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www.detroitjewishnews.com
4/7
2000
134
Meeting Ground
In Nazareth
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Special to the Jewish News
T
he new Marriott in Nazareth is
the only hotel in Israel where,
in adjoining halls, there could
be a Muslim wedding, a Christian
engagement party and a Jewish cir-
cumcision ceremony.
Moreover, integration is not limited
to the halls of the Marriott. Its entire
staff is integrated to a greater degree
than any in other Israeli enterprise.
Integration begins at the top:
Ownership is divided between NxiAreth
Arab businessman Rashid Safoury, who
owns 51 percent of the hotel, and a
number of Tel Aviv Jewish entrepre-
neurs, who control the other 49 percent.
Half of the employees are Jewish and
half are Arabs.
Training Manager Noa Peri was born
in Tel Aviv, studied hotel management in
Boston and worked for the Marriott
chain in the United States and Sweden
before being offered a position in
Marriott's first Israeli venture.
Her Tel Aviv friends don't always
understand why, and are apt to ask her
with considerable bewilderment, how
she can work with Arabs. The question
annoys her.
Such questions aren't only asked
in Tel Aviv. New Jewish Upper
Nazareth borders on old Arab
Nazareth, but there is little interac-
tion between residents of the two
communities. Desk clerk Judy Stein
from Upper Nazareth never had an
Arab friend before she began work-
ing at the Marriott. Now she has
several, with whom she goes to
movies and parties.
But for Muslim Ali Abu Ganam,
chief chef at the Marriott, interaction-
people outside his group is far from a
new experience. Trained at a hotel :
school in east Jerusalem, he spent 25
years working in Eilat, where he lived
first with an Israeli Jewish woman and
then with an English Christian
woman. He had a child with each and
keeps in close touch with his Jewish
son (who has already completed his
service in the Israeli army) and his
Christian daughter (now living with
her mother in Great Britain).
Some years ago, Abu Ganam finall
entered the bonds of matrimony by
marrying an Arab woman, who has
given birth to his third child.
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