The Jerusalem Patriarchate of the Armenian Apostolic Church claimed to be facing an “existential threat” following a violent incident on Thursday which it attributed to an Israeli-Australian businessman’s efforts to take over one of its largest properties in the city.
A group of Armenian clerics and laymen were reportedly attacked by a violent mob as they held a vigil at Jerusalem’s Cows’ Garden property currently used as a parking lot.
The Patriarchate controversially agreed in 2021 to lease the former garden occupying one-quarter of the Old City’s Armenian Quarter to Jewish real estate developer Danny Rothman and his Christian Arab partner George Warwar for 99 years. Their Xana Gardens company wants to build a luxury hotel there.
The lease agreement signed by the two sides enraged the local Armenian community and also drew strong condemnation from the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. Patriarch Nourhan Manougian subsequently blamed the “fraudulent and deceitful” deal on a now-defrocked priest, saying that he was misled by the latter.
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Manougian’s office announced about two months ago that it has decided to scrap the lease and asked an Israeli court to validate the decision. Armenian clergymen and community activists began the daily vigil at the Cows’ Garden after Xana tried to start the construction.
A mobile phone video filmed by one of the priests showed the Armenians clashing with dozens of masked men apparently trying to drive them out of the property on Thursday. Several of them were reportedly injured as a result.
“Fortunately, our youths present at the scene managed to resist and repel the attackers,” Hagop Djernazian, a community activist, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday. He claimed that the attackers were “sent” by the real estate developers.
“This is how the Australian-Israeli businessman Danny Rothman (Rubenstein) and George Warwar (Hadad) react to legal procedures,” the Armenian Patriarchate said in a statement issued the previous night.
“The Armenian Patriarchate’s existential threat is now a physical reality,” it said, urging the international community to “help us save the Armenian Quarter from a violent demise.”
“It is obvious that the provocateurs are once again trying to seize the ‘Cow’s Garden’ estate through terror, threats and violent actions, violating the procedures established by the law,” read a separate statement released by the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin, Armenia. It urged Israeli authorities to stop the “criminal acts against the Patriarchate and the Armenian community.”
Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum described Thursday’s incident as a brawl between “some Arab Muslim men and some men from the Armenian community.” She did not link it to the dispute over the Cows’ Garden.
“The city of Jerusalem will not tolerate any criminal activity, whether religiously motivated or otherwise, and the police will prosecute those responsible,” The Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted Hassan-Nahoum as saying.
Rothman and his company did not comment on the clash. The businessman did not answer questions e-mailed by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia’s government also did not react to the violence as of Friday evening,
The Foreign Ministry in Yerevan expressed “deep concern” but refrained from demanding any action by Israeli authorities after a series of fresh attacks on Jerusalem Armenians reported a year ago and blamed on Jewish extremists.
In one of those attacks, an angry mob wreaked havoc on a restaurant located in the Armenian Quarter. According to the restaurant owner, they shouted “Death to Christians!” and “Death to Arabs!”
The Armenian Church has for years accused radical Jews of regularly cursing and spitting at its clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City. Two Israeli soldiers were briefly detained by police in November 2022 for doing so during a religious procession led by an Armenian archbishop.
