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.
One of the oldest communities in Jerusalem, the Armenians have lived in the Old City for decades without significant friction with their neighbors, centered around a convent that acts as a welfare state.
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.
A tent in a parking lot
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.
Community members were outraged when they found out, prompting the priest to flee the country. The patriarchate cancelled the deal in October, but Xana fought back, and the two are now in mediation over the contract. Xana Capital has since sent armed men to the lot, the activists say, attacking members of the community, including clergy, with pepper spray and batons.
With the future of the site unclear, the activists say they appealed to the patriarchate to find out what was going on. The activists say that Warwar has the backing of a prominent settler organization seeking to expand Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Old City. The organization, Ateret Cohanim, is behind several controversial land acquisitions in the Old City, and its leaders were photographed meeting with Warwar and Danny Rothman, the owner of Xana Capital who also uses the last name Rubinstein, in December 2023. The organization denied any connection to the land deal.
“But as soon as the deal was signed, the patriarchate went into silent mode, bunker mode,” said Setrag Balian, 27, a ceramicist. “We decided that we have to take action and not once again be on the sidelines, watching and hoping that the patriarchy will take the right steps.”
So Balian and fellow resident Hagop Djernazian collected some 300 signatures from the community and filed suit against the patriarchate in February, asking them to declare the deal void and to say, for posterity, that the land belongs to the community.
In response, the patriarchate said it owns the land, not the community. Xana, meanwhile, filed a response calling the activists antisemitic squatters. The patriarchate's response and Xana's words, the activists said, leave open the chance that the land could be leased again in the future.
“It made us feel like we could not trust the institution who brought us to this day to solve this problem, to solve this conflict,” said Hagop Djernazian.
The patriarchate declined to comment on the land deal for this article, saying it could impact mediation efforts underway with Xana.
A single observer
Inside the Armenian convent, the clergy are hushed, pathways empty.
On a recent afternoon, priests in black robes rang the bell for daily prayers at the St. James Cathedral, the storied Armenian church occupying one of the highest points in the Old City. Filing into the darkened space, the men and the young seminary choir were joined only by an Israeli tour group and one Armenian woman who'd come to pray.
Father Parsegh Galamterian, church sacristan, has watched prayers thin out over the years, as the Armenian population in the quarter has shrunk from about 15,000 in 1948, the founding of the state of Israel, to around 2,000.
“The future is difficult,” he says.
Armenians began arriving in the Old City as early as the 4th century, inspired by the religious significance of the city to Christianity. In the early 20th century, they were joined by masses of Armenians who flocked to Jerusalem after being driven out of the Ottoman Empire. Theirs is the smallest quarter in the Old City, home to Armenians with the same status as Palestinians in Israeli-annexed 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. Some stay, but many drop out of studies. Clergy say that's partially because attacks against Christians have ramped up within the walls of the Old City, leaving the Armenians – whose convent is closest to the Jewish Quarter and is tucked 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 fundamentalists.
He recalled one instance, a month ago, when clergy were headed to prayer. He was intercepted by a group of settlers, who asked if they were Christians.
“’You know that you don’t have a future here in the Holy Land. You’re not going to continue to live here,” he recalled one man saying. “’This is our country. We are going to eradicate you.”
“This is the word he used,” said Gogchyan. “We are going to eradicate you from our country.”
The Rossing Center, which tracks anti-Christian attacks in the Holy Land, documented about 20 attacks on Armenian observers, Armenian private 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.
“What is being said behind closed doors is that Jerusalem is becoming a place that is no longer hospitable to Christianity,” said Daniel Seidman, a Jerusalem lawyer and peace activist. “You can see the needle moving. The spike in hate crimes is not part of this plan, but it's part of the impact.”
The incidents send a clear message to the next generation, said Gogchyan: stay away.
“The new generation doesn’t want to be in the center of the conflict,” said Gogchyan. “They’re building their future in different countries.
Despite the fractures, Armenian clergy and activists told the AP they want the same thing: a continued presence in the Old City.
“Some people feel helpless and hopeless and they want to leave,” said Balian. “But I think the majority sees that there is a struggle going on. It gives us a meaning. It gives us a purpose. It gives us a reason to stay here.”
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
