Pope says Bethlehem wall "can be taken down"

By Philip Pullella and Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Wednesday 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," he added at the end of a day spent in Jesus's birthplace in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"My earnest wish for you, the people of Palestine, is that this will happen soon," he said, 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".

"How earnestly we pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built," Benedict said.

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.