'Bethlehem wall can be taken down'

Pope Benedict yesterday said the fortified Israeli wall dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem could be taken down, if Israel and the Palestinians could remove the walls around their hearts. On a visit to the town where Christians believe the son of God was born, he said he had seen "overshadowing much of Bethlehem, the wall that intrudes into your territories, separating neighbours and dividing families".

"Although walls can be easily built, we all know that they do not last forever," the Pope said. "They can be taken down. First, though, it is necessary to remove the walls that we build around our hearts."

"My earnest wish for you, the people of Palestine, is that this will happen soon," he added at the end of a day spent in Jesus's birthplace in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before returning to Jerusalem and continuing a week-long tour of the Holy Land.

In a speech at a refugee camp school in the wall's shadow, he called it a towering symbol of deadlock in the struggle for peace and a "stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Palestinians and Israelis seemed to have reached".

The wall did not exist when his predecessor John Paul came in 2000. Israel began raising its barrier of fences and concrete through and around the West Bank in 2002, in what it said was a temporary measure to stop deadly Palestinian bombings.

Palestinians, backed by the World Court, say it is an illegal construction which steals and divides their land. The papal convoy drove the few miles south from Jerusalem, passing slowly through steel gates in the fortified barrier of towering concrete slabs and watchtowers, to reach the town.

Cheers of "Long Live the Pope, Long Live Palestine" greeted his black limousine along the steep, ancient streets, from Palestinians gathered to hear the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics back their independence aspirations.

"The oppressed have become oppressors," said one graffiti slogan on the grey concrete barrier that formed a dramatic backdrop to the Pope's speech at the Basic Boys' School.

"Bridges, not walls!" said another.

"It is understandable that you often feel frustrated," the Pope said. "Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian state, remain unfulfilled. Instead you find yourselves trapped... in a spiral of violence."

It was imagery and language Palestinians had hoped for. But the German-born Pope, criticised for what Jews saw as a lack of emotion in his condemnation of the Holocaust, stressed he saw two sides to the conflict and urged an end to all violence.

Repeating a message he has delivered since the start of his first Middle East tour last Friday, the Pope said on arrival in Bethlehem that the Vatican "supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with your neighbours".

The two-state solution is backed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, by Arab nations and the West. Israel's new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declined so far to endorse it.

He is due to meet the Pope in Nazareth today.

Mr Abbas said the "apartheid wall" was a bid by the Jewish state to drive Palestinian Christians and Muslims from the Holy Land. He spoke of "oppression, tyranny and land expropriation" and said Palestinians wanted a future with "no occupation, no checkpoints, no walls, no prisoners, no refugees".