JERUSALEM – Because the struggle in Gaza rages, Syria’s government transforms, and the Israeli-occupied West Bank seethes, Armenian residents of the Previous Metropolis of Jerusalem struggle a special battle — one that’s quieter, they are saying, however no much less existential.
One of many oldest communities in Jerusalem, the Armenians have lived within the Previous Metropolis for many years with out important friction with their neighbors, centered round a convent that acts as a welfare state.
Now, the small Christian neighborhood has begun to fracture underneath strain from forces they are saying threaten them and the multifaith character of the Previous Metropolis. From radical Jewish settlers who jeer at clergymen on the way in which to prayer, to a land deal threatening to show 1 / 4 of their land right into a luxurious resort, residents and the church alike say the way forward for the neighborhood is in flux.
Their battle, taking part in out underneath the quilt of many regional crises, displays the problem of sustaining a non-Jewish presence in a Jerusalem the place life has hardened for non secular minorities within the Previous Metropolis. Chasms have emerged between the Armenian Patriarchate, the normal steward of neighborhood affairs, and the primarily secular neighborhood itself. Its members fear that the church just isn’t geared up to guard their dwindling inhabitants and embattled convent from obsolescence and takeover.
A tent in a car parking zone
Stroll by means of the slim passageways of the Armenian Quarter, previous a perpetually manned guard publish and into an open lot with a towering pile of shrapnel crested with the Armenian flag. You’ve arrived on the headquarters of the “Save the Arq” motion.
It’s the place some residents of the Armenian Quarter have decamped, in a construction with strengthened plywood partitions hung with historical maps, to protest what they see as an unlawful land seize by a controversial actual property developer.
The land underneath risk is the place the neighborhood parks their automobiles and holds group dinners. It additionally consists of components of the patriarchate itself. It’s been a receiving level for these fleeing the mass killing of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, broadly considered by students as the primary genocide of the twentieth century. Turkey denies the deaths constituted genocide.
The patriarchate has batted away supply after supply to promote the land. That modified in 2021, when an Armenian priest, Baret Yeretsian, signed a fraudulent deal leasing the lot for up to 98 years to an organization known as Xana Capital, registered simply earlier than the settlement was signed.
Xana then turned over half the shares to an area businessman, George Warwar, who has been concerned in varied legal offenses, based on court docket filings, together with a 24-month jail sentence for armed theft, and has declared chapter previously.
In court docket paperwork seen by the AP, the patriarchate has admitted that Warwar bribed the priest and that the 2 had sustained “varied inappropriate connections” main as much as the signing of the deal.
Neighborhood members had been outraged once they discovered, prompting the priest to flee the nation. The patriarchate cancelled the deal in October, however Xana fought again, and the 2 at the moment are in mediation over the contract. Xana Capital has since despatched armed males to the lot, the activists say, attacking members of the neighborhood, together with clergy, with pepper spray and batons.
With the way forward for the positioning unclear, the activists say they appealed to the patriarchate to search out out what was happening. The activists say that Warwar has the backing of a distinguished settler group in search of to develop Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Previous Metropolis. The group, Ateret Cohanim, is behind a number of controversial land acquisitions in the Old City, and its leaders had been photographed assembly with Warwar and Danny Rothman, the proprietor of Xana Capital who additionally makes use of the final title Rubinstein, in December 2023. The group denied any connection to the land deal.
“However as quickly because the deal was signed, the patriarchate went into silent mode, bunker mode,” mentioned Setrag Balian, 27, a ceramicist. “We determined that we have now to take motion and never as soon as once more be on the sidelines, watching and hoping that the patriarchy will take the fitting steps.”
So Balian and fellow resident Hagop Djernazian collected some 300 signatures from the neighborhood and filed swimsuit in opposition to the patriarchate in February, asking them to declare the deal void and to say, for posterity, that the land belongs to the neighborhood.
In response, the patriarchate mentioned it owns the land, not the neighborhood. Xana, in the meantime, filed a response calling the activists antisemitic squatters. The patriarchate’s response and Xana’s phrases, the activists mentioned, depart open the prospect that the land could possibly be leased once more sooner or later.
“It made us really feel like we couldn’t belief the establishment who introduced us to this present day to unravel this downside, to unravel this battle,” mentioned Hagop Djernazian.
The patriarchate declined to touch upon the land deal for this text, saying it might influence mediation efforts underway with Xana.
A single observer
Contained in the Armenian convent, the clergy are hushed, pathways empty.
On a latest afternoon, clergymen in black robes rang the bell for each day prayers on the St. James Cathedral, the storied Armenian church occupying one of many highest factors within the Previous Metropolis. Submitting into the darkened area, the boys and the younger seminary choir had been joined solely by an Israeli tour group and one Armenian lady who’d come to hope.
Father Parsegh Galamterian, church sacristan, has watched prayers skinny out over time, because the Armenian inhabitants within the quarter has shrunk from about 15,000 in 1948, the founding of the state of Israel, to round 2,000.
“The long run is troublesome,” he says.
Armenians started arriving within the Previous Metropolis as early because the 4th century, impressed by the non secular significance of the town to Christianity. Within the early twentieth century, they had been joined by plenty of Armenians who flocked to Jerusalem after being pushed out of the Ottoman Empire. Theirs is the smallest quarter within the Previous Metropolis, residence to Armenians with the identical standing as Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem — residents however not residents, successfully stateless.
Right this moment, the newcomers are primarily boys who arrive from Armenia to reside and examine within the convent. Some keep, however many drop out of research. Clergy say that is partially as a result of assaults in opposition to Christians have ramped up throughout the partitions of the Previous Metropolis, leaving the Armenians – whose convent is closest to the Jewish Quarter and is tucked alongside a preferred path to the Western Wall – weak.
Father Aghan Gogchyan, the patriarchate’s chancellor, mentioned he’s often attacked by teams of Jewish fundamentalists.
He recalled one occasion, a month in the past, when clergy had been headed to prayer. He was intercepted by a gaggle of settlers, who requested in the event that they had been Christians.
“’You already know that you simply don’t have a future right here within the Holy Land. You’re not going to proceed to reside right here,” he recalled one man saying. “’That is our nation. We’re going to eradicate you.”
“That is the phrase he used,” mentioned Gogchyan. “We’re going to eradicate you from our nation.”
The Rossing Heart, which tracks anti-Christian assaults within the Holy Land, documented about 20 assaults on Armenian observers, Armenian personal property, and church properties in 2023, many involving ultranationalist Jewish settlers spitting at Armenian clergy or graffiti studying “Demise to Christians” scrawled on the quarter’s partitions.
“What’s being mentioned behind closed doorways is that Jerusalem is changing into a spot that’s not hospitable to Christianity,” mentioned Daniel Seidman, a Jerusalem lawyer and peace activist. “You’ll be able to see the needle shifting. The spike in hate crimes just isn’t a part of this plan, nevertheless it’s a part of the influence.”
The incidents ship a transparent message to the following technology, mentioned Gogchyan: keep away.
“The brand new technology doesn’t wish to be within the heart of the battle,” mentioned Gogchyan. “They’re constructing their future in several international locations.
Regardless of the fractures, Armenian clergy and activists informed the AP they need the identical factor: a continued presence within the Previous Metropolis.
“Some folks really feel helpless and hopeless and so they wish to depart,” mentioned Balian. “However I believe the bulk sees that there’s a battle happening. It provides us a that means. It provides us a function. It provides us a motive to remain right here.”
___
Related Press faith protection receives help by means of the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely answerable for this content material.
Copyright 2024 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.