Jerusalem Patriarch Irenaios (l) confers with a priest in the Patriarchate on Saturday. The Church leader has come under increasing criticism from Palestinians following a report that the Patriarchate secretly sold land in the Arab sector of Jerusalem to Jewish settlers. Greece’s Foreign Ministry yesterday called for an investigation of the alleged sale, and is sending experts to Jerusalem today to help look into the affair.

The Foreign Ministry yesterday stepped into the looming scandal regarding the alleged secret sale, by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, of Church land in the Arab sector of the ancient city to Jews, which has outraged Palestinians.

“Greece desires an immediate investigation of the affair,” ministry spokesman Georgios Koumoutsakos said, adding that a team of ministry officials would leave for Jerusalem today to that purpose.

This followed a report in Israel’s Maariv daily on Thursday, which alleged that the Patriarchate made a secret deal with overseas Jewish investors to sell two large properties in Jerusalem’s Old City. The story deeply angered Palestinians, who are opposed to Jewish settlement in the city’s Israeli-occupied Arab sector, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia formed a committee to investigate the alleged sale.

Koumoutsakos said that, if verified, the sale would be “an illegal act which we condemn.”

In its defense, the Patriarchate said any such deal would have been unauthorized, and pledged to look into the “unfortunate event.”

But Palestinian officials in the Patriarchate on Saturday called for Patriarch Irenaios’s resignation.

Dozens of Palestinian Christians protested outside the Patriarchate yesterday and heckled Irenaios, calling him an Israeli collaborator.