Jews who have been occupying a complex of buildings in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City claimed Tuesday that they have complied with a court order to evacuate the buildings, which are owned by the Greek Orthodox Church.
But while the firestorm of protests that erupted when 150 Jewish religious activists moved into St. John’s Hospice on April 11 has simmered down, it has not died.
There was no independent confirmation Tuesday that the Jewish activists had actually fulfilled the terms set by the High Court of Justice last Thursday when it gave them until May 1 to vacate.
The activists, many of them students at the Ateret Cohanim and Mercaz Harav yeshivot, were ordered out pending a lower court’s ruling on the validity of their lease, which they obtained through SBS, a Panamanian-registered company. The lease has been challenged by the Greek Orthodox Church.
The justices, nevertheless, allowed up to 20 representatives of the company to stay on for “maintenance and security” purposes.
According to Shmuel Evyater, a spokesman for the Jews who occupied the building, most of the families departed over the weekend. But none was seen leaving, and since neither church representatives nor the news media were admitted to the buildings Tuesday, it was impossible to verify the number of people who remained.
Evyater said a representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate would be permitted to enter “under agreement with the settlers, as is customary between a landlord and his tenants.”
The Greek Church, however, does not recognize the Jewish group as its tenants. It maintains that the lease was fraudulently obtained from the legitimate tenant, an Armenian businessman who was paid $3.5 million, about half of it supplied clandestinely by the Likud government.
14 MORE SETTLEMENTS PROPOSED
The Jews made no secret that their intention was to establish a Jewish presence in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, which traditionally has been segregated according to religious faiths.
The move, which coincided with the holy days before Easter, drew worldwide condemnation, even from friends of Israel in the United States.
But defiance of world opinion and a drive to plant Jewish settlements in disputed areas apparently is considered politically advantageous by the Likud caretaker regime, which is courting the right-wing and the ultra-Orthodox parties to form a new governing coalition.
New provocation is expected from a massive ceremony planned by Jewish settlers for the installation of a Torah at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus on Thursday. Nablus is the largest Arab city in the West Bank and a focal point of the 28-month-old Palestinian uprising.
The ceremonies will be held under the protection of Israel Defense Force troops. Several right-wing Knesset members are expected to attend, and possibly the minister for religious affairs, Zevulun Hammer.
The Peace Now movement plans a protest demonstration nearby.
The impetus for Likud’s settlement drive is credited to Michael Dekel, an activist recently appointed adviser to the prime minister. With no dovish coalition partner to keep the settlement drive in check, Likud has given Dekel a free hand.
The settlement issue is high on the agenda of Likud’s coalition talks with the far right. An understanding is believed to have been reached that a Likud-led regime will proceed immediately with 14 new settlements, approved by the former Likud-Labor coalition but never built.
They include one to be called Tirza, which was vetoed by former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin because of its proximity to Nablus.
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