Taxes and property: The municipality blocks the accounts of the Notre Dame in Jerusalem
The municipality of the holy city has ordered payment totalling €5 million. Papers and accounts frozen until payment is made. The node of places of worship and ecclesiastical realities that should be exempted. The director explains: "A long-standing issue" that comes up "every time the government or local administration changes".
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - A new front has opened up in the age-old issue of taxes on Christian property in the Holy Land, long the focus unresolved talks between Israel and the Vatican: yesterday the municipality of Jerusalem ordered the payment of taxes to the (pontifical) Notre Dame Institute of Jerusalem, for a total value of about 5 million euro. The administration of the holy city also decided to show its strength by ordering the freezing of the institution's bank accounts until the fee is paid.
In Israel, places of worship and monasteries are exempt from paying levies and property taxes. However, in recent years, the government and local administrations have equated some ecclesiastical realities that offer board and lodging, especially to pilgrims, to real commercial activities such as hotels, bars and restaurants.
This dispute has seen phases of deep tension, culminating on 25 February 2018 in the decision by Armenian Patriarch Manougian, Greek Orthodox Theophilos III and the Custodian of the Holy Land Friar Francis Patton to close the sanctuary of the Holy Sepulchre. This was the result of a draft law on the expropriation of land belonging to Churches and the request of the then mayor to pay years of taxes, in contravention of status quo agreements.
Yousef Barakat, head of the institute, which includes a church and a guest-house, explains that just before Christmas, the Jerusalem municipality wrote to Visa and Isracard, requesting a freeze on Notre Dame's funds.
"This is a political issue that should be solved between Israel and the Vatican," he denounces to The Times of Israel, "that occurs every time [in Israel] there is a new government or [in Jerusalem] a new mayor.
Fuelling the controversy is the complaint of hotels and guesthouses in the area that speak of unfair competition from the institute, which, not having to pay taxes, has fewer expenses and offers more competitive prices.
Hence the hoteliers' threat to appeal to the Supreme Court, considering this as well as many other places owned by the Church as commercial activities for all intents and purposes and that, for this reason, they should not benefit from the exemption reserved for places "for prayer, religious instruction or the needs deriving therefrom" as the exemption provides.
The Jerusalem administration also intervened on the matter in an official note. "The hotel operates like any other business in the city. The measure [of freezing the accounts] was taken after the hotel avoided settling the dispute with the municipality for years, despite repeated requests," reads the document released by Kan, the national public broadcaster.
The new front of confrontation comes at a time of already deep tension due to targeted raids by radical groups against Christians, the latest of which last week targeted the Church of the Flagellation in Jerusalem. At the beginning of the year, Jewish extremists had desecrated a Christian cemetery on Mount Zion, and before that they had hit several other targets, including the church near the Cenacle, the Basilica of Nazareth, and Catholic and Greek Orthodox buildings.
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