Easter week — the other snapshots of the Holy City

Christians, Muslims were unable to enter city after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

Omar Karmi

Jordan Times, Thursday, April 15, 2004

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Anywhere else in the world it would have been an unseemly melee. But in the Old City of Jerusalem, the sight of robed Armenian youths scuffling with robed Assyrian youths at the entrance to Christianity's holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, just seemed par for the course.

Easter has just passed in Jerusalem, and a city already groaning under multiple strains was visited by a whole new set of complications.

There were the thousands of tourists that, despite reams of travel warnings, descended upon the Old City, much to the elation of shopkeepers in the midst of a fourth lean year.

There was the coincidence with the Jewish Passover holiday, bringing suited and extravagantly hatted Orthodox Jews into the streets along with the robed monks and covered nuns of all denominations.

Some tourists carried large wooden crosses on Good Friday to emulate the last day of Jesus Christ. Orthodox Jews carried the Torah. In the background, the sounds of ringing church bells mixed with the calls to prayer from the mosques.

But the multiethnic Technicolour appearance of inter-religious tranquillity was only that. Jews walked in groups accompanied by armed guards. Muslim men under 45 were barred from Friday prayers at the Aqsa Mosque, and on April 9, Good Friday for Christians, they prayed instead outside the walls of the Old City in front of Damascus Gate.

Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem and Ramallah were largely unable to enter Jerusalem due to the closure enforced by the Israeli army since the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and tightened during the Passover holiday. Palestinian Muslims, needless to say, had no chance.

Meanwhile, Christians of various denominations are locked in a continual battle over control of the Holy Sepulchre and other sites that are held in uneasy check by the so-called Status Quo, based on agreement between the denominations reached back in 1767. The result is that processions and ceremonies are very tightly regulated, and any deviation is pounced on by other denominations.

April 10 marked the biggest day on the Orthodox calendar, the Day of the Holy Fire, traditionally believed to be the day of resurrection, and protocol is observed at every turn. The entrance to the Holy Sepulchre is divided into two. On the left, Armenians, Assyrians and the Copts enter in that order in their respective processions, the Armenians, entrusted with the responsibility to open the doors of the church on this day in the year alone, also guarding the doors. The right, meanwhile, is reserved for the Arab and Greek Orthodox processions, which entered in that order. Anyone not respecting the order, or not part of the congregations, will be turned away, probably the cause of the above-mentioned melee.

The height of the Holy Fire ceremony comes when a light is passed by the Greek patriarch and an Armenian bishop from inside the supposed Tomb of Christ to members of their respective congregations waiting outside the tomb, the Armenians on the north side and the Greeks on the south. The light gets passed on to the other orthodox communities and is taken to other Palestinian cities including Bethlehem and Ramallah — that is if they are allowed across the checkpoints — and by private plane to Greece and Russia. The light, of course, signifies the resurrection, and how it is lit is a secret.

But here too there is controversy. The Greek Orthodox believe they should have exclusive access to the Tomb on this day, and this year it took intervention from the Israeli authorities to maintain the status quo and ensure that an Armenian bishop gained entrance as per tradition. The controversy is an old one, and some think it is the friction between the two clergymen that creates the spark for the candles.

Even tourists are not immune or spared the idiosyncrasies of this city. One moneychanger on the Via Dolorosa, traditionally believed to be the route Jesus carried the cross, did not seem too concerned with garnering business. On a newly printed sign hung prominently outside the door of his shop, he had written: “All currencies welcome, EXCEPT the USA dollar. We do not exchange the money of the people who kill our prophets.”

A small group of young American-sounding tourists paused outside the shop for a while, looking somewhat taken aback. Soon they regained their composure, however, and started snapping away with their cameras.

A Polish tourist outside the Garden Tomb on Nablus Road — believed by some to be the true site of the crucifixion (as opposed to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre) — lost his composure with a persistent postcard salesman who apparently saw no reason why carrying a large, wooden cross across town on a hot, sunny day should preclude one from wanting to buy postcards.

Had it not been for the intervention of other cross-bearers, that point might have been made in a rather un-Christian manner.

Not exactly the stoic example set by Jesus, at least not as depicted by Mel Gibson in his movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” But then, anyone hoping to have watched the movie in Jerusalem over Easter would have been disappointed. While, contrary to some reports, the movie has not been banned in Israel, no Israeli distributor has picked it up, and as a result it has not been shown in the cinemas.

That is not to say it can't be seen. DVD copies are widely available in the Old City shops, and, according to one shopkeeper, they are selling like hot bread. One East Jerusalem hotel based its Easter charity drive around charging to show the movie (and raised around two-thirds of their target of $1,800 that way), but advertised only through Christian missions and word-of-mouth.

With no theatre licence, an illegally copied DVD sent from the US by a friend of the deacon of a local church, and under the impression that the film had been banned by the Israeli authorities, the manager was adamant that neither his name nor the name of the hotel be mentioned, lest he incur a penalty.

As for the film, on April 8 only four people were in the audience, three of them journalists.

The fourth, Irene, a born-again Christian from Bulgaria, declared herself “inspired” when she was encountered 24 hours later at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. “I have been filled with the spirit all day,” she said, “except for a brief period when I needed a rest.”

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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