On Monday, the Nature and Parks Authority announced that they were not going forward with a proposed plan to enlarge an existing national park on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The 68-acres of land is adjacent to the Jerusalem Walls National Park which was created after the 1967 Six-Day War. The plan would have not stripped the landholders of their ownership but would have given the state the right to develop the vacant land as a national park.

The park authority’s Plan 101-674788 envisions extending the borders of the Jerusalem Walls National Park to include a large section of the Mount of Olives, along with additional parts of the Kidron and Ben Hinnom valleys. The land slated to be included the expansion encompasses areas on which Armenian, Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches stand. 

“There is no intention of advancing the plan in the planning committee, and it is not ready for discussion without coordination and communication with all relevant officials, including the churches, in the area regarding the correct way to preserve this special area,” the spokeswoman for the government said in a statement.

She added that the land was “one of the most important cultural and heritage landscapes in the world.” The spokeswoman earlier noted that the areas slated to be incorporated in the plan had been “neglected for years and suffer from vandalism and arson.”

The decision to halt the plans was made after the churches petitioned the Minister Tamar Zandberg, the  Minister of Environmental Protection, last week.  

“In recent years,” the letter reads, “we cannot help but feel that various entities are seeing to minimize, not to say eliminate, any non-Jewish characteristics of the Holy City by attempting to alter the status quo on this holy mountain.”

The heads of churches said that these entities have failed due to the objection and lack of cooperation from the churches. “After their attempts failed, they resorted to statutory powers by advancing a plan to declare vast parts of the mountain as a national park,” reads the letter. “This is a brutal measure that constitutes a direct and premeditated attack on the Christians in the Holy Land, on the churches and on their ancient, internationally guaranteed rights in the Holy City.

The initial opbjections were raised by left-wing activists who claimed that a national park would marginalize the Palestinian residents who live in surrounding areas. They also objected to the plan, saying it emphasized the significance of the site to the Jewish people.

In a joint statement, left-wing groups Bimkom, Emek Shaveh, Ir Amim and Peace Now opposed the plan as part of “various mechanisms used by Israel in east Jerusalem to entrench its sovereignty, to marginalize non-Jewish presence and to prevent much needed development of Palestinian neighborhoods hereby increasing the pressure to push them out of the Old City basin.”

The City of David Foundation countered this claim with a statement saying, “The claims that are being brought against the project are largely spearheaded by organizations with a political agenda that receive large amounts of funding by the European Union with the goal of keeping Jerusalem in a state of neglect and squalor in order to bolster their narrative that Jews and Arabs cannot benefit together under Israeli sovereignty in all of Jerusalem.”

Josh Wander, a Jewish resident of the Mount of Olives did not agree with the decision to not extend the national park. 

“The plan is in the best interest of all the residents and the churches,” Wander said. “Since it is vacant and neglected, it attracts vandalism and arson. The plan does not eject the churches or limit them in any way. It would have turned the land around the churches into a nice park. This is, after all, the Mount of Olives described in the Bible. A nice Park would have attracted tourists and benefitted the Christian worshippers.”

Wander understands a deeper religious motivation behind the Church’s objection.

“The Church has always rejected any recognition of Israel’s jurisdiction in the Holy Land,”Wander said. “To do so would have been to acknowledge the return of the Jews from the exile as a nation and as the manifestation of God’s covenant. This is unaccetable to the Church which has replacement theology as one of its pillars of belief.”

“This became even more of an issus after Israel’s victory in 1967 unified Jerusalem under Israel’s sovereignty.”

Wander noted that the Church never raised these objection under Ottoman rule or under the illegal Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem.

It is interesting to note that these are the same churches that ally with the Palestinians in the political area despite suffering outright oppression in regions under Plaestinian Authority control.