wall you're standing next to, literally walling off all the West Bank communities and isolating them with those kinds of barricades.

LIN: Well, the way the situation is, everybody's saying, what's going to happen next? And you bring up a really interesting point. Though people like Amram Mitznah are talking about building walls, but it is physically impossible to surround the entire West Bank with a wall. It has to do with the nature of where Jewish settlements lay and different territories.

The reality is, you can build a trench, you can set up a checkpoint, you can make life very difficult for both sides, and that is the debate going on right now, even for liberals, like this general you just met, who are saying things have gotten so far off the cliff now that we are looking at radical solutions.

The temperature is that high here.

CAFFERTY: Fascinating stuff, Carol.

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