Sunday, April 16, 2023

After unrest at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel curtails freedom of worship for Christians

Negotiations between church officials and the Israeli police have broken down.

Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III, center left, holds candles for Christian pilgrims during the ceremony of the Holy Fire at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Old City of Jerusalem, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

(RNS) — The Israeli government, already criticized the world over for its brutal handling of Muslim worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, appears to be bent on proving that it is an equal opportunity violator of religious freedom. The Netanyahu administration is now being accused of violating the Christian faithful’s right of worship.

Three major faiths’ holy days of Ramadan, Passover and Western Christianity’s Easter overlapped in Jerusalem this spring. Easter for the Orthodox Christian church, which follows the old Julian calendar, is on Sunday (April 16). But the Israeli authorities are imposing restrictions on how many Palestinian Christians, a large number of whom are Orthodox, can attend the annual Holy Fire ceremony held on Saturday

Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that on the Saturday before Easter, a miraculous flame appears inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus’ tomb. The Orthodox patriarch enters the Holy Edicule, a chamber built over the tomb, and emerges with two lighted candles. He passes the flame among thousands of people holding candles, gradually illuminating the walls of the darkened basilica.

A week ago, however, the Israeli army unilaterally rescinded travel permits it had approved for 739 Palestinian Christians from the Gaza Strip. This might lead one to conclude that it is wary after Islamic Hamas fired a number of rockets at Israel from Gaza following the attacks on Muslim worshippers earlier this month.



But there was no attempt by Israel to blame Gazan Christians for the Hamas rockets, and the rationale the Israeli authorities gave for the clampdown was that they want to prevent a repeat of a 2021 disaster that left 45 people dead after a crowd stampeded at a packed Jewish holy site.

As with most Israeli meddling with rights guaranteed under the status quo agreement, supposed safety concerns look to many like a cover for depriving minority faiths of their freedom to worship. This decision in particular comes as anti-Christian attacks have seen an uptick under the Netanyahu regime, the most right-wing Israeli government in living memory.

In recent months an Anglican cemetery has been vandalized, church statues have been toppled and Jewish radicals have attempted to torch the Church of Gethsemane. Christian clergymen in Palestine have been under attack since the beginning of the year, with about 80 physical and verbal assaults being recorded in the first three months of 2023.

In February, the United Nations Security Council was moved to adopt a presidential statement that for the first time in a U.N. document cited Christianophobia along with antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The president of the council, a United Arab Emirates diplomat named Lana Nusseibeh, comes from a Muslim family in Jerusalem that has held the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for over 850 years, with the consent of Christians, in order to overcome the differences between Christian churches.

The Orthodox Church has called the restrictions on Christian worshippers “heavy-handed,” and Christian leaders point out there’s no need to alter a ceremony that has been held for centuries without problems. They note that the stampede occurred when a makeshift wooden stage collapsed. The entire area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its yards are made of stones.

The status quo is a 19th-century Ottoman agreement regulating the administration of Christian holy sites by determining the powers and rights of various denominations in these places. The most important of these decrees was an 1852 firman by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I, which preserved the possession and division of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and forbade any alterations to the status of these sites.

Jordan, whose royal Hashemite family is accepted regionally as the custodian of Christian and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, is supported in its responsibility by the Palestinian government and church leaders.



But negotiations between church officials and the Israeli police have broken down. “After many attempts made in goodwill,” Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem said, “all efforts at reaching an agreement with the Israeli police have failed,” adding that the “unreasonable restrictions will limit access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to the Holy Light ceremony.” 

Police officials acknowledged that they will block some routes into the Old City and that attendance will be limited in the ancient church and courtyard. But in a conference call with reporters, officials said the attendance limits — 1,800 people inside the church, which Greek Orthodox officials said was a fraction of previous years — were set by the church.

Freedom of religion and its practice are rights guaranteed by international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention regulates how an occupying power must behave, namely that it respect the status quo.

(Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Holy Land Christians say attacks rising in far-right Israel

The uptick in anti-Christian incidents comes as the Israeli settler movement, galvanized by its allies in government, appears to have seized the moment to expand its enterprise in the contested capital.

FILE - Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa leads the Easter Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Sunday, April 9, 2023. Since the rise of Israel's most right-wing government in history, church leaders say the 2,000-year-old Christian community in Jerusalem has come under increasing attack, with an uptick in harassment of clergy and vandalism of religious properties. Several church leaders, including the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the region, told The Associated Press they fear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ultranationalist coalition has empowered extremists. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land has warned in an interview that the rise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has made life worse for Christians in the birthplace of Christianity.

The influential Vatican-appointed Latin Patriarch, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told The Associated Press that the region’s 2,000-year-old Christian community has come under increasing attack, with the most right-wing government in Israel’s history emboldening extremists who have harassed clergy and vandalized religious property at a quickening pace.

The uptick in anti-Christian incidents comes as the Israeli settler movement, galvanized by its allies in government, appears to have seized the moment to expand its enterprise in the contested capital.

“The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new,” Pizzaballa said during Easter week from his office, tucked in the limestone passageways of the Old City’s Christian Quarter. “These people feel they are protected … that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.”

Pizzaballa’s concerns appear to undercut Israel’s stated commitment to freedom of worship, enshrined in the declaration that marked its founding 75 years ago. The Israeli government stressed it prioritizes religious freedom and relations with the churches, which have powerful links abroad.

“Israel’s commitment to freedom of religion has been important to us forever,” said Tania Berg-Rafaeli, the director of the world religions department at the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “It’s the case for all religions and all minorities that have free access to holy sites.”

But Christians say they feel authorities don’t protect their sites from targeted attacks. And tensions have surged after an Israeli police raid on the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque compound set off outrage among Muslims, and a regional confrontation last week.

For Christians, Jerusalem is where Jesus was crucified and resurrected. For Jews, it’s the ancient capital, home to two biblical Jewish temples. For Muslims, it’s where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The scorn heaped upon minority Christians is nothing new in the teeming Old City, a crucible of tension that the Israeli government annexed in 1967. Many Christians feel squeezed between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians.

But now Netanyahu’s far-right government includes settler leaders in key roles — such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who holds criminal convictions from 2007 for incitement of anti-Arab racism and support for a Jewish militant group.

Their influence has empowered Israeli settlers seeking to entrench Jewish control of the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, alarming church leaders who see such efforts — including government plans to create a national park on the Mount of Olives — as a threat to the Christian presence in the holy city. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.

“The right-wing elements are out to Judaize the Old City and the other lands, and we feel nothing is holding them back now,” said Father Don Binder, a pastor at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem. “Churches have been the major stumbling block.”

The roughly 15,000 Christians in Jerusalem today, the majority of them Palestinians, were once 27,000 — before hardships that followed the 1967 Mideast war spurred many in the traditionally prosperous group to emigrate.

Now, 2023 is shaping up to be the worst year for Christians in a decade, according to Yusef Daher from the Inter-Church Center, a group that coordinates between the denominations.

Physical assaults and harassment of clergy often go unreported, the center said. It has documented at least seven serious cases of vandalism of church properties from January to mid-March — a sharp increase from six anti-Christian cases recorded in all of 2022. Church leaders blame Israeli extremists for most of the incidents, and say they fear an even greater surge.

“This escalation will bring more and more violence,” Pizzaballa said. “It will create a situation that will be very difficult to correct.”

In March, a pair of Israelis burst into the basilica beside the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Virgin Mary is said to have been buried. They pounced on a priest with a metal rod before being arrested.

In February, a religious American Jew yanked a 10-foot rendering of Christ from its pedestal and smashed it onto the floor, striking its face with a hammer a dozen times at the Church of the Flagellation on the Via Dolorosa, along which it’s believed Jesus hauled his cross toward his crucifixion. “No idols in the holy city of Jerusalem!” he yelled.

Armenians found hateful graffiti on the walls of their convent. Priests of all denominations say they’ve been stalked, spat on and beaten during their walks to church. In January, religious Jews knocked over and vandalized 30 graves marked with stone crosses at a historic Christian cemetery in the city. Two teenagers were arrested and charged with causing damage and insulting religion.

But Christians allege that Israeli police haven’t taken most attacks seriously. In one case, 25-year-old George Kahkejian said he was the one beaten, arrested and detained for 17 hours after a mob of Jewish settlers scaled his Armenian Christian convent to tear down its flag earlier this year. The police had no immediate comment.

“We see that most incidents in our quarter have gone unpunished,” complained Father Aghan Gogchian, chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate. He expressed disappointment with how authorities frequently insist cases of desecration and harassment hinge not on religious hatred but on mental illness.

The Israeli police said they have “thoroughly investigated (incidents) regardless of background or religion” and made “speedy arrests.” The Jerusalem municipality is boosting security at upcoming Orthodox Easter processions and creating a new police department to handle religiously motivated threats, said Jerusalem deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.

Most top Israeli officials have stayed quiet on the vandalism, while government moves — including the introduction of a law criminalizing Christian proselytizing and the promotion of plans to turn the Mount of Olives into a national park — have stoked outrage in the Holy Land and beyond.

Netanyahu vowed to block the bill from moving forward, following pressure from outraged evangelical Christians in the United States. Among the strongest backers of Israel, evangelicals view a Jewish state as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.

Meanwhile Jerusalem officials confirmed that they’re pressing on with the contentious zoning plan for the Mount of Olives — a holy pilgrimage site with some dozen historic churches. Christian leaders fear the park could stem their growth and encroach on their lands. Jewish settlements home to over 200,000 Israelis already encircle the Old City.

The Israeli National Parks Authority promised buy-in from churches and said it hopes the park will “preserve valuable areas as open areas.”

Pizzaballa pushed back. “It’s a kind of confiscation,” he said.

Simmering tensions in the community came to a head over Orthodox Easter rituals as Israeli police announced strict quotas on the thousands of pilgrims seeking to attend the rite of the “Holy Fire” at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Citing safety concerns over lit torches being thrust through massive crowds in the church, authorities capped Saturday’s ceremony at 1,800 people. Priests who saw police open gates wide for Jews celebrating Passover, which coincided this year with Easter, alleged religious discrimination on Wednesday.

These days, Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem said he struggles for answers when his congregants ask why they should even bear the bitter price of living in the Holy Land.

“There are things that make us worry about our very existence,” he said. “But without hope, more and more of us will leave.”

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Associated Press writer Maria Grazia Murru in Rome contributed to this report.

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