According to Catholic News Agency, after "several attempts last week, intruders managed to infiltrate the outer courtyard of the monastery and disrupt the prayers that were taking place, causing fear and anger in the Christian community".

Set on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the monastery is the home of the Discalced Carmelites whose fellow religious began to live as hermits on the site in imitation of the Prophet Elijah, whose grotto is said to be under the main altar of the church.

After several attempted incursions into the monastery, the intruders confronted Christians on July 26, an incident which prompted the intervention of the police.

According to a Wednesday video statement from Wadie Abunassar, an adviser to the Churches of the Holy Land, these Jewish extremists claim Elijah's disciple, the Prophet Elisha, is buried on the grounds of the monastery. Yet Abunassar echoed the church's outright denial of such claims, pointing out that Elisha was buried "near the lands of the Moabites" far to the east near the Jordan River.

He said "gates and fences were put up" on Tuesday to mark the property lines of the monastery "and to emphasize that anyone who crosses these gates and fences without the permission of the monastery will be considered a trespasser", theoretically making such violations easier for the police to prosecute.

The assertion that there are Jewish graves in churches and monasteries is a pretext to seize and Judaize them, analyze several observers of Israeli methods.

This new allegation comes against the backdrop of repeated attacks by Jewish religious groups targeting the Christian presence, desecrating and vandalizing Christian holy sites, and attacking and spitting at priests and monks in the streets.

In an interview in April, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said that while such incidents are nothing new for Christians in the region, "the frequency of these attacks, the assaults, has become something new”, since the new term of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The government was sworn in last December, incorporating extremist Jewish leaders as part of the majority coalition.

The new governing coalition includes Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power party, who in his election victory speech last November praised his colleague Bentzi Gopstein, who called Christians "blood-sucking vampires" and " the Christian Church" as "our mortal and age-old enemy" while calling for the expulsion of all Christians from the country.

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