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An Israeli cabinet minister on Tuesday badured major churches in Jerusalem that the Jewish state is not seeking to expropriate their properties.
A government statement said Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi met leaders of the Armenian, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in response to a letter they sent last week to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In it, the churchmen called on Netanyahu to block draft legislation they said was aimed at expropriating their property.
“The government of Israel has no intention to confiscate church lands or to cause any economic damage to the churches,” the English-language foreign ministry statement quoted Hanegbi as telling them at Tuesday’s meeting.
“The goal of the government is to protect the rights of churches, of investors and of tenants,” he said.
Swathes of Jerusalem are held by various churches, in many cases under long-term leases from the state.
In some cases the churches then sublet the properties on the commercial market.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem — Israel’s second-largest landowner after the Israel Lands Authority — was reported earlier in the year to be selling off chunks of its impressive property portfolio to secret offshore account-holders for rock-bottom prices.
The sales, which include at least one prominent historical site, sparked consternation in the Israeli government and protests within the Christian community.
Israel’s parliament is working on a law that would allow the state to intervene in the resale of residential property leases to commercial property developers.
The bill was introduced several months ago along with legislation permitting the Jerusalem municipality to enforce tax collection on church property it consider commercial, with exemptions only applying to places of worship or religious teaching.
At the time, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said that the city was owed 650 million shekels ($186 million) in uncollected taxes on church properties that the municipality was prevented from collecting by virtue of a decades-long agreement.
The religious leaders protested by closing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site in Jerusalem where Jesus is believed to have been crucified and buried.
Israeli authorities then froze the legislation, committing to a dialogue with the churches.
The churches appealed to Netanyahu when the draft bill was placed on the agenda for an October 21 meeting of a government committee on pending legislation.
“We the heads of churches in the Holy Land find ourselves compelled to approach you,” they wrote.
“We were astonished to realize that this disgraceful bill was listed on the agenda of the ministerial committee for legislation,” they said.
The discussion was subsequently postponed for a week.
Listed as a bill for tenants’ rights, the draft aims to safeguard residents of properties badigned to “various bodies” on 99-year leases during the 1950s.
It does not specifically mention church holdings.
The bill’s sponsor, MP Rachel Azaria of the centrist Kulanu party says it was meant to solve the problem of “thousands of Jerusalem residents who could lose their homes due to the demands of developers”.
“Minister Hanegbi reiterated that the Christian community is extremely important to the state of Israel,” Tuesday’s statement said.
“Throughout the process the government will take all measures necessary to protect the rights of churches every step of the way,” it added.
“Minister Hanegbi also stated that this is not a church-specific issue.”
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