As Israel’s war in Gaza intensifies and Israeli attacks on people in the occupied West Bank continue, Armenian residents of Jerusalem’s Old City are fighting a different battle — one that is quieter, but no less present, they say.

Armenians are one of the oldest communities in Jerusalem, centered around the Armenian Monastery, and have lived in the Old City for more than 1,500 years.

Now the small Christian community has begun to splinter under pressure from forces they say threaten their power and the old city’s multi-faith character – from Jewish settlers who mocked clergy on their way to prayer, to a plan that threatens to make them A quarter of land deals are land deals. Landed at a luxury hotel.

A rift has emerged between the Armenian Patriarchate and the main secular community, whose members fear the church’s inability to protect its dwindling population and struggling monasteries.

Save Alk’s headquarters is in the Armenian Quarter, a building with reinforced plywood walls and ancient maps hung on it, where Armenians live to protest illegal land grabs by real estate developers.

The land under threat is where the community holds its events and is part of the patriarchate itself.

Armenian priest Baret Yeretsian secretly “leased” the land to Xana Capital (a company registered before the agreement was signed) for 98 years in 2021, after the Patriarchate refused to sell any land for years.

Shiner gave more than half of his shares to local businessman George Warwar, who had been involved in various criminal offences.

Community members are outraged.

The priest fled the country and the patriarchate canceled the deal in October, but Xana objected and the contract is currently in mediation.

Activists said Shaner sent armed officers to the area and attacked people, including clergy, with pepper spray and batons.

Activists say the “war” is backed by a prominent settler group that seeks to expand the Jewish presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The leader of Ateret Cohanim, the group behind several controversial land acquisitions in the Old City, is pictured with Warwar and Xana Capital owner Danny Rothman, aka Danny Rubinstein, in December 2023 . Ateret Cohanim denies any connection to the land deal. .

Activists filed a lawsuit against the patriarchate in February, seeking to have the deal declared invalid and the land permanently owned by the community.

The patriarchate refused, saying it owned the land.

Armenians began arriving in the Old City as early as the fourth century AD and arrived in large numbers fleeing the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. They enjoy the same status as Palestinians in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem – residents but not citizens, effectively stateless.

Today, newcomers are mainly boys from Armenia who came to live and study in the monastery, although many dropped out. Clerics say this is partly due to an increase in attacks against Christians, leaving Armenians vulnerable – their monastery is closest to the Jewish Quarter and is on a popular route to the Western Wall.

Father Aghan Gogchyan, the patriarch’s chancellor, said he was regularly attacked by Jewish nationalist groups.

The Rosin Center, which tracks anti-Christian attacks in the Holy Land, documented about 20 attacks against Armenian people, property and church property in 2023, many of which involved ultranationalist Jewish settlers spitting on Armenian clergy or graffiti on the Holy Land It read “Death to Christians”. Quarter walls.