RAMALLAH, West Bank ? While an Israeli army bulldozer crushed cars in the parking lot outside, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met with a U.S. envoy in his besieged office Monday to discuss the standoff there and at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

The armed standoffs have persisted for three weeks and neither appears close to a settlement. Until they are resolved, there is little hope for a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli soldiers guard a barricade set up at an entrance to the Church of the Nativity, center background, during a brief lifting of a curfew in Bethlehem. The Israeli Army continues their third week of operations in a stand off with Palestinian gunmen taking sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity.

Israeli police said 10 international activists, nine from France and one from Brazil, had been arrested today after they walked out of Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah.

The 10 were being held in an Israeli detention center and would be expelled from the country Wednesday, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said. More than 20 activists remained inside.

U.S. envoy William Burns met Arafat for about two hours at the compound, where about 300 aides, security guards and foreign volunteers have been confined to several rooms by Israeli troops since March 29.

As they met, an Israeli bulldozer destroyed several cars parked outside and began building a rampart, said Netta Golan, an Israeli-Canadian activist in the compound. Burns came out to see what was going on before resuming the meeting, she said.

Burns and Arafat discussed the standoffs in Ramallah and Bethlehem, truce prospects and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, according to Palestinian and U.S. officials.

The Palestinians said they will not begin truce talks until Israeli forces leave all Palestinian-run areas in the West Bank. Israel said it will lift the blockades in Ramallah and Bethlehem once gunmen holed up there surrender.

Israel is demanding Arafat hand over five suspects in October’s assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister as well as the alleged mastermind of a large arms shipment to the Palestinian Authority intercepted by Israel. Arafat has refused.

Monday in Bethlehem, heavy gunfire exchanges were heard again at the Church of the Nativity, where an Anglican envoy said the situation was worsening steadily. The shrine is built at the traditional site of Jesus’ birth.

Each side accused the other of firing first. There was no word on casualties.

Canon Andrew White, an Anglican Church envoy, said he hoped negotiations in the 21-day standoff would resume. “The situation is getting steadily worse,” White said. “There is no food. The people are getting water from a well. The sanitary conditions are terrible. Several people are sick and some are injured.”

White said the 35 priests and nuns were staying voluntarily to ensure no harm came to the shrine.

In new violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, six Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed Monday.

In 1 1/2 years of fighting, 1,542 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, while 470 have died on the Israeli side. This number does not include Palestinians killed in the Jenin refugee camp during an Israeli offensive to root out what it called a terrorist infrastructure. The number of dead there is not known.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed a three-member U.N. fact-finding team led by former Finnish President Minister Martti Ahtisaari to visit the Jenin refugee camp to learn what happened there during Israel’s military assault.