Nazareth: Mosque dispute overshadows Year 2000 celebrations
By MICHAEL S. ARNOLD
Pass by The Holyland souvenir shop at almost any hour of the day and you're
likely to find Jamal Daher sitting on a small stool in the shade of his
awning, next to the postcards, olive wood manger scenes, and guidebooks to
Israel.
Daher is a movie star of sorts; he and his shop figured prominently in
Chronicle of a Disappearance, a film about daily life in Nazareth made by a
boyhood friend, Elia Suleiman. One of the film's funnier moments showed
Daher filling bottles of 'Holy Water,' for sale to tourists, directly from
the tap. He no longer carries the items, he says, because tourists could
buy them more cheaply elsewhere.
Chronicle of a Disappearance was in many ways a tale of small-town boredom,
and it was not far off the mark. Daher's days are spent waiting. As he
waits, he smokes about half a pack of cigarettes and may play a game of
backgammon or two with his friend Yussuf.
Lifelong friends drop by and exchange backslapping greetings that punctuate
the waiting. At other times Daher just sits quietly while the hours and the
days pass by.
What Daher is waiting for is business. As the eve of the millennium
approaches, the streets of Nazareth are strangely empty. A few tour groups
meander up Casanova Street, past the Islamic Movement's open-air mosque, to
the Basilica of the Annunciation. A very few pick aimlessly at the
knick-knacks in The Holyland and similar stores. Backpackers make the
circuit from the entrance to the city to the church, perhaps wander through
the refurbished marketplace, and then hustle rides out of town.
Church of the Annunciation |
On everyone's mind is the local Islamic Movement's insistence on building a
mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation, an intransigence blessed
last month by the Israeli government just days before the courts ruled that
the Moslems in fact had no legal claim to the land. The rest of the area
will be made into a plaza for visitors to the church.
In one of those Catch-22s that are a staple of Israeli politics, the
Israeli government found itself promoting Moslem interests in the face of
opposition from the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world. Arab
governments criticized Israel's handling of the issue and called on the
local Islamic Movement to build their mosque elsewhere, wary of creating an
impression of Moslem fanaticism in the West. Had the Islamic Movement been
barred from building a mosque, however, it's reasonable to assume the Arab
world would have come down equally hard on Israel for alleged anti-Moslem
bias.
News of the decision to build the mosque sparked outrage throughout the
Christian world, including a harsh rebuke from the Vatican and a veiled threat
that Pope John Paul II might cancel his spring visit to Israel, expected to
be a major boon to Israel's millennium tourism industry.
'Of course [the mosque issue] will have a bad effect on tourism,' says
Samir Hassan, who works in his father's Central Sweets Patisserie store
across from the disputed plot of land. 'This was televised all around the
world. Everyone knows about it. When the churches close [as they did for
two days in late November] the tourists stay away.'
Pilgrims passing area of argument. |
The church-mosque dispute had been brewing for two years, since Islamic
Movement activists established a protest tent on the site in December 1997
and led anti-Christian riots in the city center last Easter. The issue
helped the local Islamic list to gain a majority on the city council in the
November 1998 municipal elections, effectively paralyzing Christian Mayor
Ramez Jeraise, who was elected directly but found himself with a minority
on the city council.
Many in Nazareth believe the Israeli government fanned the flames of the
dispute to divide the country's Arab citizens - and perhaps, according to
Deputy Mayor Suheil Diab, to bolster Jewish claims to east Jerusalem by
showing the world how a Moslem-dominated Palestinian Authority would treat
Christian holy sites.
Diab finds no shortage of reasons why successive administrations have
wanted to sabotage the Nazareth 2000 celebrations, which were an
opportunity to revitalize Israel's largest Arab city.
'The last government especially had ideological reasons to reduce the
Nazareth 2000 celebrations,' says Diab. 'Any emphasis on the non-Jewish
history of the area was seen as a bad thing. So they tried to reframe it as
Israel 2000 or Jerusalem 2000.'
Focusing the millennium celebrations on Jerusalem, Diab implies, was a
device to highlight Israel's hold on the city in the eyes of the world
during final status talks with the Palestinian Authority.
He also believes that former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's tottering
government winked at Moslem provocations over the disputed plot in order to
increase its share of the Arab vote in last May's national elections.
The ongoing tension in the city has had its fallout. France and Italy
provided some funding for individual projects, such as parks and lighting
for historic sites in the old city. Smaller donations have been received
for a museum and other localized projects. But a $3 million contract with
an American firm to host a series of millennium events, and provide the
municipality with a share of the revenues, fell through after last spring's
riots. Another project to build a convention center in town, financed by
UNESCO and the European Union, is in doubt, as are a series of conferences
tentatively scheduled to be held in the city next year.
Yet last month's showdown between the church and the mosque is just one of
the factors that suggest millennium tourism in Nazareth will fall far short
of its potential.
The government had promised some $200 million for Nazareth 2000 since the
mid-1990s, about 75% of which has finally been provided, Diab says.
Two new entrances have been built from the ring road surrounding the old
city; 1,200 new hotel rooms have been built and another 600 will be ready
during the year; and decrepit areas around the municipality, the old
market, and some holy sites have been renovated. Parking lots for tour
buses are being readied at the entrance to the city, from where tourists
will be ferried to the center in shuttle buses. Some streets have been made
one-way to ease traffic flow, and temporary lodging such as tents and
bed-and-breakfast facilities will be made available if numbers warrant.
Yet even though authorities have reduced their expectations to some 3.5
million millennium tourists - double the number in a normal year -
infrastructure preparations remain incomplete, Diab says. There are not
enough police to guarantee the tourists' personal security and traffic at
the entrances to the city remain chaotic.
To make matters worse, the city government - hamstrung by the deadlock
between Jeraise and the Islamists - is still operating from the fiscal 1998
budget and cannot properly direct its resources for the year 2000.
The Interior Ministry recently announced that a commission of inquiry will
investigate the city's management with an eye to breaking the impasse.
'Many things that the last government promised are finally starting to flow
with this government,' Diab says. Nazareth's success 'is an economic
resource not just for the city but for the whole country. There are a
thousand cities in the world like Haifa and Tel Aviv, but only one
Nazareth.'
Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak has promised to form a committee to
address the city's complaints, but it's not clear what relief it can
provide at this stage.
'Israel had a chance to connect with Third World countries and the
Christian world, to present a positive face in its conflict with the
Palestinians, but that's been missed, in my opinion,' Diab says.
'I'm afraid that when the year 2000 finishes the first thing the government
will do is form a commission of inquiry about the failure.'
A cornerstone for the planned Shihab e-Din Mosque was laid in late
November, spurred by local Moslems who donated NIS 1.5 million and 2.7
kilograms of gold for the mosque's construction. Though they took down
their protest tent when they laid the cornerstone, scores of Moslems still
sleep each night at Shihab e-Din's adjacent tomb and congregate during the
day at the plaza, which now has become an open-air prayer site fronting the
city's main drag. Ahmed Hamudi Zouaby, head of the local Wakf (Islamic
religious trust), sits amid a circle of followers, his white keffiyeh over
his blazer and vest.
Zouaby, known locally as Abu Nawaf, says he could care less about the
controversy's impact on tourism. 'I'm not a Christian, I'm not the Vatican,
so what does the Vatican matter to me?' he asks. He blames Christians for
provoking the Easter riots by pelting Moslem worshippers with stones, and
describes local Christian leaders and Vatican officials who have complained
about the mosque as 'liars.'
Salim Sharara, manager of the Islamic Movement's political office in
Nazareth, says he believes the mosque issue may well prompt a downturn in
tourism. 'Tourists always seek out peace and quiet. Of course this will
have a bad effect,' he says.
'But sometimes the issues are just too fateful.'
Zouaby does not agree that the controversy will deter tourists from
visiting Nazareth. In Jerusalem, he notes, the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, the Western Wall, and Al-Aksa Mosque all manage to thrive
within blocks of each other. In fact, he says, the Shihab e-Din mosque may
become a tourist attraction in its own right.
'Where do tourists come to? They come to visit this place,' he says. 'Any
talk that they're not going to come to Nazareth because they're afraid is a
lie. Tourists come here every day - thousands of them, all day, until 10
o'clock at night.'
So where are they?
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon only a few straggling groups of pilgrims
make their way from their tour buses to the Basilica of the Annunciation and
back, ignoring the peddlers offering them 10 postcards for a dollar and
similar deals. They come from the US, the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico. One
group of black Americans winds its way up the street, its leader holding
his staff aloft to stop passing traffic like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Monday is equally slow.
One group of American tourists pauses next to the plaza as the call of
Moslem prayer blasts from loudspeakers on the site. Their Israeli tour
guide tries to explain the intricacies of the issue.
The few tourists in town say they are aware of the controversy but didn't
give it much importance when planning their trips. 'Bombs may make us think
twice, but not this,' says Henk Brugman, a government worker from Holland
on his second visit to Nazareth. But he adds, 'The city doesn't seem to be
ready yet for tourists. They could make a lot of money if they did things
right. But they don't seem to have caught the millennium bug.'
Shuli, a Nazareth native who says he has been involved in the tourism
industry for three decades - he won't say how exactly, but hints at black
market money-changing and the like - says tourists care less about
political controversy than about immediate needs. 'The mosque issue is for
politicians, not the tourists. They care that the churches be open, maybe
the mosque too. We even have a synagogue here,' he says.
But he finds other problems. 'There's no parking for tour buses, no signs
explaining the sites, no trash cans where a tourist can throw out a
bottle,' Shuli says.
'And there are no public bathrooms. A tourist has to go around the corner
in an alley to crap. What kind of service is that?
One tourist seeking to use the bathrooms in the Casanova Hospice, directly
across from the Basilica of the Annunciation, is turned away, told the
facilities are reserved for paying guests. Hassan says he makes the
bathroom in Central Sweets Patisserie available to tourists, even those who
don't buy from his racks of baklava, but it's a stop-gap measure. 'I can
take three, four, five tourists maybe, but how can I help 2,500 tourists a
day?' he asks.
Daher at The Holyland seems to confirm the lack of basic services. He has
been sitting with Yussuf next to the creche scenes and wooden camels when a
tourist finally approaches. Daher rises expectantly. 'Do you have any
water?' the woman asks.
Daher's face falls. 'Water, no, unfortunately,' he replies. The woman walks
away, uninterested in camels or crucifixes. Daher and Yussuf return to
their conversation.
'It's better that the tourists don't come,' Yussuf says.
'They don't spend any money. They just visit the sites and leave. We don't
sell anything.'
Tour guides and bus drivers have a mafia, he says, whisking visitors to
large stores, including many in the Palestinian Authority, where they have
been promised commissions of up to 30% on the groups' purchases.
They also sell drinks, video cassettes, and guide books on board the bus, he
says, undercutting the business of stores like The Holyland.
Store owners will meet soon to discuss what they can do to increase
business, Daher says. 'In 2000 there will be more tourists but it will be
even worse,' he says. 'There will be so many people that everyone will have
to run even faster.'
'They don't give the tourists even one free hour. It's a shame,' agrees
Yussuf.
'Five hundred Israelis who come to visit are better than one million
tourists. They go into the stores, they eat in the restaurants,
everything.'
A hometown friend wanders into the store and Daher sells him some film.
'It's too bad you weren't here a week ago,' Yussuf says.
'Then you would have seen a lot of tourists. So many - like a herd, like a
flock.'
Last week, maybe. Today the friend leaves and Daher and Yussuf lapse into
silence. The sunlit minutes tick by as the millennium creeps up on
Nazareth.
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