Christians in the Holy Land respond to Israeli police restrictions during Easter celebrations
Christians in the Holy Land, after hundreds of years of celebrating Easter in Jerusalem as the most important and significant holy week for Christianity, are again being denied freedom of worship during this period by the Israeli occupation police. In response to these unilateral and discriminating Israeli actions, Palestinian Christian organizations in occupied East Jerusalem have initiated a legal process “to preserve the right to freely access our churches and shrines”. The legal actions on the Supreme Court level will be against everyone who is involved in this discriminatory policy, including the Israeli police and the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality.
Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Holy Fire Saturday, and Easter Sunday are the Holiest days celebrated in Jerusalem for Christians. The uniqueness of Holy Fire Saturday in Jerusalem has been celebrated as far back as 1106 AD. The celebrations have been governed for the past decades by the status quo of 1852 covering the processions within the boundaries of the Holy Sepulcher Church in addition to traditions by the local community and pilgrims in its vicinity. Tradition during this holy day claims the right for the local community to wait for the Holy fire on top of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate roof since for generations Palestinian Christians have been welcoming and making space for visiting pilgrims down in the plaza of the Holy Sepulcher.
The tradition also includes the right of local worshipers to reach St. Jacob’s Arab Orthodox Cathedral through the roof of the Orthodox Patriarchate to share the morning prayers of the Holy Saturday, including the sharing of the local community in the “Zaffeh” starting by the Christian Quarter, marching with the Arab Orthodox Priest of St. Jacob’s Cathedral and the head of the local community ending at the Holy Sepulcher. It is also known that the local Choir of St. Jacob’s and representatives of the traditional Jerusalemite Orthodox families are entitled to encircle the Holy Tomb. During the past 5 years all these arrangements have been jeopardized, minimized and made impossible due to the Israeli police restrictions implemented on the ground.
This month, when a debate has been initiated regarding the freedom of worship in Jerusalem due to the constant settler aggressions against Al Aqsa Mosque (Al Haram Al Sharif), and despite the fact that Israeli officials such as Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres have assured to international media that “only Israel” can keep freedom of religion in Jerusalem, Christians from the Holy Land denounced the Israeli discriminatory policies against their community. At the same time that Christians are denied, through road blocks in the old city, police presence with machine guns, as well as rude and hostile attitudes from police and Army officers, to freely exercise their religion, the Israeli occupying power allows Jews to freely access their temples, but imposes severe restrictions on the daily lives of Palestinians, including curfews and forced closures.
The group of Christians from the Holy Land thus calls upon the international community, and particularly the Christian world and civil society in general to put pressure on Israel to end the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem as well as, in this particular case, to stop limiting Holy Land Christians from exercising their basic religious rights.
The group of Palestinian Christians also greets the world with Easter blessings from Jerusalem, the city of the resurrection: "May God end the suffering of the Palestinian people; bring about justice to this troubled land and peace to the whole world".
