Vatican diplomats have put forward a proposal to Israelis and Palestinians to end a standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Christ's birthplace of Bethlehem, Vatican sources said on this afternoon.
One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the proposal had been made after the standoff began five days ago and has been renewed regularly.
According to a Church source, the proposal calls for the Palestinians to leave their weapons inside the church complex and for the Israeli army to pull back from the immediate environs for a few hours to let them out.
Father David Jaeger, spokesman for the Franciscan custodians of Roman Catholic sites in the Holy Land, told Reuters in Rome the plan was formed by Vatican diplomats and was being reproposed constantly because the situation had become graver by the hour .
Some 200 Palestinian gunmen and civilians took refuge in the church five days ago and have remained holed up inside along with 40 Franciscan monks and four nuns. Israeli troops ring the complex, one of the holiest sites in Christendom.
The Vatican has a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem that oversees the Church's work in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It has an embassy to the Jewish state in Jaffa.
Jager had said on Friday the Franciscans feared the Israeli Army was trying to legitimise an imminent attack on the Church of Nativity by declaring the friars inside hostages.
"There are allegations that the Israeli Army has decided to consider the Franciscan Friars at the Shrine of the Nativity in Bethlehem as 'hostages'", Jaeger, currently in Rome, said.
"It is impossible not to fear that the use of this term is meant in an effort to legitimise a perhaps imminent military assault," he said in the statement carried by Fides, the news agency of the Vatican's missionary arm.
"The friars are not hostages; they are in their own house, in the precise place where they belong," Jaeger said.
Israel accuses the Palestinians of using the church as a sanctuary and sheltering among clergymen there, in effect taking them hostage, but says its troops are under orders not to fire at holy places. It says its troops helped four priests slip out on Friday without the knowledge of those inside.
Palestinians say it is the troops surrounding the church who have effectively taken those inside hostage.