Israeli Police Violently Beat Several Holy Fire Worshippers Trying to Defy Capacity Limits
Angry pilgrims and clergy jostled to get through while Israeli police struggled to hold them back, allowing only a trickle of ticketed visitors and local residents inside
Tens of thousands of Christians took part in the Holy Fire ceremony on Saturday, an annual Orthodox Christian ceremony held in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, amid tension between police and Christian worshipers over Israel's decision to place limits on the number of participants for the third year in a row. Thousands of clergy, police, diplomats and pilgrims huddled inside the church, while thousands more huddles in the surrounding alleys, where police clashed and in some cases violently beat worshipers trying to make their way through their barricades.
Many trying to get to the church – built on the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected – were thrilled to mark the pre-Easter rite in the city where it all started. But for the third consecutive year, Israel's strict limits on event capacity resulted in tense confrontations between worshipers and police, sometimes erupting in violent arrests of participants.
With only two exits in the entire church, Israeli police initially capped the event this year at 1,800 participants, leading the Greek Orthodox Church to accuse the police of infringing on the freedom of worshippers with "heavy-handed” restrictions. The police then agreed to increase the number of participants to 2,200, in addition to 1,000 worshipers who were allowed to stand in the churchyard and on its roof. Church sources said that the police ultimately allowed a greater number of participants to make their way to the church than initially planned.
As early as 8 A.M., Israeli police were turning back most of the tens of thousands of worshipers who had arrived from the gates of the Old City – including tourists who flew from Europe and Palestinian Christians who traveled from across the West Bank – directing them to an overflow area with a livestream.
Angry pilgrims and clergy jostled to get through while police struggled to hold them back, allowing only a trickle of ticketed visitors and local residents inside. Over 2,000 police officers swarmed the stone ramparts.
In some cases, the pushing and shoving escalated into violence. Footage showed Israeli police dragging and beating several worshippers, thrusting a Coptic Priest against the stone wall and tackling one woman to the ground. At least one older man was whisked, bleeding, into an ambulance.
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“It is sad for me that I cannot get to the church, where my heart, my faith, wants me to be,” said 44-year-old Jelena Novakovic from Montenegro, who, like thousands of others, was trapped behind metal barricades that sealed off alleys leading to the Christian Quarter.
In a statement, the Israel Police said that "In order to keep the public peace and safety, we had to perform crowd control in the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the nearby areas in the Old City." This was done, they said, "in accordance with the size of the crowd and the masses of people and in accordance with the maximum capacity of the church, as determined by an external engineer working on the church's behalf."
It continued, "Sadly, in several instances before the Holy Fire ceremony began, people who did not have permits issued by the church tried to push police and break through the barriers intended to let in people with permits only.
"In one of those cases, the police arrested a suspect who violently physically assaulted police who were working to regulate the crowd in the Old City and wounded one of them. In another case, police were forced to intervene in order to halt violence and act as a buffer between processions of different Christian sects who were moving toward the church."
The age-old ceremony traditionally hosts as many as 10,000 worshipers, but police began to crack down on the event with the outset of the coronavirus pandemic three years ago, only doubling down on restrictions in the wake of the Mount Meron crowd crush the following year, which saw 45 worshipers die in a stampede.
The ceremony is the largest Christian event to take place in Jerusalem each year, with hundreds of police swarming the area. During the ceremony, Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai watched over the ceremony on what is called "the Sovereign's balcony," a raised stoop overlooking teh church. The balcony has been used for hundreds of years to supervise the event by the ruling power in Jerusalem.
Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that on the Saturday before Easter, a miraculous flame appears inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the ceremony's climax, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III entered the Holy Edicule, a chamber built on the traditional site of Jesus' tomb, and emerged with two lit candles. He passed the flame among thousands of people holding candles, gradually illuminating the walls of the darkened basilica, before passing it on to the thousands of believers waiting outside the church's doors. Private planes were arranged to fly the holy flame across the world, including Sofia, Warsaw, Yerevan, Istanbul, and despite sanctions on Russia, Moscow. The fire will also be transfered to Kyiv, but in the shadow of Russia's invasion, will likely be transfered overland from Poland.