A Different View: War closes the doors on cradle of Christianity

The Old City of Jerusalem – the focal point of the Easter celebration – was a husk; there were no crowds of people from different religions, of every nationality and language, packed into the narrow streets and alleyways.

I was lucky enough to visit both Jerusalem and Bethlehem some years ago – in the whole of their health – on a trip with Trócaire to witness the abuse and victimisation of the Palestinian people.

We visited the settlements where Israelis had come in and taken the homes of the Palestinians who had lived there for generations, farming the land, growing olives.

Now their old farms are gated estates of mansions – watched over by armed security – with palm trees and swimming pools in the middle of a desert, while the former residents exist in wooden shacks on the other side of the iron gates and boundaries.

But the trip also allowed time to visit some of the places we’ve known all our lives even if we’d never been there before – the Old City of Jerusalem where history hangs on every wall and turn; Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.

You can almost feel the history as you walk in the footsteps of those who have travelled these ancient streets for well over 5,000 years.

In a different way, the same thing happens to you on your first trip to New York; it’s your first time there but everything looks familiar.

And then you realise that it’s because every street corner in the Big Apple has been the location for a blockbuster movie – so it’s like you’re visiting a giant film set as much as a city.

In Jerusalem, it’s like your Christian Doctrine class has come to life. You see the Mount of Olives overlooking the city itself, and close by, the Garden of Gethsemane. You walk the narrow alleyways of the Via Dolorosa in the Old City and onto the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the traditional site of Calvary and the place where it was believed Jesus had been buried.

Jerusalem has a population of just over one million people – 60 per cent Jewish, 40 per cent Muslim – and the Old City is divided into four sectors; the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters.

The city itself became a World Heritage site in 1981, and, like a microcosm of the entire region, it maintains an uneasy and fragile existence, with so many cultures clashing and all claiming this place as fundamental to their beliefs.

Whether you have faith or not, the Old City speaks to you. It hard to describe how it feels other than the fact that you are acutely aware that you are just the latest to walk through these narrow streets and alleyways that have been fundamental to the history of the world.

You stand in awe at the Wailing Wall, watching respectfully as Jews pray – and you join for your own quiet reflection as you take in a sight that you will never, ever forget.

But if you went there this Easter – and you’d have been out of your mind to even try – there would be no great sense of awe, just an air of fear because of the ever-present threat of reprisal attacks on those who would congregate on these ancient streets.

Like all places of religious pilgrimage, Jerusalem is city that depends on tourism – and for now there are no tourists.

What restaurants and cafés that remain open, there are no outside seating areas; there are no card machines – it’s cash only because there aren’t enough customers to justify the additional expense.

Aside from the sense of history, the other thing that I’ll always remember from the Old City is the spice shops, stalls with the most colourful display of innumerable spices giving off a cornucopia of smell that is a wonderful assault on the senses.

By all accounts, some of that is still to be seen because this isn’t a tourist trap; it’s where locals buy their spices.

But the warren of shops and stalls full of religious souvenirs and memorabilia – rosary beads, statues, holy water fonts – have their shutters closed. There’s no one to buy their ware.

The security threat to Jerusalem hasn’t just affected Catholics or Christians of course; the Muslim celebration of Eid – at the end of the holy month of Ramadan – would have packed the streets as well. But as with Easter, the threat of attack made that too dangerous to gather.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, was forbidden from celebrating Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday, instead retreating to the Basilica of All Nations in Gethsemane. He was able to celebrate a Mass on Easter Sunday – but only for the few.

Again, this is not the greatest consequence of a world at war. The loss of life and destruction of cities – or in Gaza, an entire land – are the real casualties of man’s desire for domination of his fellow man.

But the season of Easter brings it home; the cradle of Christianity is closed off. The places you hear in the gospel, where Jesus walked 2,000 years ago, are under threat of bombardment and off limits to all.

It’s hard to even envisage the Via Dolorosa without pilgrims stopping to recite the Stations of the Cross, singing and praying in so many languages, shuffling along this winding path of history as the generations have before them.

Jerusalem without pilgrims is a husk; an ancient, beautiful but troubled place under threat.

Shrapnel has breached its dome of protection and landed in the Old City – so instead of the sound of prayer and church bells, it’s sirens in the sky, and the booms and blasts that follow.