By Harvey Morris
FT-UK
July 23, 2002
The Armenian Orthodox church, one of the oldest and richest in the Holy
Land,
is fighting Israel’s seizure of an ancient olive grove for a planned
security
wall between Jerusalem and the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.
Community leaders accuse Israel of a land grab that has less to do with
its
security than with an attempt to expand its border into the West Bank.
The fate of the 35-acre site and its 1,600 trees is being watched by the
Armenian government in Yerevan, whose senior representative in Jerusalem
has
written to Shimon Peres, foreign minister, demanding an explanation for
“this
infringement of Armenian rights”.
The Armenian patriarchate traditionally struggles to remain aloof from
politics. Its misfortune, however, is that its olive grove straddles one
of
the most contentious fault lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Baron Der property, purchased in 1641 as the site of a summer
residence
for the patriarch, lies on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem where the
town
borders the Jerusalem municipality. The Jerusalem city limits were
extended
by Israel after the 1967 war in an annexation of West Bank land that is
not
internationally recognised.
The invisible “red” line dividing the municipalities – a potential state
border in any Middle East settlement – runs through the olive grove. The
proposed 40 metre-wide barrier would snake across the Armenian property
and
occupy land on both sides of the border.
It would be part of a 350km barrier being built around the West Bank and
parts of Jerusalem to stop Palestinian suicide bombers reaching Israel.
The patriarchate received emergency seizure orders late last month from
the
Israeli defence ministry, which claims the Jerusalem side of the line, and
the army commander of the West Bank, who is commandeering the southern
stretch.
What was until recently a rural retreat for Armenian monks is part of a
wider
agricultural area hemmed in on the south by Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp.
To
the north is an Israeli settler road and to the east the heavily fortified
Israeli enclave of Rachel’s Tomb, one of Judaism’s holiest sites and a
frequent target of attacks in the 22-month Palestinian uprising.
Armenian community leaders believe sovereignty over the access route to
the
tomb is the underlying motive of the land seizure.
Jewish worshippers are ferried in armoured vehicles to the tomb, a few
hundred yards inside Palestinian territory. But aproposal has been floated
to
link the shrine of the biblical matriarch to the Jerusalem municipality.
That
would involve moving the border 200m further south into West Bank
territory.
Although the proposal has not won government approval, the Ashkenazi and
Sephardic chief rabbis of Israel have ruled the tomb must remain in
Israeli
hands in a final Israeli-Palestinian border settlement.
The Armenian church finds itself unwillingly at the centre of the world’s
most explosive territorial dispute.
The Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back more than 16 centuries,
almost
to the time when Armenia became the first nation to embrace Christianity
as
its official religion in 301. The patriarchate was founded in 638, the
year
of the Muslim conquest of the holy city.
Today, however, emigration has reduced the community in the Old City of
Jerusalem to about 2,000.
Despite its small congregation, the Armenian church is the largest
landowner
in the Old City and has substantial holdings in the Israeli coastal city
of
Jaffa and in Jewish west Jerusalem, where it owns much of the central
shopping district.
The church jealously protects its ancient rights as one of the three
traditional guardians of Christian holy sites, along with the Greek
Orthodox church and the Catholic Franciscan order.
Armenia’s honorary consul in Jerusalem, Tsolag Momjian, wrote to Mr Peres:
“Baron Der has an enormous historical and moral value to the Armenian
church
and the Armenian people.”
The olive trees of Baron Der – some of them 500 years old – supply the oil
that lights the lamps over the traditional tomb of Christ at the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem and above his traditional birthplace at the Church
of
the Nativity in Bethlehem.
The land itself is honeycombed with caves and Byzantine tombs that the
Armenians say constitute an archaeological treasure.
Mazen Qupti, the patriarchate’s Arab Israeli lawyer, says the Israeli
authorities say the barrier would consist of a 5m high concrete wall,
barbed
wire, an electronic fence, a flooded ditch, a sand path to detect the
footprints of infiltrators, an asphalt patrol road and possibly even a
minefield. The Israeli army tore down dozens of trees when it bulldozed a
dirt path through the grove after its invasion of the West Bank. A
three-storey residence at the site was commandeered as a military outpost.
Israeli officials have so far held off starting work on the barrier. But,
in
several meetings with Armenian officials, they said the seizure orders
were
irreversible.
The church has responded with a petition to the Israeli supreme court. Mr
Qupti said: “The Armenians say it’s the wrong place for a security wall
and
that they are losing what is a holy place for them.”
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