THE historic Armenian community in the Old City of Jerusalem has raised concerns about their displacement following a real estate deal.

In a special report with the Associated Press, members of the community said they could lose their homes to a Dubai investor for a 99-year lease of some 25 per cent of the Old City’s Armenian Quarter.

Alarm over the lease spread in April, following a surprise visit by Israeli land surveyors.

Reports emerged that an Australian-Israeli investor, whose company sign appeared on the site, planned to transform the car park and limestone fortress of Armenian apartments and shops into an ultra-luxury hotel.

The deal appears to be one of the biggest to come out of the business ties that were forged under the US-brokered agreements known as the Abraham Accords.

Anger at the developments have led to the highest authority of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, to cloister himself in a convent and prompted a disgraced priest who is allegedly behind the deal to flee to a Los Angeles suburb.

Archbishop Manougian acknowledged that the church had signed away the patch of land, saying that a now-defrocked priest bore full responsibility for the “fraudulent and deceitful” deal that the patriarch said took place without his full knowledge.

Eighty-year-old local Garo Nalbandian said of the Ottoman-era barracks where he has lived for five decades: “If they sell this place, they sell my heart.”

Hagop Djernazian, a 22-year-old community leader, said: “This quarter is everything to me.

“It’s the only place we have for Armenians to gather in the Holy Land. We have to fight for it.”

“Our lands were acquired inch by inch with blood and sweat,” said 26-year-old resident Setrag Balian.

“With one signature, they were given away.”

The quarter is home to some 2,000 Armenians with the same status as Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem — residents but not citizens and therefore stateless.

The community’s ancestors came to Jerusalem over 1,500 years ago and then again in 1915 following the Armenian genocide.

Palestinians regularly face struggles over rights to their own homes and properties as Israeli authorities attempt to remove them from strategic areas in east Jerusalem.

For the past month, protesters have formed a human chain around the quarter and gathered under Archbishop Manougian’s window, shouting “traitor” and demanding that he come clean about who has leased the land and how.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment.