The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Has Survived Roman Emperors, Crusades, and Earthquakes. Now It Survived Netanyahu

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was nearly destroyed multiple times in its 1,700-year history. Here is how Palm Sunday 2026's access crisis fits into that extraordinary story.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem has a history of surviving things that should have destroyed it. The Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Venus on the site in the 2nd century specifically to suppress Christian worship. Constantine's mother Helena identified the site in 325 and began construction of the first basilica. That basilica was destroyed by the Persians in 614. The Crusaders built a new one in the 12th century. The Mamluk Sultan Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187 and allowed Christian access to continue — one of the more enlightened decisions in the history of religious conflicts over holy sites.

The building that stands today is a Crusader construction substantially modified by Ottoman, European, and local artisans over eight centuries. It is maintained under the Status Quo arrangement established under Ottoman rule in the 19th century and recognized by Israeli law, which divides custody and responsibility for the church's various spaces among six Christian denominations: Roman Catholic (Franciscan), Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox. The arrangement is notoriously complex and has produced occasional physical altercations between representatives of different communities over specific areas of the church.

The Israeli police decision to initially block Cardinal Pizzaballa from entering on Palm Sunday 2026 fits into this long history as an incident that is simultaneously historically significant and relatively minor compared to what the building has survived. The church was not damaged. Worship was not entirely prevented. The access arrangement, after diplomatic intervention, was negotiated to a workable if imperfect solution.

What the incident reveals is the specific difficulty of managing access to a site of intense religious significance in the context of a military conflict that has brought missiles to within meters of its walls — Netanyahu's own description. The Security logic of restricting public gatherings in areas that have received incoming fire is not unreasonable. Its application to a Cardinal traveling privately to conduct liturgical functions tested the limits of that logic in ways that the Israeli government had not fully anticipated.