The World's Longest Turf War Erupts - Again!!

December 29, 2011

At a time when there are wars, conflicts and uprisings in various parts of our planet, yesterday’s news of yet another clash ought not to be the stuff of media headlines. And what happened with broomsticks, fists and “vicious insults” flying around is surely more the stuff of Harry Potter-ish comic books. But this is deadly serious!

The annual cleaning of the Holy Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site where Jesus is said to have been born, is no matter to be left to janitors or volunteers, of whom surely there would be thousands. No, it is a matter for priests. Trouble is, like Vietnam and Berlin once were and North Korea still is, there is a deadly turf war going on in this Church.

For centuries, three rival Christian religious groups have shared control of the church – Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic – part of the legacy of the murderous Crusades. This year over 100 priests and monks went at each other when

. . . a clergyman of one order accidentally pushed his broom into space ‘controlled’ by the other group . . .

The 6th century church is the oldest in the Holy Land and a very fragile status quo governs relations among the three denominations. To repair or clean a part of the structure is to own it, according to accepted practice.

That means that letting other sects clean part of the church could allow one to gain ground at another’s expense. Tensions between rival clergy at the church have been a fact of life for centuries and the site has often been caught up in international politics.

In the 19th century, tensions over the church – and the wider issue of Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands – was a factor in the outbreak of the Crimean War.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079328/Priests-brawl-Bethlehems-Church-Nativity-clergy-fight-Christmas-cleaning.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RnVfXFd5MU

The Palestinian police said it had been “a trivial problem . . . No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God."

Well, as the world well knows, men of God have been at the root of most of the wars over two millennia. And here we were thinking that Korea, where God does not come into the equation - yet(!), was the planet's longest unresolved war!

The background piece attached to the Daily Mail article ends with this -

Decisions about who takes care of what is based on the Ottoman Empire status system, dating back to 1299, which mandates that things be done as they have always been.

That sounds more than a tad like the situation in Thailand!