Members of the small Christian community in Jerusalem’s Old City described being under pressure in recent weeks from what they say is growing harassment and intimidation from violent Jewish ultra-nationalists.
Earlier this month, a man identified by church authorities as a Jewish radical was detained after he allegedly vandalized a statue of Jesus in the Church of Flagellation – where Christ is held to have taken the cross after being condemned to death by crucifixion.
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A Christian man carries a cross along the Via Dolorosa ahead of the Good Friday procession in Jerusalem's Old City
(Photo: AP / Maya Alleruzzo)
"This is the church commemorating the suffering of Jesus, and exactly here, doing that is something very bad, very bad," said Father Eugenio Alliata.
That incident followed a series of others, including one in which graffiti reading "Death to Armenians" and "Death to Christians" were scrawled in Hebrew on the walls of the Armenian Convent of Saint James, last month. Israeli police said they stepped up patrols around Christian sites in the holy city.
"Since the beginning of the new government, attacks like this are becoming very, very usual," said Miran Krikorian, a restaurant owner in the Old City. "And the problem is that we are feeling that there's nothing we can do about it."
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Christian clerics hand out olive branches to residents of the Old City of Jerusalelm
(Photo: Reuters)
The cramped warren of alleyways that makes up the Old City surrounds some of the holiest sites for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and the local communities have long-developed ways of living together.
As well as the statue defacement, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said there had been at least four other reported incidents of vandalism or violent harassment.
In one case, a group of religious Jews threw chairs and tables around an area near the headquarters of the Custody of the Holy Land, creating a "battleground" in the Christian quarter. In another, a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem was vandalized, it said.