Standing on a balcony at the New Imperial Hotel, overlooking Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, 75-year-old Walid Dajani last week declared a one-man war on Jewish settlers.
Officials from Israel’s supreme court had served an eviction notice against Dajani following a ruling last month that the disputed 2005 sale of the historic 40-room hotel to a radical settler group was valid. The Jewish settlers’ organisation Ateret Cohanim immediately branded him “a squatter” and threatened to seize the building. Such a move would establish a strategically valuable settler presence just inside Jaffa Gate, the main entrance to the ancient city’s Christian Quarter.
According to Dajani, the settlers – who seek to create a Jewish majority throughout the Old City which, along with East Jerusalem, was annexed by Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 – are enacting “the rape of Jaffa Gate”. His family has owned land on nearby Mount Zion for 800 years, and has run the New Imperial since 1949. “From this moment I am embarking on the fight of my life,” he said, calling on Christians, Muslims, Jews and world leaders to fall in behind him. “On my back, they will take me out.”
So far his appeal for international support has been met mostly with silence. But earlier this month, local Christian leaders, terrified of the political and religious consequences of the settlers’ takeover, demonstrated inside Jaffa Gate.
Archbishop Theodosius Attulah, spokesperson for the Greek Orthodox church, criticised the supreme court decision, saying the sale was fraudulent. “The Christian properties have been a target for 70 years, but this is the most dangerous so far. It is aimed at marginalising Palestinian influence and weakening the Christian presence in the Old City. It will not be tolerated.
“Jerusalem is sacred to the three monotheistic religions, the purpose of the move is to transform the city into a place of hatred and struggle,” he said.
The showdown is the culmination of a lengthy court wrangle dating back to a suspect secret sale of Greek Orthodox-owned properties to settlers, authorised by a now deposed Greek Patriarchate. Three properties were involved: the New Imperial Hotel and the Petra Hotel, both in the Jaffa Gate plaza, and a house in the Muslim Quarter.
The Greek Orthodox church, the largest private landowner in Israel and the occupied territories, has often sold property in East Jerusalem to Jewish settlers who deploy dubious means to secure deals. The New Imperial Hotel was sold behind Dajani’s back, despite the fact that he is a protected tenant, and the $1.8m deal for the three properties was signed by a Greek official who has since disappeared.
Michael Sfard, a leading Israeli human rights lawyer, said it was hard to believe the supreme court ruling would stand. “The price itself should have shown this was suspicious. It’s the cost of a two-bed flat in Tel Aviv,” he said.
“The hotel is priceless,” said Dajani, whose protected tenancy was legally agreed with the previous Greek patriarch for three generations. “The furniture alone is worth half a million,” he added.
The hotel boasts spacious dining areas, tea rooms where Black Forest gateau is served, hallways decorated with ornate early-Ottoman carvings and pictures of famous guests including Kaiser Wilhelm II who visited Jerusalem in 1898. In pride of place is a photograph of General Edmund Allenby who entered Jaffa Gate on foot in December 1917, after winning the Battle of Jerusalem and addressed crowds from the Imperial’s balcony.
Dajani fears representatives of the settlers will seek entry to the hotel any day. He has been watching his security cameras and monitoring suspicious activity on hotel booking websites. He says he has learned that hotel “clients” linked to the settler group had taken rooms in the hotel through Booking.com and were already inside the property. He has closed the rooftop restaurant to prevent incursions from adjoining buildings.
He invited the EU delegate in Jerusalem to book rooms at the hotel for each member country as a show of support and to prevent a takeover by “fake guests”, but received no reply. “They didn’t even drop by for a coffee to show support.”
Since Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem last year, recognising the city as Israel’s capital, European diplomats have floundered, unable to show alternative leadership. Meanwhile, the demoralised Palestinian community in the city is carved off by the imposing separation barrier from the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank.
On Friday, however, Dajani received news that an appeal to King Abdullah of Jordan may bear fruit. Feelers had also been put out to the Vatican, and a visiting official from Jeremy Corbyn’s office had dropped by with messages of support.
Dajani was most cheered by support from Russian president Vladimir Putin, reportedly under pressure from the Russian Orthodox community to call for the sale to be annulled. This led to a former Israeli chief of staff, General Giora Eiland, to warn that a settler seizure of the properties “might create a crisis for relations between Israel and the Christian world and bring negative relations with the Russian president”.
Even so, looking across from the Imperial’s roof to the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the city’s other sacred sites, Dajani’s shoulders slumped a little. “We have to do the impossible,” he said. “When I look at the walls opposite, I see them cry, asking: ‘Where are the people who love Jerusalem?’”