Armenian Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City feel the walls closing in

As Israel’s war on Gaza rages and Israeli attacks on people in the occupied West Bank continue, Armenian residents of the Old City of Jerusalem are fighting a different battle – quieter, they say, but no less existential.

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

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 Jewish settlers who jeer at clergymen on their way to prayer to a land deal threatening to turn a quarter of their land into a luxury hotel.

Chasms have emerged between the Armenian Patriarchate and the mainly secular community, whose members worry the church is not equipped to protect their dwindling population and embattled convent.

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

The land under threat is where the community holds events and also includes parts of the patriarchate itself.

After years of the patriarchate refusing to sell any of its land, Armenian priest Baret Yeretsian secretly “leased” the lot in 2021 for up to 98 years to Xana Capital, a company registered just before the agreement was signed.

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

Community members were outraged.

The priest fled the country and the patriarchate cancelled the deal in October, but Xana objected and the contract is now in mediation.

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

The activists say Warwar has the backing of a prominent settler organisation seeking to expand the Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The organisation, Ateret Cohanim, is behind several controversial land acquisitions in the Old City, and its leaders were photographed with Warwar and Xana Capital owner Danny Rothman, also known as Danny Rubinstein, in December 2023. Ateret Cohanim denied any connection to the land deal.

Activists filed suit against the patriarchate in February, seeking to have the deal declared void and the land to belong to the community in perpetuity.

The patriarchate refused, saying it owns the land.

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

Today, the newcomers are mainly boys who arrive from Armenia to live and study in the convent although many drop out. Clergy say that’s partially because attacks against Christians have increased, leaving the Armenians – whose convent is closest to the Jewish Quarter and is along a popular route to the Western Wall – vulnerable.

Father Aghan Gogchyan, the patriarchate’s chancellor, said he’s regularly attacked by groups of Jewish nationalists.

The Rossing Center, which tracks anti-Christian attacks in the Holy Land, documented about 20 attacks on Armenian people and property and church properties in 2023, many involving ultranationalist Jewish settlers spitting at Armenian clergy or graffiti reading “Death to Christians” scrawled on the quarter’s walls.