Their flocks grazed there in the fourth century. It was a haven for Christian pilgrims and a sanctuary for those fleeing genocide at the hands of the Ottomans over 100 years ago. It’s the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, the smallest and most peaceful of the Old City’s divisions. Home to some 2,000 Armenians, it is one of the Holy Land’s most valuable pieces of real estate.
And unbeknownst to those who live and work there, it was up for sale. In 2021 Xana Capital Group, owned by Danny Rothman, an Australian-Israeli businessman, made a secret deal with the Armenian Christian patriarchate to lease a large section of the Armenian Quarter, including part of the Armenian Theological Seminary and several family homes. When the deal became public, the local community refused to remain silent, a priest who oversees the church’s real estate was defrocked, and Patriarch Nourhan Manougian’s leadership came under a cloud of suspicion.
“This is land that belongs to the Armenian community for centuries,” Levon Kalaydjian, a Jerusalem-born Armenian, said. “This does not belong to the patriarchate, nor is it for him, the patriarch, to do whatever he wants to do with it.”
Community protests came to their climax when, this past fall, dogs and bulldozers disturbed a sit-in at a site known as the Cow’s Garden which Rothman has chosen as the location for his latest hotel.
The Cow’s Garden is a much-valued location. The man who engineered the Armenian Genocide, Ottoman minister of war Enver Pasha, coveted the Cow’s Garden for a summer home over a century ago, while more recently, Jerusalem’s erstwhile mayor, Teddy Kollek, pressured several patriarchs to allow development. Their attempts, along with numerous investors, eager for the real estate, all failed until the 2021 secret deal with Xana.
A true sweetheart deal, it grants Xana the power to build a luxury hotel complex over not only the Cow’s Garden but the patriarch’s private garden and the seminary’s main hall, where nearly all of the community’s celebrations are held. The deal also allows Xana to renew the lease for another half century after the initial term is up, for a total of 98 years.
One of the world’s most valuable properties—all for the almost laughable pittance of $2 million and $300,000 rent per year—a price so paltry compared to other offers that its exposure elicited outcries of bribery and corruption
To make matters worse, very little is known about nor can be known about Xana, a Dubai-based company, due to the United Arab Emirates city’s secretive codes.
Then, belatedly, in October 2023—after two years of protest and pressure from the Armenian community—Patriarch Manougian canceled the deal, saying it was illegal because it had not been approved by the Synod of the Brotherhood of St. James.
Since the cancellation, the patriarchate has put out a statement emphasizing the danger to the Armenian character of the quarter, and Manougian himself has at times joined the protesters in the Cow’s Garden.
Kalaydjian summed up the community’s reaction to its patriarch’s tardy participation with a wry, “Better late than never.”
Meanwhile the dogs and bulldozers failed to intimidate the protesters. Neither did armed settler groups who, as protest leader Balian noted, “don’t even come from Jerusalem, or the Old City.”
“We’re a 1,700-year-old presence at least in the Old City,” Balian continued. “We are not ready to give up just at the presence of armed people or bulldozers.”
Balian hopes for a solution where the community is included in any major decisions and for the Armenian community to stick together. “For us, it doesn’t even matter if it’s settlers or not, or if it’s Jews or Muslims or others. Our goal is to keep that land Armenian.”
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