Holy Hot Seat
Anti-Islam?
A Christian-Muslim dispute over a mosque in
Nazareth puts Israel squarely in the middle.
AZ,
AARON LIGHTNER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Nazareth
A
long-standing dispute
between Muslims and
Christians over the building
of a mosque next to the
Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth
is fast entangling the Israeli govern-
ment, whose attempts to mollify the
situation have served only to ignite it.
The implications may be grave as
this Muslim-Christian conflict
, reignites, and they stretch far beyond
this sleepy Galilee city of 70,000.
Virtually all the Christian denomi-
„4.
nations in Israel convened in Jerusalem Construction workers build the foundation of a controversial mosque
two weeks ago to present a united
near the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.
front against the building of a mosque
on a plot originally slated to become a
Fearing a Muslim backlash, Israeli police refused
municipal square.
to intervene, even after the Coalition of Churches
In addition, the Vatican has condemned Israel's
filed numerous complaints, Kopp said.
decision to allow the mosque to be built.
"We have pictures of" the Islamic Movement
The dispute comes as the Jewish state and the
"hauling out bones from Jewish graves and huge
Palestinian Authority, which is predominantly
Roman columns, but no one has done anything to
Muslim, spar for the title of protector of Christian
stop it," Kopp said.
holy sites in the Holy Land.
The government's greatest fear is that the churches
If built, the mosque will sit at the foot of the
would not support it even if construction was halted
Church of the Annunciation, one of the holiest sites
and rioting started, said Raphael Israeli of Hebrew
in Christendom and a Nazareth landmark since its
University, one of four members on a 1998 commis-
completion in 1968.
sion of inquiry that studied the dispute.
"This is the. first time in 500 years that the
Riots last October as part of the Palestinian upris-
churches posed a united front on -any one issue, so
ing, in which police killed 13 Israeli Arabs, only
grave is the situation," said Danny Kopp, a
intensify the fear.
spokesman for the Coalition of Churches.
The sad fact is that failure to stop construction
To varying degrees, almost every Christian
"will bring unrest to all of the Christian organizations
denomination is involved, from the Catholic repre-
in the world," Raphael Israeli said. "But the Muslims
sentative of Palestinian nationalism, Michel Sabbah, would also despise Israel, because it used force and
to the Christian Zionists.
.
because it had once submitted, which is a sign of odi-
"At first;" Kopp said, "[Israeli Primc Minister
ous weakness" in Muslim eyes.
Ariel] Sharon was promising that this project would
Israeli, the only commission member to vote
be scrapped only/over his dead body, but when" the
against construction of the mosque, believes that
Islamic Movement in Israel "began to build, we
Israel must remove the Islamic Movement from the
were forced to regroup. -
lot, "even by force, even if the cost is high." Elana
International Pressure
Two weeks ago, after an intense letter-writing cam-
paign to the U.S. Senate initiated by the coalition's
American chapter, an Israeli court order was issued
to stop the building.
Preceding this move were two conversations U.S.
President George W. Bush held with Sharon, urging
him to stop the mosque project. The pressure
seemed to have worked.
Despite the court order, however, building con-
tinued on the Nazareth mosque even on Christmas
Day.
1/4
2002
14
Kaufman, an expert on Arab political behavior at Tel
Aviv University, believes that realpolitik, not legality,
pushed the Israeli government's decision.
"In a way, the government thought the Muslim list
would throw some precious votes their way. Or they
thought the favor would somehow be returned, per-
haps by a pacification of rhetoric," she said. But
•
apparently that is not the case."
The man in charge of the mosque has vowed to see
the construction through at any cost. Salman Abu
Ahmad, the city's deputy mayor and the head of the
Islamic Movement's political wing, sits in the Islamic
Movement tent on the disputed lot.
Abu Ahmad sees only one catalyst for the contro-
versy — "international pressure" born of growing
anti-Islamic sentiment in the West.
"What, is Bush crazy?" Ahmad asked. "What
does Bush or the pope have to do with local build-
ing policies? Are we the only city in the world that
has a mosque near a church?
"The way they are treating this issue, it is as if
we are going to be the next target after
Afghanistan or Iraq," he said. "They are treating
this matter as if we are going to build an atom
bomb in the basement of the mosque."
When asked why construction continued,
despite the court order against it, Abu Ahmad
said, "It's not construction. It's nothing more than
maintenance."
Abu Ahmad claims the land has been in Muslim
hands for centuries.
"What, did the Jews bring this land with them
from Poland?" he asked. "No, this land belonged
to the Wakf," the religious trust that administers
Islamic holy sites. It was Palestinian land before
1948. There was a Muslim school here, which I
attended, and inside that was always a mosque."
Not so, claims Uri Mor, former director of the
Christian communities department at the
Religious Affairs Ministry.
Until the Nazareth municipality planned the city
square i'n 1997, the site was a dilapidated lot of no
interest to the Islamic Movement, Uri said.
"Only 200 of the 700 meters of that plot belong
to the Wakf. That is a fact, and it is for the gov-
ernment only to decide what to do with it," he
said.
The government's most grievous mistake was its
failure to consult the Christian community until it
had already ceded the land, Mor said. When the
Islamic Movement launched a "pogrom" against
the Christian community in Nazareth in March
1999, the government should have clamped down,
and "kicked the Islamists out," Mor said.
Kaufman believes the Islamic Movement's efforts
Israel Insight
THE ISSUE
b om b ing in
of
terreorrlican
(Dne of dl e kheYastargets
Ani st trainingc amps
Afghanist an
of AlQai da. With the recent strong U.S. denun-
ciations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror .irect
in
camps
ed against. Israel, could their training
d
ca
Lebanon and Syria be targete next?
BEHIND TEE ISSUE
News reports out of the Middle East recently
reveal that U.S. officials have informed the Syrian
and Lebanese governments that they must stop
playing host to terror organizations such as
Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Allan Gale, Jewish Community Council of
itleo-opolitan Detroit