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A view of the Cows’ Garden property of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. (Photo by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.)
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Armenians and Israeli Settlers Clash over Land Parcel in Old City Jerusalem

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The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
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By Ella Chakarian

For more than 200 days, Setrag Balian, a fourth generation Jerusalemite-Armenian, has camped out in a tent in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem. A ceramicist by trade, Balian is a co-founder of Save the ArQ, a group dedicated to blocking a murky development project that would forever alter the quarter’s character.

In trying to scuttle the deal and preserve the Armenian Quarter, Balian’s group is facing off against Israeli developers who have been photographed with top representatives of an organization called Ateret Cohanim, which bills itself as “the leading urban land reclamation organization in Jerusalem, which has been working for over 40 years to restore Jewish life in the heart of ancient Jerusalem.” Ateret Cohanim has been involved in contentious property disputes in the past: most notably an almost-two-decades-long legal battle with the Greek Orthodox Church over control of three properties in the Old City. Ateret Cohanim representatives deny any connection to the Armenian quarter dispute, which involves a valuable patch of the Old City known as Cows’ Garden.

The catalyst for confrontation is a sweetheart real estate leasing deal under which Israeli developers would gain the right to build a luxury hotel in Cows’ Garden in exchange for a surprisingly low annual payment of $300,000 to the Armenian Patriarchate, which controls the property. Members of the Armenian community in Jerusalem, alleging skullduggery on the part of those who secretly negotiated the deal, have sued to block it. But those who stand to benefit are not giving up easily — hence the standoff.

“Armenians have been in Jerusalem since the fourth century,” said Balian. “The Patriarchate has been there as an institution since the 7th century. It is a very important plot of land.”

Under the original agreement, signed in secret in 2021, the Armenian Patriarchate granted an Israeli entity, Xana Gardens Ltd, a 98-year lease to develop Cows’ Garden and some adjacent areas, including land covering the Patriarchate’s seminary. When the deal became public it caused an uproar among local Armenians. Responding to the backlash, the Patriarchate moved to invalidate the agreement in October 2023. Since then, the matter has been mired in legal wrangling.

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The process that led the Patriarchate to sign the deal in the first place remains a source of contention. The man who headed the Patriarchate’s real estate department and who negotiated the deal, Khachig (Baret) Yeretsian, was defrocked and has since fled Jerusalem, following allegations that he misled Archbishop Nourhan Manougian. Meanwhile, Palestinian and Jordanian authorities responded to the news by freezing their recognition of Archbishop Manougian as the leader of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem.

Yeretsian has claimed in interviews that he is a “scapegoat,” insisting that others within the church hierarchy were fully aware and approved of the arrangement. He declined an interview request from Eurasianet, saying: “I have spoken before on many occasions, and I stick to my principles and will never change.” In an apparent effort to prove his version of events, Yeretsian posted a letter on social media seemingly signed by a top official within the Patriarchate, Fr. Samuel Aghoian, showing that the deal enjoyed the backing of the Patriarchate’s entire hierarchy. The letter emphasizes that the deal will supply “a steady income of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, to support the Armenian Patriarchate with all its departments and its congregation.”

When queried by Eurasianet, Aghoian declined to confirm the validity of the letter or provide comment due to the ongoing legal case to invalidate the deal.

Balian says that since the Patriarchate moved to cancel the deal, there have been five separate incidents involving violence and intimidation against Cows’ Garden, undertaken by Jewish settlers set on seeing the deal through.

“Within 24 hours of the Patriarchate issuing the cancellation letter to Xana Gardens, Israeli settlers attacked the boys on the ground with attack dogs and [brandishing] automatic weapons,” said Karnig Kerkonian, co-founder of Kerkonian Dajani LLP, the law firm representing the Armenian community of the Old City in its lawsuit to invalidate the deal. In later incidents on Cows’ Garden, Kerkonian alleged that Israeli police abetted efforts to get opponents of the deal to back down.

Xana Gardens Ltd. was registered in Israel on July 8, 2021, which, according to Kerkonian, was one day after the signing of the real estate deal with the Armenian Patriarchate. Kerkonian said that his law firm’s research of the company raises questions about possible ties to “certain Jewish settler groups.”

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Israeli-Australian developer and head of Xana Gardens, Danny Rothman, also known as Rubinstein, has been known to associate with leaders of the settler group, Ateret Cohanim. He did not respond to a request for comment from Eurasianet.

George Warwar, another Xana Gardens representative who clashed with Armenians in Cows’ Garden last year, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Eurasianet.

Kerkonian said that since the creation of the state of Israel, the Armenian Quarter has lost 90 percent of its pre-1948 population. According to a census from 2006, 790 Armenians resided in the Old City — a 50 percent decline from the number in the 1960s. Kerkonian claimed that “there is clearly an attempt to remove the Armenian presence from places in the Middle East where they have had strongholds.”

For centuries, Jerusalemite-Armenians have lived amicably with other communities in the Old City. Balian and other members of Save the ArQ believe that the current pressure against the Armenian Quarter is an outgrowth of the hard-right policies pursued by the Israeli government.

Daniel Seidemann, a Jerusalem-based attorney providing non-legal counsel to the Armenian community, said there are precedents for shadowy dealings across the Old City in Jerusalem — even in the Armenian Quarter. He cited Shahe Ajemian, the Armenian archbishop of Jerusalem who was detained in 1986 on suspicion of being part of a bribery scheme that “allegedly involved identification cards, land deals and inside information on planned future projects.”

What makes the current situation in the Armenian Quarter different, according to Seidemann, is “the attempt at physical intimidation here of an entire community” that, he says, “goes beyond anything we’ve witnessed in the past.”

“As serious as this is to the Armenian community, it is indicative of a much greater challenge to the Christian and the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem and a very, even deeper threat to the character of the city,” he said.

Armenians who live in the quarter describe the current situation as a land grab. They contend that if the deal goes through, it will effectively mean the end of the Armenian presence in Jerusalem. Sensitivities among local Armenians in Jerusalem have been heightened by Armenia’s loss of Nagorno-Karabakh in late 2023.

The legal battle could take years to resolve. As it plays out, members of the community keep watch over Cows’ Garden in shifts, ready to resist any settler effort to occupy the parcel. Armenian volunteers play cards to pass the time and spend hours in conversation, while sacrificing time from their families and jobs. Balian said he feels motivated by the togetherness displayed in the tent.

“Everybody has understood that this is an existential battle,” said Balian. “We all have to fight it.”

(Ella Chakarian is a journalist based in New York City and current M.S. Candidate at Columbia Journalism School. Follow her on Twitter @ellachakarian. This article originally appeared in www.eurasianet.org on August 2.)

 

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