Pope Francis is planning to visit Israel
in the next few months, and the Prime Minister’s Office announced
Wednesday that Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with the pontiff during his
trip to Italy next week.
In the meantime, however, a single electricity
pole continues to bother the Catholic Church and taint relations between
it and Israel.
The
electricity pole was put up by the Israel Electric Corporation two
years ago across from the church near the Garden of Gethsemane in
Jerusalem.
The site at the foot of the Mount of Olives is one of the
holiest to Christians - the place where tradition says Jesus and his
disciples prayed together before Jesus was arrested by the Romans and
crucified the next day.
The church there is one of the oldest and most
impressive in Jerusalem.
The
electricity pole was placed across from the church as part of the
construction of a separate electricity infrastructure for Jewish
settlers in East Jerusalem, who have asked to be disconnected from the
Jerusalem District Electricity Corporation, which supplies electricity
to Arab neighborhoods on the city’s east side.
Jerusalem
District Court Judge Yoram Noam on Wednesday criticized the Jerusalem
municipality, which has allowed the IEC to place the electric pole in
such a sensitive spot.
“You wouldn’t have done it in the Kotel plaza,”
said the judge off the record during a hearing on the matter Wednes.
The
Custodia Terrae Sanctae, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land that
has been authorized by popes for centuries to supervise the Christian
holy sites here, filed an administrative petition a year and a half ago
in court against the Jerusalem city engineer, the municipality and the
IEC.
The Catholic custodian claimed in the petition that the city
illegally granted a building permit to the IEC for the pole.
“The
huge pylon obstructs the view of the Old City from the prayer garden of
the church used by pilgrims,” reads the petition.
“One of the
significant reasons for the popularity of the church is the unique view
of the Temple Mount and the Old City, and the pylon utterly destroys
this uniqueness.”
The court will decide
If
the pole itself was not bad enough, the IEC has also placed a small
transformer on it - and the police have added security cameras.
The
custody says the pole sits across from the altar where the pope will
hold a mass, as did his predecessor.
The
custodial vicar, Father Dobromir Jasztal, in practice the deputy
custodian, took the unusual step of attending the court session
yesterday.
At the end of the hearing, the two sides agreed to transfer
the matter to the appeals committee of the Jerusalem Regional Planning
and Building Committee - and the petition was dismissed. But during the
hearing the judge criticized the placement of the pole, saying it was a
beautiful corner of Jerusalem and in addition a holy place.
“Everyone
who sees it asks what’s that? Today they don’t build that way anymore,”
said Noam.
The
Jerusalem municipality said: “The IEC is the one that determines the
need for building electric poles or other equipment. The city does not
deal with [such] considerations or circumstances. The city is interested
in helping the Church in this matter with the IEC in order to move the
electricity pole from its present location.”