The World - News from Dec. 30, 1986
Rival clergymen swept clean a church in Bethlehem on the traditional site of Jesus’ birth without the fistfights and broom battles of former years, Israeli authorities said. Greek Orthodox and Armenian clergy accepted an Israeli proposal to leave untouched a 1-by-3-yard section of the wall above the church grotto, which each side has claimed during the annual Christmas cleaning of the 1,600-year-old Church of the Nativity. For the rival denominations, cleaning an area is tantamount to ownership.
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