An old Jerusalem controversy

[MJ]

Churches renew Easter rivalry in Jerusalem

 

By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem

 

FT-UK

April 13 2001

 

Flak-jacketed police and Israeli troops almost outnumbered worshippers in the

Old City of Jerusalem as depleted ranks of Christian pilgrims marked the

first Good Friday since the start of the Palestinian uprising.

 

The foreign visitors who each year tread the Via Dolorosa, following the

route of Christ's ascent to Calvary, were largely absent, deterred by

violence that has included recent clashes between stone-throwers and security

forces within a few metres of the Christian holy sites. Shopkeepers in the

narrow streets around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre said it was the

quietest Easter for visitors since 1967, the year Israel wrested the Old City

from Jordanian rule.

 

Unusually this year, the dates of the western and eastern Easters coincide

and, for once, Catholics and Protestants mingled with Russian and Greek

Orthodox, Copts, Armenians and Ethiopians at the 14 stations of the cross

that lead to the Holy Sepulchre.

 

Despite the declining numbers of Christians in Jerusalem - some estimates put

the number at fewer than 10,000 - the 17 churches represented here continue

to exert a powerful influence on the politics of the city. They own much of

the property and regard that property as inalienable.

 

The churches jealously guard their rights against each other and against

Muslim and Jewish incursions. Ancient rivalries that date back to the

Crusades and beyond have been exacerbated since 1967 by rising nationalism

among the Palestinian laity, running up against expatriate priesthoods

sometimes suspected of being pro-Israeli.

 

These tensions have led to violence at Easter and to pitched battles in the

Holy Sepulchre, a Crusader warren of rival chapels and presbyteries centred

on the tomb of Christ. As recently as 1998 Armenians fought with Syrian

Orthodox Christians armed with metal bars, knives and stones over the right

of yet a third denomination to display religious joy on Easter Saturday.

 

This right to exuberance on the holy day is confined to the Greek Orthodox

under a complex division of rights known as the Status Quo, imposed by the

Ottoman authorities in the 19th century to try to establish inter-Christian

peace.

 

The Armenians do not expect any trouble, having taken to placing a guard of

muscular, crew-cut monks from former Soviet Armenia at the head of their

ranks as they observe the ceremony of the holy fire when the darkened church

is steadily flooded with light from thousands of candles.

 

If the Old City, with its Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian quarters, is

a microcosm of the ethnic divisions in the region, then the Church of the

Holy Sepulchre is a yet smaller microcosm. Possession is everything and the

Greek, Armenian, Franciscan and Coptic monks who control the body of the

church aggressively swing their censers to mark their passage through the

church according to a strict timetable.

 

While Greeks, Catholics and Armenians take it in turns to worship at Christ's

tomb, nearby at the rear of the sepulchre the Copts invite pilgrims to touch

the stone where His head is said to have lain. Since failing to pay their

Ottoman taxes in the 19th century, the Ethiopians have been exiled to a

monastery on the roof alongside yet another Coptic stronghold.

 

The Israeli authorities have frequently been accused of exploiting this

hornet's nest of Christian conflict for political ends. The Egyptian Copts

claimed that the government allowed the Ethiopians to extend their control of

the roof by taking over a passageway between two chapels in a dispute that

was inconclusively referred to the Israeli supreme court.

 

On Sunday, before the Latin Patriarch enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

to celebrate Easter Sunday Mass, its huge double doors will as always be

opened by a Musli m porter. The key has been held by the same Muslim family

for generations, since the Christians decided none of their co-religionists

could be trusted with the task.