Eastern Rite Dispute Over Cleaning of Nativity Church Worries Israel

As thousands of Latin rite Christians prayed here Wednesday for peace on earth, Israeli authorities worried about religious war clouds threatening next week’s scheduled cleaning of the Church of the Nativity for Orthodox Christmas celebrations.

Intense negotiations have so far failed to resolve a dispute between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox communities over which will have the privilege of cleaning a small section of the northern wall of the 1,600-year-old church, which was built over the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born.

Last year the same argument touched off a club- and chair-swinging melee between Greek Orthodox and Armenian clergymen, which was broken up only after the intervention of Israeli troops.

The dispute is one of many stemming from the complicated relations of about 70 Christian churches and denominations represented in the Holy Land. The conflicts tend to flare around the time of the two great Christian feasts--Christmas and Easter--when the various sects focus simultaneously on the sacred places that all revere.

And since 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank lands where those holy places are situated, it has been up to the Jewish state to mediate the Christian disputes.

“We inherited a box with broken eggs,” said one Israeli official familiar with the situation. “These are ancient rivalries--inter-Christian sensitivities that Jews are responsible to handle.”

A dispute over the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem--said to be standing over the site both of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified, and the tomb where his body was interred afterward--was reputedly a proximate cause of the 19th Century Crimean War.

The Turks got so fed up with the religious bickering during their rule here that, in 1852, they pushed through the so-called “status quo” agreement that was to have settled the basic questions of which sect holds sway at various times and locations.

The agreement was reaffirmed several times, and was enshrined most recently in the Cust Memorandum, a 1929 document named for the district officer for Jerusalem under the League of Nations mandate extending British rule to Palestine. Israel continues to oversee the holy places according to the guidelines in that 56-year-old memorandum.

The general guidelines don’t always suffice, however, when circumstances change or institutional sensitivities become aroused.

“Things do get down to centimeters in this issue,” said Daniel Rossing, director of the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry’s Department of Christian Communities. “Who hangs an icon? Who places a lamp?”

The dispute between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox communities over the section of Nativity Church wall here goes back at least a century, Rossing said.

Spokesmen for the two communities, by mutual agreement, refused to comment on their differences. However, Rossing said that the dispute centers on a 50-square-foot section of upper wall in the north apse of the church. The apse is one of the few areas of the edifice where the Armenian Orthodox and Latin communities have any rights in what is, under the “status quo” agreement, basically a Greek Orthodox church.

“The cleaning is not a real cleaning, but an expression of political rights,” said an Israeli official who requested anonymity. “It’s unimportant whether or not a certain wall is dirty; what is important is who will put the broom to it.”

On the appointed cleaning day last year, Rossing said, “civil authorities who were present discovered that the respective sides had brought in additional manpower. They literally had clubs, pipes, and broken bottles.”

The Israeli authorities kept the lay reinforcements out, but a brawl nonetheless erupted inside the church, involving about 25 Armenian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox clergymen.

This year’s ceremonial cleaning has been tentatively set for Dec. 31, prior to Greek Orthodox Christmas celebrations scheduled for Jan. 6 and 7, and Armenian Orthodox holiday services slated for Jan. 18 and 19.

“The various churches are still negotiating the matter,” Rossing said.

Other Israeli officials said that talks between lower level officials have failed to reach a solution, and last weekend the patriarchs of the two Orthodox communities entered the negotiations directly. Another meeting is scheduled for today.

These sources said that the Armenians appeared willing to compromise either by skipping the disputed wall section or having the Israeli authorities clean it. However, one official added: “Any compromise is interpreted by the Greek Orthodox as a concession, because they feel that practically all of the church is theirs.”

In any event, Rossing promised, “I’m sure we will be standing by (at this holiday’s ritual cleaning) watching very carefully to nip anything in the bud.”

And Bethlehem’s Christian Arab mayor, Elias Freij, said, “I will personally attend the cleaning to ensure that there is no violence. I believe they cannot repeat what happened last year. I condemned them, and they received very bad publicity in the international media.”