Nuns in W. Bank Stand Ground in Turf Battle

The nun looked out through the barred gate of a Russian Orthodox monastery here and tried to explain why she and an American colleague have been holed up inside for nearly two weeks, refusing to leave.

“It’s about the land here and why our church should get to keep it,” Sister Xenia Cesena, 35, of San Francisco said this week through the gate. “But it’s also about religious freedom. It’s a high principle for us to stand for.”

Cesena and Sister Maria Stephanopoulos--a 40-year-old New Yorker whose brother, George, is a former White House aide--are members of the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church, an offshoot created by exiles from the 1917 Russian Revolution. The nuns are trying to stop the transfer of the monastery to the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow. The two churches have never reconciled despite the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

As befits such a tale from this divided land, this is a tangled dispute that centers on a patch of ground. But it is also a fight by the rival churches for power, property and standing in the Holy Land, a battle that dates back more than eight decades. Attempts by officials from Russia, the United States and the Palestinian Authority, which controls Jericho, to negotiate a compromise have failed.

Located about two miles from the biblical Mount of Temptation, where Christian tradition holds that Satan tempted Jesus, the three-acre property is known as the Jericho Garden Monastery. The onetime rest stop for pilgrims contains a small chapel dating back to about the 6th century but is known more for its garden of date palms and oranges. It is not considered a major holy site.

On Jan. 15, Palestinian police acting on orders from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat seized the property without warning and evicted its four resident monks, all members of the New York offshoot. Palestinian officials say Arafat was responding to requests from the more powerful Moscow church and Russian officials.

The Palestinians say a formal request for the property--backed by documents appearing to show ownership--was made by Russian Patriarch Alexi II on Jan. 7 during a visit to the Holy Land with former Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

“It is clearly not an accident that this is occurring now, when the patriarch and Yeltsin were just here,” said Daniel Rossing, the former director of the department of Christian communities in Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. “The [exiled] church has gradually been losing control of its properties here as the Moscow church gets the upper hand.”

Shortly after the police moved in, Stephanoupoulos, who runs a girls’ school in a village outside Jerusalem, staged a protest in the street outside the monastery. After negotiations by U.S. consular representatives, she was allowed onto the grounds. Cesena was later allowed to join her.

The two women are sharing the compound with several representatives from the Moscow church and with Palestinian police guards. Their conditions are primitive--the nuns are sleeping in an unfurnished shed--but the two women say their treatment has been “adequate.”

Russian diplomats would not comment on the dispute. Representatives of the Moscow church did not return calls.

Palestinian officials, who have been surprised by the dispute and the publicity generated, say the whole thing has become a headache. In an effort to find a solution, Arafat is expected to consult with Russian and U.S. officials this weekend at the World Economic Summit in Switzerland.

“We are trying our best to find our way out,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian Cabinet minister. “But each side is using every amount of pressure it can, with one using the Russian government and the other using the American government.”

But officials of the exiled church, which lost control of a similar property in the city of Hebron two years ago, insist that they are the rightful owners of the Jericho monastery and say they do not intend to give it up. If they do so, they say, they fear that their properties in Jerusalem could be targeted.

For now, Cesena said she and Stephanopoulos intend to stay in the monastery until at least a temporary solution is found. But even if they are forced to leave, Cesena said, they will have accomplished a major goal: “We will know before God that we have stood up and fought for what we believe.”