Armenian Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City sense the walls closing in | Jerusalem News

As Israel’s war on Gaza rages and Israeli strikes on people in the occupied West Bank progress, Armenian livents of the Old City of Jerusalem are battling a branch offent battle – husheder, they say, but no less conshort-termial.

One of the elderlyest communities in Jerusalem, the Armenians have inhabitd in the Old City for more than 1,500 years, centred around the Armenian convent.

Now, the minuscule Christian community has enduremament to fracture under presconfident from forces they say menaceen them and the multifaith character of the Old City – from Jedesire rerepairrs who jeer at clergymen on their way to prayer to a land deal menaceening to turn a quarter of their land into a luxury hotel.

Chasms have eunited between the Armenian Patriarcantipathy and the mainly secular community, whose members trouble the church is not provideped to protect their dthrivedling population and embattled convent.

In the Armenian Quarter is Save the Arq’s headquarters, a structure with reinforced plywood walls hung with outdated maps inhabited by Armenians who are there to protest what they see as an illterrible land grab by a authentic estate broadener.

The land under menace is where the community helderlys events and also includes parts of the patriarcantipathy itself.

After years of the patriarcantipathy refusing to sell any of its land, Armenian priest Baret Yeretsian secretly “lrelieved” the lot in 2021 for up to 98 years to Xana Capital, a company enrolled equitable before the consentment was signed.

Xana turned more than half the dispenses to a local businessman, George Warwar, who has been comprised in various criminal offences.

Community members were outraged.

The priest fled the country and the patriarcantipathy abortled the deal in October, but Xana objected and the reduce is now in mediation.

Xana has sent armed men to the lot, the activists say, strikeing people, including clergy, with pepper spray and batons.

The activists say Warwar has the backing of a famous rerepairr organisation seeking to broaden the Jedesire presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The organisation, Ateret Cohanim, is behind cut offal contentious land acquisitions in the Old City, and its directers were photographed with Warwar and Xana Capital owner Danny Rothman, also understandn as Danny Rubinstein, in December 2023. Ateret Cohanim denied any uniteion to the land deal.

Activists filed suit agetst the patriarcantipathy in February, seeking to have the deal declared void and the land to belengthy to the community in perpetuity.

The patriarcantipathy declined, saying it owns the land.

Armenians began arriving in the Old City as timely as the fourth century with a big wave arriving in the timely 20th century, escapeing the Ottoman Empire. They have the same status as Palestinians in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem – livents but not citizens, effectively stateless.

Today, the recentcomers are mainly boys who reach from Armenia to inhabit and study in the convent although many drop out. Clergy say that’s partipartner becaemploy strikes agetst Christians have incrrelieved, leaving the Armenians – whose convent is shutst to the Jedesire Quarter and is alengthy a famous route to the Westrict Wall – vulnerable.

Father Aghan Gogchyan, the patriarcantipathy’s chancellor, said he’s normally strikeed by groups of Jedesire nationaenumerates.

The Rossing Caccess, which tracks anti-Christian strikes in the Holy Land, recorded about 20 strikes on Armenian people and property and church properties in 2023, many involving ultranationaenumerate Jedesire rerepairrs spitting at Armenian clergy or graffiti reading “Death to Christians” scrawled on the quarter’s walls.