Good Friday draws thousands to solemn processions in Jerusalem and Haifa

Thousands of Arab Israelis celebrate Good Friday in two Haifa processions where multiple participants prayed for an end to the war.

The annual processions Friday, one around the Saint Louis the King Cathedral and the other in the vicinity of the Elias Cathedral, are among countless processions worldwide on Good Friday, when Christians commemorate Jesus’s crucifixion.

In Jerusalem, thousands march slowly, many of them singing hymns and some carrying crucibles, along the Via Dolorosa — the cobblestone path where tradition says Jesus bore the cross to his crucifixion.

Traditionally solemn affairs, the events in Haifa are particularly toned down amid the war and a relatively low turnout –- many Christians from the Galilee stayed away this year, likely because of rocket fire by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“It’s a sad day during a sad time,” says Maya Da’abul, participates in the march with her husband and two teenaged children. Normally the family spends Good Friday at a church in Kafr Bir’im near the Lebanese border, but “because of the war we stayed in Haifa, where it’s safe” Maya says.

Kafr Bir’im “is where our family comes from, before 1948,” she adds, referencing the expulsion of the village’s
population by Israel during the War of Independence. It remains uninhabited but for the church.

The family recites hymns and prayers about Jesus as they walk through a cloud of incense billowing from a priest’s thurible. “But we also pray in our hearts this war will end,” Maya says.