Judge Orders Eviction of Jewish Group : Jerusalem: Appeals panel opens the way for ouster by overturning a lower court stay.

A judge Tuesday ordered a nationalist Jewish group to vacate a building in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City this morning, less than a week after the group’s presence had triggered religious and ethnic unrest in the historic neighborhood.

The order followed a ruling by an appeals court that overturned a delay in a court-ordered eviction. The building is owned by the Greek Orthodox Church, and church officials were enraged by the takeover, which began last Wednesday.

Lawyers for the Jewish group, the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva (seminary), were still trying to appeal the ruling on the grounds that they needed time to take the issue to the Supreme Court, government radio said today.

“The judges have canceled the stay. They must be evicted,” said Avraham Sochozolsky, a lawyer for the church.

David Ben-Ami, one of the yeshiva members, told Army Radio: “We will obey any order and law of the state of Israel that unquestioningly obligates us without any tricks. With us they won’t need police or force.”

Ateret Cohanim is dedicated to setting up Jewish enclaves throughout the walled Old City, which is divided into four traditional neighborhoods: Jewish, Muslim, Armenian and Christian. The group originally said that it had bought the Christian Quarter building outright. The sprawling 72-room structure is a run-down, turn-of-the-century hotel called the Hospice of St. John.

Yeshiva spokesmen later said they were “guests” of a Panamanian-registered company that had bought up a long-term lease and is running the building as a hotel. The seller, an Armenian Old City resident, has kept out of sight.

Last Thursday, a day after the Israelis moved in under armed escort, the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Diodorus I, led a protest march that broke up in chaos when police sprayed tear gas on the demonstrators. The commotion brought charges of carpetbagging and police abuse from Greek church officials. Members of the yeshiva denounced their opponents for “horrifying anti-Semitism.”

Israeli Religious Affairs Minister Zevulun Hammer visited the site Tuesday and appealed for calm. He took the view that the conflict is purely legal, hinging on who has the right to occupy the building, and that it should not be blown up into a religious battle.

“This is a civil problem, not one of religion,” Hammer said. “Every citizen of Jerusalem has the right to live wherever he buys property, according to the law.”

There has been much speculation about the origin of the money used to buy the lease--reported to have cost anywhere from $3.5 million to $5 million. Ateret Cohanim member Shmulik Evyatar, who held a press conference at the building Monday, said the donors wished to remain anonymous “for obvious reasons.”

Israeli newspapers reported that the government has set aside funds to buy up Old City property outside the Jewish Quarter. Some of the money had been willed by deceased Israelis expressing the wish to enhance the city.

Sources in the Armenian Quarter said that officials from the Housing Ministry have been canvassing the neighborhood to look for sellers.

Despite efforts to confine the issue to law, the yeshiva’s selection of a site in the Christian Quarter touched several nerves.

Teddy Kollek, the city’s mayor, has criticized the occupation.

The Old City, which contains shrines holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, has long been bedeviled by campaigns of various faiths to muscle each other aside. For the past century, the city has been ruled by an informal agreement to freeze the disparate communities in place, a status quo that has been buffeted by war, civil conflict and population growth.