Many first-time Jewish visitors to the Old City of Jerusalem walk through the Armenian Quarter without even realizing it as they head from the Jaffa Gate to the Western Wall. Teen tours cross from the Armenian Quarter into the Jewish Quarter to see the site of the 16th-century Hurva Synagogue, dynamited by the Jordanians upon their capture of the Old City in 1948.
Many Christian pilgrims bypass the Armenian Quarter as they visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from the Jaffa Gate or New Gate or follow the Via Dolorosa from the Lion’s Gate through the Muslim Quarter to the church that sits on the site of both the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.
In March 2020, the Armenian Patriarchate signed an agreement with the Municipality of Jerusalem to make a parking lot.
Today, plans to develop the Armenian Quarter threaten to upend the 0.05-square-mile neighborhood that occupies just one-sixth of the Old City. The root of the current dispute dates back nearly five years when, in March 2020, the Armenian Patriarchate signed an agreement with the Municipality of Jerusalem to make a parking lot with 90 spaces for Jewish Quarter residents and the rest for the Armenian Quarter residents. The following year, the Patriarchate agreed to a 98-year lease for 25 percent of the Armenian Quarter’s land to Xana Gardens, a joint Israeli-Emirati company. The leased area would include the Cows’ Garden, the Patriarchate’s private parking area and garden, Alex & Mary Manougian seminary hall, five residential homes, and a portion of the Patriarchate’s building.
The deal outraged Armenians, in Jerusalem and beyond. While it might be legal under Israeli law, there were several procedural problems on the Armenian side. The Patriarchate signed the lease without community knowledge and acted absent the approval of the Holy Synod, the Patriarchate’s executive body. Xana Gardens might say they had a signature from the Patriarchate, but it was a deal akin to a greeter at Home Depot selling the store absent the knowledge of its manager or owner. The Patriarchate’s bylaws require strict approvals for leases between 25 and 49 years and forbid any leases greater than 49 years.
In February 2024, Jerusalem’s Armenian community filed a lawsuit in the Jerusalem District Court, arguing that the lease is unlawful, both because the property was a religious endowment and because the Patriarchate lacked the authority to approve the sale. In September 2024, Xana Gardens filed a counterclaim against the Armenian community, and the court scheduled a trial for September 2025. The tension in the meantime has escalated repeatedly into violence between Armenians and Israeli Jews.
Israeli Jews may celebrate consolidation of control over the Old City after so many pogroms and Ottoman and Jordanian ethnic cleansing, but the Armenians were not the perpetrators of these actions.
The Israeli courts should void the lease not only for legal reasons, but for diplomatic and moral ones as well. If the Jerusalem Municipality accepts signatures from unqualified parties on lease deals and land sales, then it is only a matter of time before disreputable individuals without true authority over the structures in which they live will use the precedent to sell property to others. Diplomatically, states hostile to Jews would be happy to use the precedent to extort Jews to vacate their properties in Arab countries, Turkey, and Iran, or in West Bank cities like Hebron and Nablus. Irish and Norwegian anti-Semites might relish the opportunity to force the sales of synagogues and Jewish community centers. Israeli Jews may celebrate consolidation of control over the Old City after so many pogroms and Ottoman and Jordanian ethnic cleansing, but the Armenians were not the perpetrators of these actions and so should not pay the price for what Arabs or Turks did to the Jews of the Old City.
Across the Middle East, Christians are under threat. Only in Israel does the community thrive. As the Islamic Republic of Iran represses minorities directly and by proxy, as Turkey alongside Azerbaijan promotes renewed genocide against Armenians, as Turkey-backed Islamists in Syria threaten the Armenian community of Aleppo, and as other Arab states like Egypt museumify religious minorities, Israel should stand firm in solidarity with Christians under fire. The Jewish state should be confident enough in its legitimacy, sovereignty, and moral high ground to celebrate the Old City’s diversity, rather than undertake any actions that could endanger it. Israel’s policy should be that the Armenian Quarter should remain Armenian, no ifs, ands, or buts.
