JERUSALEM – Armed Israeli police forced their way into a French-owned church compound in the contested city of Jerusalem on Thursday, the French foreign ministry said, briefly detaining two consulate employees and prompting the top French diplomat to abandon his planned visit to the site.
The unusual incident threatened to further strain relations between Israel and France weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for an arms embargo on Israel prompted backlash from right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The French Foreign Ministry said it would summon the Israeli ambassador in protest in the coming days.
A strongly worded statement from France said Israeli security forces had intruded on the courtyard of the Church of the Pater Noster, angering French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and prompting him to abandon his scheduled visit there.
The ministry said Israeli police detained two staff members of the French Consulate in Jerusalem despite their diplomatic status, adding that the employees were released only after Barrot intervened.
“This attack on the integrity of a domain placed under the responsibility of France is likely to weaken the bonds I have, in fact, come to cultivate with Israel at a time when we all need to make progress in the region on the road to peace,” Barrot told reporters in Jerusalem.
Barrot was meeting with Israeli officials Thursday in the city, where he pleaded for a cease-fire to stop the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and called for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon — a former French protectorate that Israel invaded last month in its broadening military campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
“These actions are unacceptable,” the French Foreign Ministry statement said of Thursday's fracas between Israeli security forces and French diplomatic staffers. “France condemns (these actions) all the more vigorously as they come at a time when it is doing everything it can to work towards de-escalating the violence in the region.”
Israeli police portrayed the controversy as a misunderstanding, saying that two church workers who declined to identify themselves had refused entry to Israeli security guards accompanying Minister Barrot on his church visit.
Israeli police said they held the men for some 20 minutes and released them once they were identified as employees of the French Consulate in Jerusalem, which is the protector of French religious communities and four holy sites in the city.
The Israeli police said all foreign ministers on official visits to Israel are assigned Israeli security guards for their trips. It said the logistics of Barrot's visit were worked out beforehand with the French Embassy in Israel, warning the public against contributing to “misleading narratives" about the altercation.
The compound that Barrot had planned to visit — on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem — holds a church originally built by Crusaders that believed the site to be where Jesus taught the Pater Noster, or Lord’s Prayer.
It was later acquired by Princess Héloïse de la Tour d’Auvergne, who had the prayer written in calligraphy in numerous languages on the walls of the cloisters and courtyard, also home to the the ruins of the Byzantine Eleona Church. The site was entrusted to French Carmelite nuns in 1874.
“This domain is not only one that has belonged to France for over 150 years,” Barrot said. “It's one where France has ensured security and maintenance with enormous care.”
Thursday's incident was reminiscent of several others skirmishes over the years between irritated French officials and assertive Israeli bodyguards.
In 2020, President Macron lost his temper at Israeli security officers who had insisted on accompanying him inside another French church in Jerusalem.
In 1996, then-French President Jacques Chirac accused Israeli security forces of pushing and shoving his entourage in a spat that even drew an apology from a young Prime Minister Netanyahu during his first year in office.
Such stand-offs take on symbolic significance in Jerusalem, among the most fiercely contested swaths of real estate on earth.
Israel has viewed Jerusalem as its “unified, eternal” capital since capturing east Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians want those territories for their future state, with east Jerusalem serving as their eventual capital. Israel annexed the eastern part of the city in a move not recognized internationally.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel more than a year ago, President Macron has stressed his support of Israel and its right to defend itself. But tensions have escalated in recent weeks as Macron has demanded that Israel do more to avoid the rapidly mounting civilian casualties in its campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
Later Thursday, Minister Barrot held talks on the conflict with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.