7 Israelis arrested over alleged desecration of Muslim, Christian sites in Jerusalem

LONDON: Israeli authorities arrested seven Israelis over the weekend on suspicion of desecrating Christian and Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.

All of the suspects were questioned on suspicion of conduct liable to endanger public safety and were later released under restrictive conditions, The Times of Israel reported, citing Israeli police.

Three people were detained on suspicion of vandalizing Muslim graves. Police did not say when the alleged incident occurred but released a video showing three people approaching a tombstone, kicking it repeatedly and knocking it over.

In a separate case, police said they detained four suspects “in real time” after they allegedly spat at the Armenian Patriarchate compound in the Old City.

The arrests come amid continuing criticism of Israeli authorities over harassment of Christian clergy and damage to church property in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israeli media have reported that many of the incidents involved young Orthodox Jewish men spitting near clergy members and other Christians.

Churches and cemeteries have also been vandalized and clergy have reported physical assaults. Some observers have compared the attacks to violence associated with extremist Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Earlier this month police arrested six Jewish suspects — five minors and one adult — accused of banging on and spitting at the entrance to St. James Monastery in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. Police said that the suspects also threw stones at the compound’s wall.

The monastery serves as the regional headquarters of the Armenian Church and the residence of its senior local cleric.

In another case, a Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge on Thursday acquitted a man accused of violently attacking a Catholic nun after accepting an insanity defense. The judge ordered the man to be committed to a psychiatric hospital for up to six years.

The April assault on the nun, who was walking in her habit in Jerusalem’s Old City, shocked Christian communities in Israel and elsewhere.

Clergy members and advocates said that verbal abuse and spitting were increasingly common in the densely packed historic quarter, where Christians, Jews and Muslims routinely cross paths while visiting sites sacred to all three faiths.

The Old City lies in East Jerusalem, territory Israel occupied in the 1967 war and later illegally annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community. It includes some of the holiest sites in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Rights groups, including the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said that attacks on Christians and Muslims by Jewish extremists had been compounded by Israeli restrictions on freedom of worship in Jerusalem.

The organization said in an April report that the measures were used to subjugate Palestinians and alter the city’s demographic makeup along religious and ethnic lines. It has described them as grave violations of religious freedom and international law and as part of a broader system of repression and discrimination.