As wars rage around them, Armenian Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City feel the walls closing in
BY JULIA FRANKEL
JERUSALEM (AP) — As the war in Gaza rages, Syria’s government transforms, and the Israeli-occupied West Bank seethes, Armenian
residents of the Old City of Jerusalem fight a different battle — one that is quieter, they say, but no less existential.
Now, the small Christian community has begun to fracture under pressure from forces they say threaten them and the multifaith character
of the Old City. From radical Jewish settlers who jeer at clergymen on the way to prayer, to a land deal threatening to turn a quarter of their
land into a luxury hotel, residents and the church alike say the future of the community is in flux.
Their struggle, playing out under the cover of many regional crises, reflects the difficulty of maintaining a non-Jewish presence in a Jerusalem
where life has hardened for religious minorities in the Old City. Chasms have emerged between the Armenian Patriarchate, the traditional
steward of community affairs, and the mainly secular community itself. Its members worry that the church is not equipped to protect their
dwindling population and embattled convent from obsolescence and takeover.
Walk through the narrow passageways of the Armenian Quarter, past a perpetually manned guard post and into an open lot with a towering
pile of shrapnel crested with the Armenian flag. You’ve arrived at the headquarters of the “Save the Arq” movement.
It’s where some residents of the Armenian Quarter have decamped, in a structure with reinforced plywood walls hung with ancient maps, to
protest what they see as an illegal land grab by a controversial real estate developer.
The land under threat is where the community parks their cars and holds group dinners. It also includes parts of the patriarchate itself. It’s
been a receiving point for those fleeing the mass killing of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, widely viewed by scholars as the
first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies the deaths constituted genocide.
The patriarchate has batted away offer after offer to sell the land. That changed in 2021, when an Armenian priest, Baret Yeretsian, signed
a fraudulent deal leasing the lot for up to 98 years to a company called Xana Capital, registered just before the agreement was signed.
Xana then turned over half the shares to a local businessman, George Warwar, who has been involved in various criminal offenses,
according to court filings, including a 24-month prison sentence for armed robbery, and has declared bankruptcy in the past.
In court documents seen by the AP, the patriarchate has admitted that Warwar bribed the priest and that the two had sustained “various
inappropriate connections” leading up to the signing of the deal.
