The Latin Patriarch in the Holy Land has called on Israel to stop its troops firing at an Arab Christian village and to surrender all occupied land to the Palestinians.

Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the highest-ranking Catholic official in Jerusalem, made the appeal during a tour of Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem on the West Bank.

Beit Jalla has been subject to Israeli tank fire since Palestinian gunmen began using the village as a base to fire at Gilo, a neighboring Jewish suburb of Jerusalem. Gilo is built on land annexed by Israel following the 1967 Middle East war.

Archbishop Sabbah said that Israel must not react by increasing levels of firepower.

The patriarch was accompanied by Beit Jalla's mayor, Raji Zeidan, who said the Palestinian Authority was working to restrain gunmen from using his village to fire at Gilo.

Zeidan also criticized Israel for using heavy fire against Beit Jalla, saying it was making victims of residents who took no part in the violence. "No shots came from the houses that were bombed [by Israel]," he said. "There are other ways to deal with that matter."

About 130 people, most of them Palestinians, have died in violent clashes with Israeli security forces that began on September 28. Israeli officials claim that the Palestinians fired from Beit Jalla hoping that Israeli tanks, returning fire, would damage a church in the village, thereby igniting the wrath of the Christian world, including the Vatican.

But Archbishop Sabbah, the first Palestinian to serve as Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said it was Israel that must ease tensions by giving up territory to the Palestinians. "This is the only salvation, also for Israel itself to convert all of its neighbors to friends," he said. "As along as they have enemies, ...