"Who is Danny Rothman, the Australian Jewish investor set to build a hotel in East Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter?"

Over the past few weeks, secret plans to build a luxury hotel over land leased from the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to an Australian Jewish investor has provoked outrage within the Armenian community of the Old City, and concerns over the erasure of its presence.

Meanwhile, very little information on the company behind the hotel plans, Xana Gardens Ltd, or its director, Daniel "Danny" Rothman (also known as Daniel Rubinstein), has been made public. Media reports have described him as a “mysterious” investor.

The New Arab (TNA) can now reveal many of Danny Rothman’s past business ventures, based on company and court records as well as open-source information. These ventures suggest that Rothman has extensive ties within the tourism industry, both in Israel and abroad.

TNA contacted Mr. Rothman for comments regarding his past ventures, his alleged Israeli nationality, as well as his plans for Jerusalem’s Old City. No response was received in time for publication.

Palestinian and Christian concerns

Armenian activists estimate that the extension of the project might reach 16,000 m2 (around 13% of the Armenian Quarter’s 126,000 m2).

Many within the Armenian community fear that Christian presence will be forever changed in the Old City. Mostly as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jerusalem’s Armenian population has been in decline since the mid-20th century. 

The land controversy has led to the defrocking of Baret Yeretzian, the director of the Department of Real Estate of the Patriarchate.

Both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Jordan have withdrawn their recognition of Patriarch Nourhan Manougian, due to his mishandling of “culturally and historically significant Christian properties in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter”. 

These properties are located in East Jerusalem, whose Israeli annexation is a violation of international law, as the area would fall under PA jurisdiction. The land lease has not only alarmed Armenians but also Palestinian Arabs, because of its political implications.

Jewish investors from all around the world have long sought to buy real estate in occupied East Jerusalem for various reasons, from religious to sentimental, political, and purely business ones. The Armenian Quarter is especially strategic as it intersects the main access roads between West Jerusalem and the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, making it “prime real estate in Israeli eyes”.

In 2019 an Israeli court ruling approved the purchase of property leases from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate by religious settler organisation Ateret Cohanim. Similarly to the Armenian land deal, foreign companies played a role in the purchase. Yeretzian, the defrocked real estate manager of the Armenian Patriarchate, has dismissed the parallels, saying that Rothman is instead “a secular Jew”...

Rothman, who also goes by Rubinstein according to company records, has declined to speak to the media, stating to AP that “I never get interviewed by the press.”

Examination of Xana Gardens’ company records has also led to a dead end, as the parent company, Xana Capital Group, is registered in Dubai, where company shareholder information is not publicly available. 

While the Emirates have always been an appealing destination for international firms due to tax avoidance and corporate secrecy, the normalisation of ties with Israel sanctioned by the Abraham Accords in 2020 has been a boost for trade between the two countries...

On his LinkedIn profile, Danny Rothman claims to have received a Bachelor’s of Applied Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). When contacted by TNA, the university stated that it “can find no record of a Daniel Rothman or Daniel Rubinstein graduating from LSE”...