Putin's letter will provoke a new international conflict?

Putin's letter will provoke a new international conflict?

In a letter to the Prime Minister of Israel, Naphtali Bennett, the President of Russia requested that the Alexander Nevsky Church in Jerusalem's Old City be immediately transferred to Russian ownership.

Allegedly, Bennett's predecessor, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, gave Putin a promise that this will be done. But Putin's insistence on ownership could fuel not only a diplomatic conflict between Israel and Russia, but also criticism from the international community, Israeli media reported today.

On Sunday, the Ambassador of Israel in Moscow, Alexander Ben Zvi, called on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia to explain the recent statements of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yair Lapid, after the vote in the UN for the suspension of Russia in the Human Rights Council.

According to the Russian ministry, "it was a poorly disguised attempt to use the situation in Ukraine to divert the attention of the international community from one of the oldest unresolved conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Alexander Nevsky Church, also known as the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, is a valuable asset of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and is located in the center of the Christian quarter.

This holy place was written about in 2019, when Israeli Naama Issachar was in prison in Moscow for possessing cannabis on Russian territory. In order to free her, Netanyahu promised Putin the Church of Alexander Nevsky, which has been de facto owned by Russia since 1890, and earlier the Ottoman Empire claimed the right to worship.

It was recognized then that the church belonged to the Russian Empire, which is why in 2017, Moscow demanded that Israel recognize Russia's ownership. In 2020, Netanyahu decided that the dispute over ownership would fall into the category of "holy places" and that therefore could not be resolved in court.

After that, it was registered that the Government of Russia is the owner, but the Bennett administration returned that decision to the Supreme Court, which has not yet finally ruled. In 2021, a commission was set up to decide on ownership, but it has not yet met. Russia's impatience has come to light, and former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the association in charge of Russian property in the Middle East, has drawn public attention to a letter Putin sent to Bennett.

During his visit to Israel, Stepashin criticized Israel for the status quo in the church dispute over the war in Ukraine. "Now we are fighting to return the complex and it is very difficult, we are almost there, we have been working for five years, we have found all the historical documents, but the situation in Ukraine has happened and Israel is behaving as it often does, playing ping pong with everyone", said a Russian official.

Commentator on Russian affairs, Alex Tanzer claims that the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions have turned the church dispute from a small one into an international one, and that the transfer of the church to Russian hands could lead to diplomatic consequences for Israel.