JERUSALEM’S DIVIDING LINES
Canberra Times, Australia
November 28, 2007 Wednesday
H is Beatitude, Theophilus III, "Patriarch of the Holy City of
Jerusalem and all Palestine, Syria, beyond the Jordan River, Cana
of Galilee, and Holy Zion" to give him his full and ancient title is
nothing if not hospitable.
He interrupts an interview in the tranquil stone-built Greek Orthodox
patriarchate in the heart of the Old City’s Christian quarter to offer
his visitors a tot of excellent 40-year-old Moldovan cognac. He is
justly proud of the Church’s venerable history here, dating back to
Byzantine times. In the wall of his wood-panelled first- floor office
there is a copy of the historic document given to his seventh-century
predecessor Sophronius by Omar Ibn al Khattab, the Second Caliph of
Islam, after his bloodless conquest of Jerusalem in 637 and promising
the protection of the holy places. With the Greek Orthodox Church well
known, among many other things, for being one of the biggest landowners
in the Holy Land, the patriarchate is, in the present incumbent’s own
words, "one of the largest and most powerful institutions in the land
… a state within a state". Yet not all has been well within the
cloistered calm of the patriarchate, thanks to a row with profound
ecclesiastical, financial, and above all political overtones. Two
years ago Theophilus was elected by a convincing majority of the synod
which had earlier deposed his predecessor, Irinaeus, in an atmosphere
of political scandal over property deals made on his watch.
But Irinaeus refused to go quietly. Maintaining that the patriarchate
is still rightfully his, Irinaeus remains holed up in an apartment
inside the building, guarded by armed Israeli police, together
with what his successor describes as "two or three monks totally
excommunicated from the patriarchate".
Moreover, as Theophilus explains, "our bank accounts are frozen" so
that money due to the patriarchate "is impossible for us to receive
in our own name. It has to go through other channels." Recently, a
senior police officer was called to the patriarchate when Theophilus’s
lawyers tried to execute a court order seeking to enter the apartment
occupied by his predecessor, to make an inventory of icons, documents
and other valuables held by Irinaeus which they argue belong to the
institution. But despite several hours of argument they were not
allowed to do so and the order was reversed by the same judge. Then
the Jerusalem District Court deferred a hearing on an appeal by
Theophilus’s lawyers. These unholy wars arise because for two years
after his election, the Government of Israel unlike those of Greece and
Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority has not recognised Theophilus
as the Patriarch. Theophilus says that "the White House recognised
us from the outset. I have received a very nice letter from President
[George W.] Bush signed by himself." Last month he declared that the
Government of Israel had "for the first time interfered in the inner
functioning and administration of a spiritual institution and tried
directly and indirectly to determine who is going to be the spiritual
leader of the Church and the community". Though he is, at times,
coy about using the word, Theophilus’s basic charge is that for two
years attempts have been made to blackmail him into completing and
approving the "unfulfilled" and in political terms radioactively
sensitive deals made during the tenure of his predecessor.
Last month, he detailed his complaints about his treatment by Israel
which he has described as a "humiliation and ridiculousness" at a
meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her last
trip to Jerusalem. It now looks as if Theophilus’s travails may
finally be reaching an end. A committee chaired by Israeli cabinet
minister Rafi Eitan has now made a landmark recommendation that
he should be recognised as Patriarch. The police stance shows that
the story is by no means over. But the Prime Minister’s Office has
indicated that subject to checks by government lawyers it is likely
that the cabinet will decide as Eitan has advised. It and the United
States consulate will not confirm what the Patriarch’s allies firmly
believe, namely that the path to his final recognition was cleared
after irresistible pressure from Rice. But either way the whole episode
sheds unusual light on the extraordinary determination of right-wing
Jewish settler groups to make inroads into Arab quarters of the Old
City. Rice had reason for concern. If it were to go through it would
have the potential to affect any future division between Arab and
Jewish neighbourhoods in the Old City. The properties involved are
on the north, and Arab, side of the wide road linking the Jaffa Gate
with the heart of the Old City. They include the Imperial Hotel,
which, while it has seen better days since General Edmund Allenby
stood on one of its still impressive wrought-iron balconies after
taking the city from the Turks in 1917, remains one of the area’s
landmarks. It has been leased from the Church since the 1940s by the
Dijanis, a long-established Palestinian Jerusalem family. In August
2004, however, Nicholas Papadimas, a finance officer who had been
given power of attorney by Irinaeus, negotiated a deal with Israeli
interests notably including, Theophilus says, Ateret Cohanim, the
Jewish settler organisation most associated with acquisition of
property in Arab sectors of Jerusalem.
When the negotiations were reported by Maariv in March 2005,
outrage spread rapidly among Irinaeus’s mainly Israeli-Arab flock
even though the then Patriarch maintained and still maintains that
he knew nothing of the transactions and that Papadimas, a high liver
with an expensive taste in cigars and cars who had by now disappeared,
had only been authorised to lease a single store.
Reflecting anger among junior clergy and laity, the synod convened
two months later and deposed Irinaeus. Theophilus maintains that
he swiftly came under pressure to approve the deal which led to the
downfall of his predecessor. The convulsions in the Greek Orthodox
Church are hardly simple, of course. Earlier this year the Jordanian
Government threatened its approval of Theophilus’s appointment and
demanded clarification of land deals in which the Church appeared to
be still involved. But it dropped the threat after receiving written
assurances from the Patriarch.
Meanwhile Irinaeus is fighting a determined rearguard court action,
arguing that he himself strongly resisted pressure to ratify them
once they came to light despite at least one lawyer representing
settlers threatening to put a "nuclear bomb" in the patriarchate
unless he agreed. But Theophilus now seems in no doubt that the task of
extricating the Church from the fallout of "Jaffagate" while preserving
its independence is with him. "The partiarchate has been dragged into
a political conflict and because of a crisis of leadership became
involved in things that were not for the patriarchate." Some allies of
Theophilus who still profess anxiety that the Eitan committee decision
may not spell an end to the story believe a key reason for the hold-up
after the end of Ariel Sharon’s premiership was to press him into also
ratifying a separate "non-ideological" land transaction with the Church
at Beit Shemesh, in which lawyer Uri Messer represented the purchasers.
Messer has denied trying to hold up Theophilus’s recognition. (To
add an entirely separate complication to the saga of Greek Orthodox
land transactions, two Israeli businessmen Yaacov Rabinowitz and
David Morgenstern, have been convicted of defrauding the Church of
$US20million ($A22.9million) by making bogus land deals seven years
ago). But it is Jaffa Gate which is of real international interest.
The idea that elements in the Israeli Government may have previously
supported the settlers’ cause something which Danny Seidemann,
an Israeli lawyer who has long contested Jewish settlement in Arab
parts of Jerusalem has "no doubt" is the case was arguably especially
sensitive in the run-up to the upcoming Annapolis Middle East summit.
While in any peace deal Jews would require what Seidemann calls "an
iron-clad guarantee" to use the route from the Jaffa Gate through
the Armenian Quarter to the Jewish Quarter with freedom and safety,
the strategic purpose may be to create a new Jewish "contiguity"
between the Jaffa Gate and the Jewish Quarter which would disturb
the delicate (but functioning) separation of Arab and Jewish quarters.
Nor will settler designs on Arab buildings in the Old City end with
Theophilus’s recognition.
"If you throw them out of the window they come under the lintel of
the door," Seidemann says. "The stake which will go through the
heart of the settlers has not been invented." The patriarch has
repeatedly stressed that he is not a politician, but he says the
patriarchate’s extensive landownership, not least in the Christian
Arab quarter behind the Imperial, is "why those who have their own
interests and want to bring about changes in the natural demography
of Jerusalem, the physical demography of Jerusalem, try and do this
through the patriarchate". While stressing that the $2.3million Jaffa
Gate transaction could yet wind up in the courts, and that he will
always honour properly reached agreements with any party, he adds,
"This is a legal matter and it should be dealt with legally. I
am the wrong man for certain people because they had other plans
in mind and they were not fulfilled." But he also sees the Church
as having a "moral responsibility to leave the city as it is, and
this has always been our policy". Recording that the city’s historic
role has been as a "meeting place for Jews, Christians and Muslims",
he says that part of the "beauty and greatness of Jerusalem" is that
"it should be an example of coexistence, and an example of religious
and cultural diversity". It seems that Theophilus has won a crucial
battle, but not yet the war.