Christians celebrated Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, facing an increasing struggle to maintain their status in the Holy City in the face of the expansion of Jewish settlements and repeated acts of violence.
Hundreds attended the traditional procession on the Mount of Olives with palm fronds and olive branches that celebrates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week.
“In Easter, we celebrate the feast of love and life. My wish to all is that love and life can determine our life more than the violence we are living,” the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said after mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.
The past year has seen a marked increase in tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank with a tough Israeli crackdown imposed following a spate of deadly attacks by Palestinians in Israel.
Christians in Jerusalem have also complained of increasing violence in recent months, particularly since the formation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious government at the start of the year, seeing it as part of a wider threat to their place in Jerusalem.
Israel has said it maintains the status quo of holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, where some of the holiest sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims sit virtually side by side, but Christian leaders have voiced growing alarm.
Read the article by Henriette Chacar in Sight Magazine.