The Israeli Police arrested November 15th three  Armenian Jerusalemites, including a 17-year-old minor. Two adult arrestees received a 15-day stay-away notice forbidding them to be within 50 meters of the Cows’ Garden. This followed a peaceful attempt by members of the Armenian community to stop attempts by an Australian-Israeli investor and people he appears to have hired to create facts on the ground in the Armenian quarter.

The Armenian Patriarchate published an “urgent communique” calling for support for Christian presence in Jerusalem and accusing the Israeli police of bias in their treatment of the Armenian community. The communique calls the current crisis over one-fourth of the Armenian quarter “an existential threat” of its 16-century history.”

The communique says that the Israeli police is supporting the efforts to destroy the parking lot by a controversial investor who has no permission from the municipality for his work. The communique says that the investor uses provocation instead of responding in a legal way to the decision by the Patriarch to cancel the land deal. See below the full communique

An incident report from the Save the ArQ movement noted that troubles began on November 15, at around 4:30 PM, when a motorcade of settlers on 4×4 vehicles and motorbikes, which were by all accounts sent by the Xana Capital representative George Warwar, encroached on the Cows’ Garden premises (Goverou Bardez).

The report said that “the entire Armenian community of Jerusalem surrounded the barricaded perimeter in order to stop the trespassers. The Israeli Police and IDF arrived on the scene and the settlers scattered, with only a few remaining on-site, in a malicious attempt to change facts on the ground.”

The outraged Armenian community attempted to peacefully – with neither any intention nor any directive to resort to any violence from community leaders — demand that the trespassers vacate the property belonging to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Instead of removing the trespassers, the Israeli police permitted a few settlers to continue their presence intended to possess the Armenian property. In response to the incursion, our community members — despite being asked to disperse — formed a human shield and peacefully urged the aggressors to vacate the Cows’ Garden.

In a related matter, the investigative unit at the New Arab has exposed the identity of one of the radical Israelis who participated in an earlier confrontation on behalf of the Australian-Israeli investor to be an associate of the racist Israeli minister of interior Itamar Ben Gvir. In a report published in the New Arab the investigative unit states:

“One individual present at the confrontation is an active member of the Israeli settlement movement. This individual is a US citizen who, in the past, has been put in ‘administrative detention’ in the aftermath of the Shefa-Amr terror attack of 2005.

Today, he describes himself as a “hilltop settlement activist”, and is involved in Israeli-proscribed settlement activities in the West Bank. The presence of armed settlers on the Armenian Patriarchate’s leased land represents a substantial escalation between the local residents and Xana Gardens Ltd, the company owned by Rothman which allegedly intends to build a hotel. It is noteworthy that the Armenian patriarch has submitted legal documents to the Israeli courts declaring that the controversial deal has been unilaterally canceled.

The Armenian Patriarchate had announced on November 3^rd that “a letter was sent on October 26, 2023, to Xana Gardens Ltd”, informing the latter that the July 2021 lease agreement was canceled.

Three days later on the night of November 4, confrontations between local residents opposed to the construction work and “armed guards” drew in a couple of hundred individuals, requiring police intervention.

Below is the incident report by Save the Armenian Quarter movement