The tragic reality at this time of Easter is that all three of the religions of the book, and all the common Children of Abraham, have so terribly besmirched their own history, teachings, and values -- with the Israeli people, claiming to represent the historical Jewish people, today at the very top of this devilish list for racism, militarism, bloodletting and oh so much of the worst kinds of hypocrisy.

JERUSALEM, April 13 (Reuters) - Bowed down by crosses and carrying candles flickering in empty drink bottles, Christian pilgrims on Friday retraced Jesus's walk to crucifixion in subdued Holy Land Easter celebrations.

Protected by heavier-than-usual security because of recent Israeli-Palestinian violence, the Good Friday religious parade is the once-a-year day when Christianity takes the spotlight in a historic location also revered by Jews and Moslems.

However the numbers were dramatically down on previous years because of the violence.

"Fewer people and they don't seem as carried away as in other years," said a coffee shop waiter.

Devout Christians have braved wars and ruthless rulers for nearly 2,000 years to make the pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jesus along the Via Dolorosa in the old quarter of Arab East Jerusalem.

Grouped in main Christian religions -- from Roman Catholic to Greek Orthodox to Protestant -- as well as individuals, the pilgrims shuffled jammed together down the narrow cobbled alleyway where the 14 Stations of the Cross lie.

The stations mark the places where Jesus was scourged, stumbled and crowned with thorns. The journey starts at the prison -- now a church -- where Jesus was taken after the Last Supper.

In one of the many historical ironies of the journey, the seven-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation flared just metres from the end of the walk at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Jesus was crucified and buried.

Surrounded by armed guards, Israeli right-wing leader Ariel Sharon, now Israeli prime minister, on September 28 visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a site also sacred to Jews because it is the location of Temple Mount.

The order of dress in the Jerusalem processions was mainly black, with priests and nuns accorded special status among the thousands of other pilgrims in tourist-like summer clothing.

Wooden crosses, from six-foot and longer ones carried by an individual or groups of men to small crosses clutched in the hands of elderly women, dotted the snaking line of thousands of pilgrims.

The most dramatic enactment was a man, bare from the waist up, with red paint spattering his body to resemble blood, dragging a lengthy cross.

With a crown of thorns on his head, he was guarded by men dressed as Roman soldiers carrying whips.

The Israeli Tourism Ministry said the number of foreign tourists visiting over the Easter period was about half of the three million expected before the violence broke out.

Visitors from Italy and Germany were down by about 70 percent while there was a 50 percent fall in tourists from the United States.

"Usually at Easter we have pilgrims who come from Cyprus and from Greece, yearly about ten thousand people. This year only three hundred people so it's very very bad, it's terrible -- the worst we have ever seen in our life," said Ziad Hashima, a souvenir shop owner on the Via Dolorosa.

Restaurant owner Jacir Hanna's reservations book for Good Friday is blank this year, compared to more than 100 diners scribbled in for last year's Easter.

"This year it is zero. The reason is the uprising," he said.

American Rob Green said he was a "little apprehensive" at first about attending the procession because of the warnings that it could be drawn into the present violence.

"But it's the holiest place on earth and I didn't want to give up that opportunity," he said.

Fellow American Lori Quick said she felt the warnings had been overdone.

"God watches over us," she said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters - 13 April) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon favors a long-term interim deal with the Palestinians that would give them a far smaller and weaker state than they demand, according to an interview published on Friday.

But heightened tensions after an alleged Israeli attempt to assassinate an activist of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank and new clashes in Gaza have made talk of peacemaking seem like empty words.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, turnout for traditional Good Friday processions, held under heavy Israeli security, was low compared with previous years. Cross-bearing pilgrims retraced the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion.

The procession ended without incident but shortly afterwards Palestinian youths briefly threw stones at Israeli security guards at a location that is sacred to both religions and frequently the scene of clashes after Muslim Friday prayers. In incidents outside Jerusalem, three Israeli soldiers were wounded when a bomb exploded near their vehicle about six miles from the city, an army spokeswoman said. Witnesses said two separate gunbattles took place in Gaza near the Egyptian border at Rafah but there were no casualties.

About 2,000 Palestinians rallied in Nablus after Friday prayers to protest at the lack of progress in ending violence. Witnesses said minor stone-throwing against Israeli soldiers erupted near Karni crossing between Israel and Gaza. Palestinian hospital sources said seven people were wounded when troops opened fire to break up the trouble. Stating publicly what his aides have said, Sharon told the Maariv newspaper he could accept a Palestinian state on some 42 percent of the West Bank.

With another Israeli withdrawal in the West Bank, such as the one promised in a 1998 interim peace accord, "it's possible to reach 42 percent, plus or minus," he told the newspaper.

That is only a little bit more than the West Bank land in which Palestinians already have full or partial control under interim peace deals going back seven years.

As before, Sharon conditioned any peace talks on an end to violence that has raged for nearly seven months in a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

In Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, about 40 masked men, shrouded in white sheets -- a symbol of martydom to Palestinians -- renewed their vows as members of the military wing of the Islamic Jihad group to kill Israelis.

"We swear to God that the sons of the Jerusalem brigade will come at you like an earthquake," said the leader of the group, which has carried out bombings in Israel.

"Every Zionist monkey is number one on our wanted list," he said as the contingent of self-declared suicide-bombers-in- waiting kissed a Koran and submachinegun at a rally attended by hundreds of Islamic Jihad supporters.

In the newspaper interview, Sharon said a Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized and its police forces armed only to maintain order, while Israel would for years oversee the external borders and be free to fly over the territory.

He has said he can envisage only a long-term agreement of non-belligerency with the Palestinians, not a final peace deal.

Palestinians have already ruled out establishing a state on anything less than all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip -- lands that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinians, meanwhile, lashed out at Israel over the alleged attempt to blow up Fatah activist Nasser Abu Hmeid in a refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday.

The alleged incident occurred less than 24 hours after U.S.-arranged talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials aimed at reducing violence.

Palestinian officials said two "collaborators" with Israel had delivered a booby-trapped car to Abu Hmeid, but he suspected foul play and called in security forces who took the vehicle to a field where it exploded, causing no casualties.

"Sending a booby-trapped car into a residential area was a serious escalation," Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Amr told Palestinian television.

Asked to comment, the Israeli army said: "We are unaware of any such explosion." Palestinian television showed the charred remains of what it said was Abu Hmeid's car.

Palestinian officials have accused Israel of assassinating more than 20 activists since the uprising began.

At least 376 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 71 other Israelis have been killed in the violence that erupted last September after peace talks deadlocked.

New York Times - 13 April: KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip, April 12: In a cluster of tents pitched in a sea of rubble where Palestinian dwellings were flattened here Wednesday by Israeli Army bulldozers, Fatima Abu Loz sat hollow-eyed today, nursing a child.

"We've lost everything," she said of her family's razed home and belongings buried in the wreckage. "We were building the future and it was destroyed."

At least 15 cinder block houses were destroyed and scores of people made homeless when the Israelis thrust into the edge of the Khan Yunis refugee camp on Wednesday, targeting what the army said were buildings used by gunmen to shoot at the neighboring Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.

Stunned Palestinian residents were still milling through the wreckage today, salvaging what remained. A refrigerator and washing machine poked out of a pile of rubble. Behind the ruins, apartment buildings gutted by Israeli shelling and machine- gun fire stood empty.

A short drive away across the sand dunes, on a heavily guarded beach used by Jewish settlers, Hagit Cohen watched her children play in the surf.

On Tuesday, her settlement, Katif, was hit by three mortar shells fired by Palestinians. No one was hurt in that attack, but earlier this month a baby was seriously wounded when mortars fell on another settlement.

Mrs. Cohen fears leaving her children outside the house, so the beach outing was a break from the anxiety at home. "We're living our lives, but also feeling the war," she said.

Israeli teenagers carrying surfboards headed back to their settlements, passing soldiers in bullet- proof vests. Tanks and armored troop carriers were dug in along roads flanked by the uprooted trees of Arab-owned orchards. The groves had been bulldozed to deny cover to Palestinian gunmen who had fired at settlers' cars.

A tank was positioned in Neve Dekalim's deserted industrial zone, facing the Khan Yunis refugee camp. Meanwhile, soldiers peered into the camp from an armored observation booth hoisted high by a crane. A lone burst of gunfire shattered the erie calm, scattering boys who had gathered in the rubble.

In the tent on the ruins of his house, Mrs. Abu Loz's husband, Jalal, said that the couple and their eight children had been left with only the clothes they wore, and that neighbors were bringing them food. The Red Cross supplied the tent, and the Palestinian Authority had provided a few mattresses and blankets, he said. "We were here before the settlements were built, and we're not going away, even if we have to stay in a tent," he said.

A neighbor, Hassan Abu Ubeida, who also lost his house, said he fled with his family early Wednesday when he heard the Israeli armored vehicles approaching. "There was no chance to take anything out," he said. "This was an assault on unarmed civilians."

On the beach nearby, Mrs. Cohen said it was hard for her to watch television images of the homeless Palestinians. "They're just civilians, and I don't know if they have the power to stop the shooting, but on the other hand, human lives are at stake," she said. "My husband says that in a war individuals always get hurt. We don't want this, but what can we do?"

Yossi Chen, a settler who had been wounded in a shooting attack on his car, said that conflict with the Palestinians left no alternative but to strike back, even if that resulted in harm to civilians. "Since we're in a state of war, there's no choice" he said.

Mr. Chen, who travels daily in an armored military truck to study at a yeshiva in a neighboring settlement, said he felt more protected in Neve Dekalim than on the streets of cities inside Israel, where there has been a wave of bombings in recent weeks.

Mrs. Cohen agreed. "Right now there's no place that's secure," she said.

In the Khan Yunis camp, residents said the only solution was the departure of the settlers.

"This is Palestinian land and they should go away from here," said Suleiman Abu Musa, whose house was destroyed. "If they leave, the problem will be solved."

Then he added a wish: "God willing, there will be a car-bomb very soon inside Israel, and they too will cry. They will cry blood."