A 1,500-year-old community has risen up to defend its home in the Old City fearing that a land deal is a maneuver by Jewish ultranationalist organizations that is being covered up by the war in Gaza.

Although he lives nearby, Setrag Balian spent the night in a tent. He and other young Armenian activists take turns so that someone can raise the alarm if the bulldozers return to their neighborhood in the historic walled citadel of Jerusalem. It had already happened by surprise last November, when the war in Gaza monopolized the world’s attention.

Dozens of people, some armed and some with dogs, showed up at dawn to begin raising the ground in compliance with an opaque real estate operation. The result is that the normally the large parking lot that the patriarch and a priest agreed to lease for 98 years to an
Australian-Israeli businessman to build a luxury hotel.

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