At Riven Holy Sepulcher, Anxiety as Crowds Loom
By DEBORAH SONTAG
New York Times
December 1, 1999JERUSALEM -- Uri Mor, a slight, white-haired Israeli government official stood atop a broken sewer cover inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as hundreds of tourists streamed by.
The broken cover has been hidden beneath a rickety, splintering board for three years. No repair is ever hastily undertaken at the holy site where tradition says Jesus died and was buried. In a venerated house of worship that is elaborately divided, arch by arch, among three major Christian rites and several other denominations, no sewer cover is simply a sewer cover. It is turf.
What hope, then, can there be for Israel to persuade the Christians to install an emergency exit before an expected millennial rush of pilgrims?
If a sewer hole generates a sectarian dispute, a new door could far more seriously upset the delicate balance of power among the Christian denominations, whose rights in the church are minutely defined and zealously guarded.
Mor, who is Israel's liaison with the Christians, shrugged.
It took four years of talks to get the Christian parties to agree to such an exit on principle, given the safety concerns for a sprawling church with a single 3-yard-wide door. A decision to restore four arches took 27 years, he noted, and deliberations over what color to paint the cupola lasted three decades.
"There is another system of time inside the Holy Sepulcher," he said. "We are working on seconds and they on eternity."
Israel is reluctant to impose a fire exit on the church. Its relations with the Christians have soured since it recently authorized the construction of a mosque in Nazareth next to the Basilica of the Annunciation. The Vatican sharply condemned Israel, and the other Christian denominations backed the Catholics by joining in a two-day shutdown of churches across the country. It did not create a good climate for negotiations about the emergency exit.
But Israel has long feared the potential for disaster at the Holy Sepulcher, and its concerns have increased in anticipation of the millennium, with projected crowds of as many as 20,000 visitors a day.
"There is an urgent need for a new emergency exit to prevent a possible catastrophe," Linda Menuchin, a police spokeswoman, said last month.
In the days of the Crusaders, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the walled Old City contained 12 separate exits. Now, in the last days of the 20th century, with 17,000 daily visitors, the church has only one way in and out, requiring patience.
"O.K., guys," an American tour leader hollered Tuesday, trapped in a bottleneck just inside the door. "This is the most crowded church I've ever seen. If you want to just skip the whole thing and wait for us outside, fine with me. We'll tell you later about Jesus' tomb."
In the last 200 years, the church has suffered an earthquake and two fires, one of which cost 500 lives when people suffocated or were trampled to death as they tried to flee.
Israeli officials worry especially about the Holy Fire before Easter, as do some church leaders. During the Eastern Orthodox ritual, the church and its courtyard are thronged with celebrants who jostle to light their candles directly from the patriarch's after his is miraculously ignited inside the sepulcher.
But the churches do not consider the emergency exit with the same urgency as Israel. Mor, showing his frustration, said, "Some think they'll pray to God for no disaster."
But George Hintlian, an Armenian historian who served for 25 years on the church's restoration committee, says increased daily crowds pose no grave safety threat.
"The issue has been blown out of proportion," he said. "For the churches, it is not an immediate need. The only truly dangerous day is Holy Fire day, and the Greeks, Cypriots and Armenians will not come in any greater numbers because of the millennium. The real hazard will come if there is peace with Syria, because then the Syrian Orthodox will multiply the attendance at Holy Fire."
Shlomo Ben Ami, Israel's internal security minister, continues to meet with sect leaders to try to win their cooperation for the exit. But he has said Israel will not act unilaterally. Israel could use the police to limit the crowds in the church, but that too would represent an impingement on the right of free access.
"There is some trap in the situation because the government has contradictory interests," Mor said. "Obviously the government is responsible for the safety of the people, but it also wants to respect the will of the churches. Not just wants to, has to. It is bound by international agreement."
As a kind of latter-day representative of the sultan, Mor, a bespectacled Israeli, is responsible for overseeing the Ottoman-era status quo agreement.
In 1852, that agreement sought to mediate centuries of bitter rivalries by formally dividing, down to the brooms, the Holy Sepulcher and other holy places. The three patriarchates of Jerusalem -- the Latin, the Greek and the Armenian -- were granted principal ownership rights in the Holy Sepulcher. The Egyptian Copts, the Syrians and the Ethiopians, whose monks live on the roof in hovels, possess very little property and depend on the major rites for their privileges.
Only owners were envisioned as having the right to clean, maintain, repair and restore, ensuring that contested areas would fall into disrepair. And contestations have abounded.
The broken sewer cover, for instance, straddles a seam between Armenian and communal property. The Armenians claim the sole right to repair the sewer cover, and that right is disputed by the others. Similarly, the cave-like Chapel of St. Nicodemus, with its dirt floors, rock walls and dilapidated altar, has never been restored because both the Armenians and the Syrians claim ownership. Not only that, the archway leading into the chapel is sustained by a wooden scaffold because the Syrians want to restore it at a width of 71 inches and the Armenians, Greeks and the Franciscans at 67 inches.
In one more strange twist, two Muslim families have held the keys to the church door since Saladin ousted the Crusaders. The status-quo agreement acknowledges their sole right to unlock the church, and stipulates that a single ladder will be shared by all three rites, who will take turns laying it against the portal so the Muslims can climb up to open the ancient iron lock.
The church itself, with the contrasting styles of its many chapels, bears fascinating testimony to the divisions within. It stands as a kind of monument to sectarianism. Turf-conscious animosity is palpable inside, as rival priests and monks keep an eye on the invisible boundary lines that separate their properties.
Closing the entrance to the Chapel of the Angel and the Tomb Tuesday, an Orthodox priest pushed back the tourists on line. "It's time for a procession," he said. "Go to the Franciscans."
An emergency exit would infringe on almost everyone's closely held powers. Israel has been negotiating with the three major Christian rites and with the two minor denominations, and the Muslim families have sought assistance from the Palestinian Authority.
"Since any innovation is considered as a breach of the status quo, the communities are carefully studying the proposal," said Metropolitan Timothy, secretary-general of the Orthodox patriarchate. "Nevertheless, there are many, many reservations expressed until now for the new opening."
The current proposal suggests opening up a bricked-up Crusader-era doorway that belongs to the Greeks. The exit corridor would lead up to the roof, transecting either the Copts' or the Ethiopians' territory, and out into the crowded marketplace beyond. Which should it be, Copts or Ethiopians? Would the Greeks share the key? Who decides what constitutes an emergency?
Can the Israelis play the neutral party?
Further complicating matters, none of the churches officially recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Old City, which was annexed along with the rest of East Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war.
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