Systemic land dispossession in Jerusalem: Patriarchate challenges Israeli state expansion under religious guise (150/150)
Original framing: “Greek Orthodox Patriarchate denounces Israeli seizure of church land in Jerusalem” — Middle East Eye
This conflict traces back to Ottoman land codes (1858), British Mandate policies (1920s-40s), and Israel's post-1948 land regimes, which systematically transferred Palestinian land to state or quasi-state actors. The 1950 Absentee Property Law, used to seize land from Palestinians displaced in 1948, set a precedent for today's seizures. The Patriarchate's lawsuit echoes 19th-century disputes where European powers intervened in Ottoman land affairs under the guise of protecting Christian minorities.
The Patriarchate's lawsuit lays bare the entangled histories of religious authority, colonial land regimes, and settler-colonial expansion in Jerusalem, where Ottoman waqf properties now face Israeli state seizure under the guise of 'development' or 'security.
' This is not an isolated religious dispute but a microcosm of a global pattern, from apartheid South Africa to Indigenous land struggles in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where state and corporate actors use legal fictions to dispossess marginalized communities. The Patriarchate's role is paradoxical: it resists state power while being a product of colonial-era entanglements, mirroring the trickster's duality of subversion and complicity. Systemic solutions require dismantling Israel's land regime—rooted in 1950s laws—and replacing it with communal land trusts that reflect Indigenous and waqf traditions, ensuring land is held in perpetuity for collective benefit. International legal pressure, grassroots land defense funds, and interfaith stewardship councils are critical to breaking the cycle of dispossession, but they must center the voices of Palestinian Christians and Muslims who have borne the brunt of this violence for decades.