It Is Not Just A Piece Of Land We Are Protecting

Not The Times, surely? Oh, yes. Wherein, Catherine Philp writes:

It was night-time when the settlers, armed with rifles and accompanied by attack dogs, descended on the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City.

“They came and started ripping up the pavement with diggers,” said Hagop Djernazian, 22, a young activist who rushed to the site to see off the settlers.

Linking arms, the Armenians formed a human chain in front of the bulldozers until the settlers were turned away. “It is not just a piece of land we are protecting,” Djernazian said. “It is the future of Armenians and all Christians in Jerusalem that is at stake here.”

With international attention focused on the bombardment of Gaza and on settler attacks in the West Bank, Armenians in the Old City say they are facing perhaps their most serious existential threat in the 16 centuries since they first settled here.

Since Israel occupied and annexed the Old City in 1967, bringing life back to its empty Jewish Quarter, biblically inspired right-wing Jewish settler organisations have sought to extend their presence throughout the walled city, which contains some of the holiest sites in the three Abrahamic faiths.

One such organisation is Ateret Cohanim, which has used foreign money to buy up property across all four quarters, and at times illegally occupied church premises in the Christian quarter, including the famed St John’s Hospice.

When Armenian residents discovered, belatedly, that a deal had been agreed to sell off a critical tract of church-owned land without due process, the outcry led the Armenian Patriarchate to declare the deal null and void. Instead of going to court to rule on the validity of the deal, however, the capital venture firm that signed it sent in armed settlers to do their work.

Most of the land, known as Cow’s Garden, a former grazing site, serves at present as a car park for the community within the pedestrian-only old city. To their horror, when details of the questionable deal emerged five families found out that their homes were also to be handed over.

“I have lived in this house for 52 years,” Garo Nalbandian, 81, a former Time Life photographer, says. “It is my home. Where else should I go? Armenians are a community ... This land does not belong to me. It belongs to all Armenians in the world.”

Since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 the Armenians, like other non-Jews in the occupied territories, have been in effect stateless, members of a shrinking community that now numbers about 1,000.

When the settlers attacked last week, they were accompanied by police officers, who refused to intervene. The police then arrested three Armenian bystanders and demanded that they produce documents proving the land was theirs.

The Armenian Patriarchate pleaded for support from all Jerusalem’s Christian communities, and said the Armenian presence in Jerusalem was “under possibly the greatest existential threat of its 16-century history”.

In a joint statement the heads of all the churches in Jerusalem voiced their concerns “that these events potentially endanger the Armenian presence in Jerusalem as they set a precedent for similar engagements”.

The statement said: “The provocations that are being used by the alleged developers ... threaten to erase the Armenian presence in the area, weakening and endangering the Christian presence in the Holy Land.”

“The Armenians are one of the most vulnerable communities in Jerusalem. They are not Palestinians, they are not Israeli,” said Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer with Terrestrial Jerusalem, which works towards resolving the status of Jerusalem consistent with the two-state solution originally envisaged.

The disputed land lies strategically between Jaffa Gate and the Jewish Quarter, and the main road running alongside it has been the scene of a rising number of hate attacks on Christians even before the latest standoff.

In the car park next to the broken-down wall, Armenian activists have set up a vigil in case the settlers return.

“We are not afraid to stand in front of the bulldozers again,” Djernazian said. “We are fighting for our existence here in Jerusalem, and if we lose this land we may witness ethnic cleansing of Armenians from here. We faced it in Nagorno Karabakh a month ago, and we are afraid that we may face it also here in Jerusalem.”