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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 October 1999 Issue No. 451
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Unholy wars
By Graham UsherA few years ago the former prime minister of Jordan, Taher Masri, commented that "If the 20th was the century of nationalism, then the 21st may be the century of religion". Masri's premonition appears nowhere more germane than in the stew of sectarian tensions presently stirring (and being stirred) in what was once the avowedly nationalist city of Nazareth.
Relations between the Christian minority and Muslim majority had traditionally been presented as "harmonious" in Israel's largest Palestinian city. But things took a turn for the worse in 1997. As part of its programme for the millennium celebrations, Israel's Tourism Ministry decided then to earmark extra funds to the Nazareth municipality to build a plaza on land in front of the city's main Christian Church of the Annunciation to cater for the millions of tourists and pilgrims expected to descend on Nazareth for Christmas 2000. Protesting that the land in question belonged, pre-1948, to the Waqf (Muslim Religious Endowment), Israel's Islamist movement set up a "protest tent" at the site and demanded that a mosque be built on it.
The conflict was compounded by the victory of the Islamist "United Nazareth" bloc in the elections for the municipality in November 1998. Holding 10 of the council's 17 seats, the Islamists made the construction of a mosque the condition for working with Ramez Jeraisi, the Christian and Communist-backed mayor of Nazareth and an ardent supporter of the Plaza project. With the municipality not functioning and the Israeli government caught up the last throes of the 1999 elections campaign, the stew boiled over last Easter with clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nazareth leaving 30 people injured and tit-for-tat strikes by the Islamists and the main Christian churches.
If tempers have cooled a little since then, it was because both sides were awaiting the decisions of two official bodies that would have a major impact on the future status of the site. The first was the recommendation of the ministerial committee set up under the Netanyahu government but now headed by Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, to work out a "compromise solution" between the Waqf and the municipality. The second was the verdict of the Nazareth District Court over who owns the 1,860 square metres of land earmarked for the plaza. As fortune would have it, the two decisions came last week within six days of each other. And they may have set the scene for an unholy war in the run-up to second millennia anniversary of Christ's birth.
On 1 October, Ben-Ami came forward with broadly the same compromise as that recommended by the Netanyahu government -- that the municipality is authorised to build a plaza on condition that 700 square metres is set aside for the construction of a small mosque. By way of compensation, the Waqf would be given ten dunams of land elsewhere in Nazareth that could be used for "cultural and educational facilities". The Islamists quietly welcomed the decision, clearly knowing a good deal when they saw one. Jeraisi was less pleased. As for the main Christian churches in Israel/Palestine, they were furious.
In a rare show of Christian unity -- and within hours of the Ben-Ami "compromise" -- the Greek Orthodox, Latin and Armenian churches made public a letter they had sent privately to Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, on 11 September. Together with the Vatican's representative in the Holy Land, the three patriarchs warned that they would close down all the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem during the Christmas period if the Islamist tent were not removed from the area of the Church of the Annunciation. Nor was it simply a question of the tent. "The place currently proposed for the building of a mosque," they wrote to Barak, "is not compatible with the larger vision of peace and harmony among all the communities of faith in Nazareth and will remain an unfortunate source of friction and dispute in the future."
The Vatican also believes the "compromise" violates a promise it says it received from then Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon in April that any deal that included the construction of a mosque at the site would be "a reward for the violence of the rioters". In such circumstances, the Pope might have to "reconsider" his planned trip to Israel and the Occupied Territories in March next year, said Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Michel Sabah, on 5 October.
It was at this moment that the Nazareth District Court ruled that, aside from 135 square metres which holds the holy tomb of Shihab Al-Din (nephew of Salah Al-Din), the plot next to the Church of Annunciation was state land over which the Waqf had no claim.
It was a ruling that met with the quiet satisfaction of Jeraisi and the churches, but the fury of the Islamists. On 8 October, over a thousand of their number turned out for noon prayers at the "tent mosque" adjacent to the Church. They also heard speeches from imams and members of the Knesset belonging to the Islamist-backed United Arab List denouncing the District Court ruling, warning the Pope to "stay out of Nazareth's internal affairs" and generally applauding the Ben-Ami "compromise". Although the rally passed peacefully, the mood was captured in the chants of certain parts of the congregation. "With blood and fire shall we redeem Shihab Al-Din," they cried.
Given the heightened tensions that currently exist between the Israeli government and the Islamists following the involvement of Palestinians associated with the movement in recent car bombings in Haifa and Tiberias, very few commentators doubt that things could get seriously out of hand in Nazareth, especially if the dispute is aggravated by outside powers. Nor is there much doubt that the main culprit in the imbroglio was the Likud government, with Sharon reportedly promising one "solution" to the Vatican and Netanyahu another to the Islamists.
But the leaderships of the Muslim and Christian "blood brothers" in Nazareth are also at fault for whipping up sectarian passions rather than unifying on the basis of a common nationality and religious compromise. For unless that spirit of common nationalism and compromise is rediscovered, the next months could see the brothers' blood spilled over a tent and a half-acre of land in Nazareth.
