While Christmas might be a distant memory for many, the Armenians of Jerusalem only just held their annual celebration on 19 January.. This year, the holiday was overshadowed by the war in Gaza and the ongoing threat to the survival of the community from a deeply controversial real estate deal.
Many spent the day in an unconventional fashion, joining a sit-in at a tent in their church car park, which is part of a large plot at risk in the Armenian Quarter of the walled Old City.
“This illegal, treacherous land deal actually brought us all together,” says Setrag Balian, a ceramicist turned activist.
Armenians date their presence in the holy city back to the 4th Century. Many of the 2,000-strong community live inside the large, cobble-stoned compound of St James Convent.
In the past, they have often been divided by political differences and family fights and there have been rifts between Jerusalemite Armenians and their Church leaders who act as employers and landlords for many.
Yet for two months, local Armenians and priests have all been staying in a large, improvised tent here, around-the-clock, to try to block the development going ahead. They eat here and work shifts as guards behind a makeshift barricade decorated with Armenian flags.
Together, they say, they have seen off attacks by contractors with bulldozers, armed settlers and masked thugs.
“Everything was put in danger with this deal,” Setrag says. “Whoever wants to take away our rights and endanger our presence and our lives here, we will stand up against them and defend our rights till the end.”
Last April, facts began to emerge about a 2021 contract secretly signed between the Armenian Patriarch and a Jewish Australian-Israeli developer. It gave a newly-created firm, Xana Gardens, a 98-year lease to build and operate a luxury hotel in an area known as the Cow’s Garden.
The deal covered a plot of 11,500 sq m, abutting the ramparts of the south-western corner of the Old City, with an option to take over an even bigger area. It includes the car park, some church buildings and the homes of five Armenian families, accounting for about 25% of the Armenian Quarter. Located on Mount Zion, it has huge religious significance and is incredibly valuable real estate but an annual fee of just $300,000 (£237,000) was to be paid by the developer.
Local Armenians and priests have been staying in an improvised tent on the land as they protest against the deal
“For that amount, you could barely rent yourself a couple of falafel shops in the Old City,” remarked an Armenian using the car park, who preferred not to disclose his name.
Amid fervent protests by locals and the decision by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to withdraw their recognition of the patriarch over his role in the deal, pressure mounted on the Church to cancel the contract.
Simultaneously, an international team of Armenian lawyers arrived to investigate and provide guidance.
The patriarch claimed he had been deceived by a trusted priest who was later defrocked. He finally announced a formal move to cancel the deal in October.
At that juncture, tensions between Armenians and representatives of the developer, whose workers had forcibly taken over the car park, escalated into direct confrontations.
When Israeli bulldozers arrived at the contested site to initiate demolition, Armenians rushed to block them. The next month, claims of intimidation arose as the developer arrived with several armed men.
Further attempted incursions occurred after the protest tent was set up. The most violent incident transpired last month when masked men came to the car park, beating people with sticks and using tear gas. A priest, Father Diran Hagopian, documented the events on Facebook Live.
“They were shouting, ‘you should go out from this land,'” he later told the BBC. “One of their leaders was shouting: ‘You can break their legs, you can even kill them, but they should leave.'”
The apparent involvement of known Jewish settlers in attacks, alongside other evidence, has heightened long-standing suspicions that a powerful settler organization is implicated in the attempted land takeover.
Aviv Tatarksy, from Israeli non-profit organisation Ir Amim, says settler organisations want to "Judaise" the Old City
Since Israel seized the Old City and its sacred sites from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, Jewish investors in Israel and abroad have endeavored to purchase properties, aiming to solidify Israeli control over occupied East Jerusalem.
Palestinians aspire to designate this portion of the city as the capital of their envisioned future state, while Jewish Israelis perceive the entire city as their eternal and undivided capital.
Researchers at the Israeli non-profit organization Ir Amim, dedicated to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and endorsing Jerusalem’s diversity, express concern about developments in the Armenian Quarter.
“This is close to sensitive places,” notes Aviv Tatarksy. “Creating a settlement in this area is part of very far-reaching aims of settler organizations who basically want to Judaise completely the Old City, with their eyes on the Temple Mount or al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Settlements erected in occupied territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this view. The BBC has attempted to contact the developer behind Xana Gardens several times but has not received a response. The now-defrocked American priest who orchestrated the deal, Baret Yeretsian, faced an angry mob of young Armenians shouting “traitor” as he left St James Convent last year, assisted by Israeli police, before relocating to Southern California.
He has since denied to journalists that the developer has any political or ideological agenda, dismissing such accusations as “propaganda” based on his Jewish identity.
The Armenian Church has initiated legal proceedings through the Israeli courts to challenge the validity of the contract for the Cows’ Garden.
As locals gathered around a brightly lit Christmas tree in their makeshift tent last week, they remained steadfast but acknowledged that their legal battle could easily extend over years. Whether incursions can be halted in the meantime remains uncertain.