By Markar Melkonian

For the past three years, Armenian, Arab, and international news sources have been reporting on the escalating threats to the Armenian community of Jerusalem’s Old City.  The story is still sketchy, and it is a long way from over. But even now, we know enough to assess the threat, to survey the damage done, and to draw lessons moving forward.  

The billowing smoke over Gaza conceals many things, including more thousands of crushed children, more tens of thousands maimed, more thousands starved to death and exposed to fatal diseases.  The drifting smoke conceals much outside of Gaza, too, including hundreds of West Bank Palestinians gunned down on their own streets, thousands taken hostage by the IDF, and thousands more evicted from their homes.  And it conceals much else besides, including ramped-up efforts to eradicate the 1600-year-old Armenian presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.  

Since 1967, when East Jerusalem fell under Israeli occupation, the ancient Christian presence there has fallen to 10% of what it was before.  Like their Muslim neighbors, Christians have faced detention without charge, house demolitions, debarment from worship at holy sites, arson, and physical assault.  Like their Muslim neighbors, Christians today face daily harassment, vandalism, threats of violence, and seamless cyber surveillance by Shin Bet, Mossad, and well-funded settler organizations.  The three main churches in the Old City, namely, the Latin, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolic churches, have lost land under many pretexts, including green-zone and empty-lands laws, archaeological excavations, and eminent domain.  Many of the confiscations have been fraudulent, as in the unauthorized sale in 2004 of the New Imperial and Petra Hotels near the Jaffa Gate, by a renegade Greek Orthodox Patriarch, to a shell company created by the aggressive settler organization, Ateret Cohanim.  In case after case, Israeli courts have sided with the usurpers and the settlers against the owners of the land.  Dimitri Diliani, president of the National Christian Coalition of the Holy Land, put his finger on the settlers’ purpose:  

…the Israeli occupation aims to achieve one goal, which is to create an environment that rejects the presence of Jerusalemites in their own city, be they Christians or Muslims. They are all subjected to persecution and deliberate Israeli racism, to displace them from the city and turn it into a city with Jewish majority.

“This,” Diliani added, “is the main reason behind the decrease in the number of Christians in Jerusalem and the migration from the city.” 

Goveroun Bardez (Cows’ Garden)

Armenians have resided in Jerusalem as a community for some sixteen centuries—more than half of the history of the city since the First Temple period.  Although the Armenian “Quarter,” the Harat al-Arman, makes up barely one-seventh of the total 223 acres of the Old City, it is one of the most coveted 30 acres on Earth.  The Armenian neighborhood is located on the highest point on Mount Zion, and the main access roads that connect Jewish-populated West Jerusalem to the Jewish “Quarter” in the Old City run through the Armenian neighborhood.  If Israeli settlers gain a foothold in the Armenian neighborhood, they have a clear shot for further expansion into the rest of the Old City.  It is no wonder, then, that this land has been a prime target of the self-described “Judaizers of Jerusalem.” 

In view of this threat, one might have thought that the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, a major property owner in the Old City, would have exercised vigilance. In July 2021, however, it secretly signed an agreement to lease a portion of its land for 98 years to Xana Gardens Ltd., an Israeli real estate development company that announced plans to build a “seven-star” hotel on a Patriarchate lot called Cows’ Garden (Hadiqat al-Baqar), or Goveroun Bardez.  As rumors spread, Armenian Jerusalemites began to voice doubts and long-repressed grievances.  A later statement signed by “Concerned Jerusalem Armenians” described their long-standing frustration in a phrase:  Silencing Us with Their Silence”   In a letter dated November 15, 2021, twelve of the seventeen members of the Saints James’ Brotherhood of Jerusalem, a monastic order based in the Armenian Patriarchate, condemned the Goveroun Bardez deal as a violation of the Rules of the Holy Synod (Dnoren Joghovu) of the Patriarchate, claiming that it had been signed without their authorization or prior knowledge.    

Some details of the deal between the Patriarchate and Xana Gardens became public on July 7, 2023, at a presentation of a fact-finding report by a team of international lawyers from the USA and the Republic of Armenia. The report included an Armenian-language copy of the contract, which appeared to bear an altered date, from 7 July 2021 (a day before Xana was incorporated in Israel) to 8 July 2021. The document bore three signatures on the Patriarchate’s side: that of Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, that of the elderly Archbishop Sevan Gharibian, and that of an individual previously known as the Very Reverend Father Baret Yeretzian.  It did not bear a signature of the counterparty, Xana Gardens. 

According to the lawyers’ report, the Xana Gardens plan presented to Jerusalem City Hall calls for an exclusive luxury hotel of 3.5 to 4.0 acres—more than twice the area of Goveroun Bardez.  The “lease” contract, or at least the Armenian-language version of it, did not include a map of the projected construction site, but Xana claims that the deal includes the dining hall of the St. James’ Monastery.  It also appears to include a café, part of a museum, the Armenian printing house, and several additional retail spaces—as well as five homes in the dwindling Armenian Quarter, whose residents are to be evicted without having been consulted. Taken together with adjacent properties that have already been confiscated, including a police station and the Tower of David Museum, the land under threat might well encompass 25% of the total area of the Armenian “Quarter” of the Old City of Jerusalem. 

The contract stipulated an initial payment by Xana Gardens of $2 million, plus an annual payment of $300,000 throughout the duration of the lease, plus an uncertain annual remuneration connected to the receipts from the hotel, minus any losses that Xana might incur.  This, for the lease of property that, according to some published estimates, has an assessed value in the billions of dollars.  To complicate matters, the 98-year “lease” now appears to be--at least effectively—a transfer of ownership of the land.  

Both the internationally recognized Palestine Authority and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, have condemned the confiscation of Armenian Church property and opposed the land deal.  Thus, the elected leaderships of Palestine have demonstrated a greater concern for the continuity of the Armenian community in Jerusalem than has the Armenian Patriarchate itself.  Some observers might be quick to observe that, by insisting that Armenians retain their lands in the Old City, Hamas is pursuing “its own interests” against Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem.  But this raises the question why the Patriarchate has not pursued “its own interests” by protecting its land against those who are trying to seize it.  

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has long been recognized internationally as the custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.  On  May 11 2023, Jordan and the Palestine Authority suspended their recognition of Archbishop Manougian as the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.  His actions, the custodians’ statement said, were a clear violation of international charters and resolutions aimed at preserving Jerusalem’s status quo and safeguarding the Armenian heritage of the city. 

On October 26, 2023, the Patriarchate announced that it was cancelling the Goveroun Bardez agreement.  The contract, it said, was signed under false pretenses and in violation of the internal procedures of the Holy Synod and the General Assembly of the St. James’ Brotherhood. The Patriarchate is now contesting the deal in an Israeli court, but it is doing so separately from the team of international lawyers that first made the land deal public. 

On June 21, 2024, the Republic of Armenia got around, at long last, to recognizing the State of Palestine.  In response, the Foreign Ministry of Israel summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh reprimand.”  So far, it is not clear what consequences Yerevan’s recognition of Palestine might have when it comes to the continuing confiscation of Armenian land in Jerusalem. 

They Didn’t Steal It, We Gave It Away 

The Armenian Patriarchate has been losing land in and around East Jerusalem for decades.  In 2002, for example, the Israeli occupation regime seized 35 acres of Armenian Patriarchate land, known as Baron Der, for construction of a section of the 700-kilometer “separation wall” that it has imposed upon the Holy Land.  At about the same time, the occupiers confiscated Armenian land below the western side of the ramparts of the Old City, from outside the walls of Jerusalem to the old Hotel Fast.  Since then, they have stepped-up the process of doing to the Armenian “Quarter” what they did to the Mughrabi “Quarter” in 1967.  

An open appeal of April 6, 2024, signed by seven prominent Armenian community organizations, warned that “The very existence of the Armenian Patriarchate and the Armenian community of Jerusalem is now under historic threat.” The January 27, 2023 attack on an Armenian-owned restaurant near the New Gate in the Christian Quarter illustrates how the settlers and the police work together to terrorize native residents:  in that instance, a group of invading settlers hurled chairs and tables at customers, shouting Death to Arabs, death to Christians!  Israeli police, advancing from the side of the attackers, beat the residents who had just been attacked. They detained several of the targets of the attack and then withdrew without detaining any of the attackers.

If the occupation regime and its settler surrogates succeed, the remnants of the Harat al-Arman might or might not consist of part of a seminary, with a few priests in quaint garb, and maybe a small museum and a library, to provide Friends of Israel with the illusion of religious tolerance and to draw tourist dollars.  But it will not include native Armenian residents as an enduring community.  The Judaizers of Jerusalem want that land; they want it without Armenians, and they have ramped up their efforts under the convenient cover of the genocide in Gaza.  

But forced confiscations are not the only way that the Patriarchate has been losing property in Jerusalem.  Officials in the Patriarchate have a record of selling off church property, both land and treasure, for personal profit.  The following are two among many instances worth noting:  

• In the 1970’s, Bishop Shahe Ajemian, Sacristan of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, sold church land to Israeli authorities.  After a series of additional scandals, the Sts. James’ Brotherhood ousted Ajemian in 1982, and in 1986 he was caught in a smuggling-and-bribery scheme, involving the plunder of Armenian church treasures in Jerusalem (the second-largest trove of such treasures, after the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in Armenia), along with Raphael Levy, an official with the Israeli Interior Ministry.
• In August 1983, a five-man church auditing committee issued a report charging then-Archbishop Yeghishe Derderian, Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1960 to 1990, with impropriety in handling church funds derived from selling land to the Israelis.  Despite convincing evidence presented against him, Derderian continued to serve in his office.

The Patriarchate also has a decades-long record of gratuitously alienating the most immediate and helpful allies of the Armenians in Jerusalem, namely the Latin and Greek Churches, and the Palestinian leaderships.  For example, in a letter of December 28, 2021, Baret Yeretzian, who was then Real Estate Director of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, published an open letter addressed to an early critic of the Goveroun Bardez deal, Dr. Ramzi Khouri, the Head of the Palestinian Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs.  In his letter, written on Patriarchate letterhead, Yeretzian insinuated that opponents of the land deal objected to the counterparty’s “denomination and race.”   By contrast, Yeretzian wrote, the Armenian Patriarchate “maintains its neutrality and noninvolvement in political and racial matters.”  Thus, the “neutral” and “noninvolved” Yeretzian publicly implied that the critics of the land grab, including Armenian Jerusalemites and Dr. Khouri himself, were motivated by antisemitism, rather than opposition to 54 years of tyranny and ethnic cleansing, and the ongoing denial of self-determination to fourteen million Palestinians.  

Thanks to Patriarchate stonewalling, key details of the Goveroun Bardez debacle remain hidden; nevertheless, the complicity of Yeretzian and Patriarch Nourhan is clear enough.  Jerusalem-born historian Bedross Der Matossian summed it up: “They didn’t steal it,” he said, referring to the Judaizers of Jerusalem, “we gave it away.”  By “we,” presumably, Der Matossian was referring to the Patriarchate, and perhaps to other inattentive compatriots, too.  

But Armenian activists and some residents of the Old City had been sounding warnings about the disposition of Goveroun Bardez for years before the deal was signed in July 2021.  Suspicions grew when, in March 2020, the Patriarchate struck a ten-year usage agreement with the occupation regime’s Jerusalem municipality, to upgrade the Goveroun Bardez parking lot for the use of Jewish visitors to the Western Wall.  As it turned out, the agreement included an article whereby it would be void if, in the future, an agreement was signed to construct a hotel on the same site.  Lo and behold, that is what took place a year later.  

Time and again, the voices of the Armenian residents of Jerusalem have been dismissed and silenced.  The Patriarchate has long fostered a culture of intimidation towards the laity, many of whom live on Patriarchate property, owe their jobs to the Patriarchate, and must rely on the Patriarchate to enroll their children in the Armenian school.  Intimidation produces contempt.  In a published interview, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab asked Yeretzian whether he had bothered to consult the Armenian residents of the neighborhood about the Goveroun Bardez deal. Here is the exchange: 

Kuttab: You did not talk to the community much. Did you talk to the head of the committee, the clubs, the Homenetmen, and the other Armenian clubs?

Father Yeretzian:  No. Why should I?

Kuttab:  Because they are part of your community.

Father Yeretzian:  No, no. I am a priest, not the patriarch, those people do not represent anybody.

One may compare Yeretzian’s casual contempt for his own congregants with his high praise for Rothman, whom he described in the same interview as “a very honest man, a very kind man, a very straightforward person.” 

During a November 5, 2023 settler attack on Goveroun Bardez, the “very honest” Rothman, aka Rubenstein, accompanied by fifteen settlers with guns and attack dogs, informed the Armenian residents that the land upon which they had lived--some of them for decades, others for generations--was not theirs, and that they must leave. On 23 May 2024, the “very kind” Rothman was photographed with Netanel Danzinger, a veteran of the notorious Netzah Yehuda Battalion--a setup which even the genocide-mongering Biden Administration has cited for gross human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza.  Yeretzian’s “very straightforward” friend Rothman has also been photographed at a Jerusalem hotel with Ateret Cohanim founder Mati Dan, and with Itamar Ben-Gvir, Benyamin Netanyahu’s Minister of National Security, and a leading booster of the genocide in Gaza.  

Armenians of Jerusalem Step Up to the Task

The Goveroun Bardez debacle raises questions more important than the abnormal psychology of a real estate director. Consider the question:  What does it tell us about the Patriarchate as an institution that someone of Yeretzian’s character—at once imperious and petty, and simultaneously as naïve as a toddler--could have risen to the position of Director of Real Estate?  

That question is easy enough to answer, but it leads to a further question: what steps, if any, are likely to forestall Israeli authorities and their settler surrogates when—not if but when—they take their next steps to eradicate what is left of the Armenian community of Jerusalem? 

The steps that “should” be taken are all-too-obvious:  set up permanent provisions for financial transparency, accountability, and legal oversight; ensure mandatory consultation with an elected consultative body of the laity and the larger community on matters that have a direct impact on them; strengthen and extend practical solidarity with other churches, to defend the Christian presence in the Old City and the Holy Land; join hands firmly with Palestinian leaders, Christians and Muslims, to speak with one voice, in the face of escalating Israeli ethnic cleansing and land theft.  And so on.  

But who is going to ensure that these obvious steps are taken?  Not the Mother See of Etchmiadzin:  aside from the authority to ordain bishops, it has no higher authority over the Patriarchate in Jerusalem.  And it is even less likely that the Patriarchate of Jerusalem will get around to reforming itself:  judging from the long, uninhibited careers of the Ajemians, Derderians, and Yeretzians—and in the absence of evidence that Patriarch Nourhan has yet taken a single step on his own to ensure that the worst corruption and incompetence will not be repeated--it would be foolish to expect the Patriarchate to redeem itself soon enough.  After all, individuals in the highest positions in the Patriarchate have repeatedly ignored and violated their own rules and procedures, including the Bylaws of the Holy Synod itself and the Rules of the General Assembly of the Brotherhood.  In the name of independence, political neutrality, and noninvolvement, they have betrayed the 1600-year legacy of our ancestors, betrayed the immediate interests of their own community, insulted our allies, and sided with the tormenters of their own congregants.  Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the Jerusalem community.  

As it turns out, though, there is hope for the Harat al-Arman.  Armenian Jerusalemites have stepped up to take matters into their own hands--with or without the permission of the Patriarchate.  Over the past two years, the community, led by articulate and brave twenty-somethings, have come together across generations, political divides, and petty differences, to defend what is theirs.  Their Save the ArQ Movement has organized legal defense, conducted effective media outreach, and stood its ground against the impunity of a ruthless settler regime.  It defends the land and redeems the honor of the Armenians of Palestine.    

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George Hintlian, a lifetime Jerusalemite and scholar of the Old City, noted that there is a way, if we continue to struggle and to confront.” Let us hope he is right and let us help.  Donate to Save the ArQ: https://givebutter.com/ArmenianQuarter, and to the Center for Law and Justice Tatoyan Foundation: https://givebutter.com/center-for-law-and-justice-tatoyan-foundation. 

Markar Melkonian is the author of The Philosophy and Common Sense Reader:  Writings on Critical Thinking (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and The Wrong Train: Notes on Armenia since the Counterrevolution (Sardarabad Press and Zankag Press, 2020; the expanded Armenian edition, ՍԽԱԼ ԳՆԱՑՔԸ. Գրառումներ հետհակահեղափոխական Հայաստանի մասին, was published in 2021).  

Photo: Standing watch - Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter Dec, 2023.
© Ahmad al-Gharabli/AFP