Israel’s closure of the Holy Sepulchre is proof that no faith is safe from occupation
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, participating in Palm Sunday prayer at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in a previous year
Ismail Patel writes in Middle East Eye on 31 March 2026:
In Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands at the heart of Christian worship. It is the site for commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection. To deny access to this site is not a simple administrative act. It is a violent interruption of ancestral religious ties, a colonial imposition that severs Palestinian Christians from the heart of their spiritual and communal life.
The loss is not only theirs. Every act of exclusion from sacred space is a lesson in the ongoing Israeli occupation, a reminder that the logic of domination still governs Jerusalem.
Israel closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on 28 February and prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Father Francesco lelpo, Custos of the Holy Land, from entering it on Palm Sunday.
This had a major impact. It is thought this is the first time in centuries that senior church leaders had been kept from attending Palm Sunday Mass at the Holy Sepulchre. The Latin Patriarchate called it “a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world, who during this week, look to Jerusalem”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed the decision only after facing international criticism, including from one of his closest allies, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, who said that denying the cardinal access to the church was “difficult to understand or justify”. On Monday, Israeli police said that they reached an agreement with Christian leaders to allow “limited prayer” at the church.
Architecture of control
This reversal is not a solution but a performance, a manoeuvre to placate international audiences while the colonial architecture of control remains intact.