Because the warfare in Gaza rages, Syria’s authorities transforms, and the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution seethes, Armenian residents of the Outdated Metropolis of Jerusalem struggle a unique battle — one that’s quieter, they are saying, however no much less existential.

One of many oldest communities in Jerusalem, the Armenians have lived within the Outdated Metropolis for many years with out vital friction with their neighbors, centered round a convent that acts as a welfare state.

Now, the small Christian group has begun to fracture beneath stress from forces they are saying threaten them and the multifaith character of the Outdated Metropolis. From radical Jewish settlers who jeer at clergymen on the best way to prayer, to a land deal threatening to show 1 / 4 of their land right into a luxurious lodge, residents and the church alike say the way forward for the group is in flux.

Their wrestle, taking part in out beneath the quilt of many regional crises, displays the issue of sustaining a non-Jewish presence in a Jerusalem the place life has hardened for non secular minorities within the Outdated Metropolis. Chasms have emerged between the Armenian Patriarchate, the standard steward of group affairs, and the primarily secular group itself. Its members fear that the church will not be geared up to guard their dwindling inhabitants and embattled convent from obsolescence and takeover.

A tent in a parking zone

Stroll by the slender 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 bolstered plywood partitions hung with historic maps, to protest what they see as an unlawful land seize by a controversial actual property developer.

The land beneath menace is the place the group parks their automobiles and holds group dinners. It additionally contains elements 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 seen 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 as much as 98 years to an organization referred to 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 prison offenses, in line with court docket filings, together with a 24-month jail sentence for armed theft, and has declared chapter up to now.

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 have been outraged once they came upon, prompting the priest to flee the nation. The patriarchate cancelled the deal in October, however Xana fought again, and the 2 are actually in mediation over the contract. Xana Capital has since despatched armed males to the lot, the activists say, attacking members of the group, together with clergy, with pepper spray and batons.

With the way forward for the location unclear, the activists say they appealed to the patriarchate to seek out out what was occurring. The activists say that Warwar has the backing of a outstanding settler group looking for to increase Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Outdated Metropolis. The group, Ateret Cohanim, is behind a number of controversial land acquisitions within the Outdated Metropolis, and its leaders have been photographed assembly with Warwar and Danny Rothman, the proprietor of Xana Capital who additionally makes use of the final identify 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,” stated 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 correct steps.”

So Balian and fellow resident Hagop Djernazian collected some 300 signatures from the group and filed go well with 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 group.

In response, the patriarchate stated it owns the land, not the group. Xana, in the meantime, filed a response calling the activists antisemitic squatters. The patriarchate’s response and Xana’s phrases, the activists stated, go away open the possibility that the land may very well 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 drawback, to unravel this battle,” stated Hagop Djernazian.

The patriarchate declined to touch upon the land deal for this text, saying it might affect mediation efforts underway with Xana.

A single observer

Contained in the Armenian convent, the clergy are hushed, pathways empty.

On a current afternoon, monks 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 Outdated Metropolis. Submitting into the darkened house, the boys and the younger seminary choir have been joined solely by an Israeli tour group and one Armenian girl who’d come to hope.

Father Parsegh Galamterian, church sacristan, has watched prayers skinny out through the years, 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 longer term is troublesome,” he says.

Armenians started arriving within the Outdated Metropolis as early because the 4th century, impressed by the non secular significance of the town to Christianity. Within the early twentieth century, they have 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 Outdated Metropolis, house to Armenians with the identical standing as Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem — residents however not residents, successfully stateless.

At this time, the newcomers are primarily boys who arrive from Armenia to dwell 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 Outdated 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, stated he’s usually attacked by teams of Jewish fundamentalists.

He recalled one occasion, a month in the past, when clergy have been headed to prayer. He was intercepted by a gaggle of settlers, who requested in the event that they have been Christians.

“’You realize that you just don’t have a future right here within the Holy Land. You’re not going to proceed to dwell right here,” he recalled one man saying. “’That is our nation. We’re going to eradicate you.”

“That is the phrase he used,” stated Gogchyan. “We’re going to eradicate you from our nation.”

The Rossing Middle, which tracks anti-Christian assaults within the Holy Land, documented about 20 assaults on Armenian observers, Armenian non-public 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 stated behind closed doorways is that Jerusalem is turning into a spot that’s now not hospitable to Christianity,” stated Daniel Seidman, a Jerusalem lawyer and peace activist. “You possibly can see the needle transferring. The spike in hate crimes will not be a part of this plan, however it’s a part of the affect.”

The incidents ship a transparent message to the subsequent era, stated Gogchyan: keep away.

“The brand new era doesn’t need to be within the middle of the battle,” stated 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 Outdated Metropolis.

“Some individuals really feel helpless and hopeless they usually need to go away,” stated Balian. “However I believe the bulk sees that there’s a wrestle occurring. It provides us a that means. It provides us a objective. It provides us a motive to remain right here.”

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Related Press faith protection receives assist by the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely answerable for this content material.