AS The bells sounded through the courtyard of the Holy Sepulcher church, the priests began to sing a deep and low prayer. The heads bowed above the candles and escorted by people with large gold crossings, they headed for a platform in the heart of the old place.
The ceremony on Holy Thursday, in which the Greek Patriarch Orthodox of Jerusalem washes the feet of 12 monastic priests to commemorate the last supper, is one of the many Easter rituals which took place in the ancient city of Jerusalem for hundreds of years. For Christians, there is no healthier place to commemorate Easter than here, the site where they believe that Jesus Christ has been crucified, buried and risen.
However, the crowd that gathered in front of the church of the Holy Sepulcher Thursday morning was small and silent. International pilgrims jostled with Greek Greek monks with a black dress, but a group of native worshipers was significantly absent.
For generations, the tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians living in the villages and cities of West Bank occupied by Israeli like Ramallah, Bethlehem and Taybeh would go to the old town of Jerusalem at Easter to participate in prayers, procedures and rituals such as the Holy Fire ceremony. The Holy Sepulcher church itself is found in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel of Jordan in the 1967 six-day war and annexed unilaterally in 1980.
However, centuries of tradition have been broken by the increasingly draconian control of Israel on the Palestinian movement – which means that all Palestinian in the West Bank living outside Jerusalem must obtain a military permit if they want to enter the city. For years, Christians from the Palestinian territories have regularly obtained permits to visit Jerusalem in Easter, but since the war with Hamas broke out on October 7, 2023, they became almost impossible to obtain.
This Easter, the government announced that it had issued 6,000 permits, although there are 50,000 Christians – mainly Catholic or Orthodox Greek – living in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. However, in reality, only 4,000 were given, according to Christian leaders, and often only to a few members of each family who applied.
These permits are valid for only a week and do not allow Palestinian pilgrims to stay in Jerusalem during the night, which means that they must make the journey exhausting in the Bus or Taxi – crossing a multitude of army control points – every evening, limiting the festivities in which they may not participate. valid permit.
The few who go to the old town have encountered increased police brutality in recent years. In April 2023, Palestinian Christian worshipers and international pilgrims were beaten by Israeli police and the armed forces when they were trying to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
“People are very afraid and many will no longer risk attending Easter processions,” said Omar Haramy, who directs Sabeel, a Christian organization based in Jerusalem. He said that several staff members were beaten last year when they were trying to attend Easter festivities in the old town, and Christians in the old town regularly faced hostility outside the churches or making their daily life.
One of the largest sources of distress among the Christian community is the introduction of aggressive blockages and police services that have prevented thousands of Christians from participating in the holy fire festivities that mark the resurrection on Saturday afternoon of Easter, as they have done for hundreds of years in the old town.
Although the restrictions have been justified in the name of security, many Christians consider them another way for the Israeli State to exercise domination over the community.
“I’m going to go to celebrations on Holy Saturday because my family has been part of this tradition for thousands of years, but I’m not going to bring my children, it’s too dangerous now, with police violence,” said Haramy.
The Gaza spectrum is also hung on this year’s Easter festivities. Palestinian Christians are among the 51,000 people killed in Gaza since the start of the war with Israel and on Sunday of the branches, an Israeli missile struck the only hospital led by Christians in the Strip. About 500 Christians are housed in the Church of Sainte-Famille, one of only two on the left. People contacted by the Guardian said they were too afraid to speak, fearing everything that could make it a target of Israeli air strikes.
Despite all its biblical importance and its abundance of churches, convents and monasteries, the old town of Jerusalem has become more and more dangerous for all Christians, not only those of Arab circles. Since the rise of Jewish ultra -nationalism in Israel, and the election of the most extreme right government in the history of the country, the extremist and colonist Jewish movements – which want to claim all the territories of Israel and the Palestinians as a state only for the Jews – have been embraced in their actions against Christians and Muslims.
Historically, the relationship between Christians and Jews was heavy, due to the historical role of the Christian Church in anti -Semitism and the persecution of the Jews. The current presence of proselytizing evangelical Christians, many of the United States, which go to Israel with the sole purpose of converting the Jews, was also inflammatory, in particular among the Jewish Orthodox community.
But religious intolerance and antichristian feeling were carried out by the Israeli political leadership – the ultra -duretity minister of national security, Itamar Ben -Gvir, described the Israelis spitting Christians as “an old Jewish tradition” – and old suspicions have turned into brutality, as total violence. There have also been growing incidents of groups of settlers who tried to grasp Christian lands in Jerusalem. In 2023, the Roman Catholic patriarch of the Holy Land Pierbattista Pizzaballa accused the government of establishing a “cultural and political atmosphere which can justify or tolerate actions against Christians”.
A recent Rossing Center report for Education and Dialogue has documented the sharp increase in the scale and the severity of attacks against Christians in Jerusalem and through Israel in 2024, going to spit priests and public hatred speech to the desecration of tombs, fire crises and the vandalization of churches.
“It is generally the young Israeli Jewish men who lead these attacks with impunity. They face very few punishments, if the police get involved, “said John Munayer, director of international engagement at the Rossing Center.
“It is a clear attempt at the Zionists of the hardcore settlers to judge the old town of Jersualem and to try to make it unbearable for Christians who have been there for centuries.”
While attending the Easter prayer ceremony on Thursday, Father Nikon Golovko, the deputy chief of the Russian ecclesiastical mission in Jerusalem, said that he had “really seen things change for the worst for Christians in the past nine years”.
He said: “We receive much more hostility and even assault from the Jewish community. They spit priests, even when we cross the Christian district. This sends a message that the city does not belong to all communities but only to the Jews. It was not like that before.”
After an incident in which the Orthodox Jews were taken on video spitting Christians, the office of Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was “totally determined to protect the sacred right of worship and pilgrimage to the holy sites of all confessions”.
Xavier Abu Eid, Palestinian Christian political analyst and author of Palestine: Palestinian Christians and struggle for national liberation 1917-2004, said that despite the harassment of assembly with which they have been confronted, the decreasing number of Christians left in the western shore and the relentless horrors of the war in Gaza, he still considered the case The life of war.
“As Palestinian Christians, we know that this generation will do it or break it,” said Abu Eid.
“So, clearly to the Israeli occupation that we will remain, that we will celebrate the same religious events that we have been celebrating for centuries is both a national mandate and a religious mission that we have. Keep our Christian traditions alive, pray – they have become an act of resistance. ”
