Ariel Center for
Policy Research

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

 

NATIV    Volume Thirteen    Number 2 (72)   March 2000    Ariel Center for Policy Research

 

SYNOPSIS

 


The Anti-Millennium: The Islamization of Nazareth

Raphael Israeli

The rise of the Islamic movement in Israel in the past two decades has had a very ominous ramification over the past two years, when the Muslim fundamentalists moved to complete the Islamization of Nazareth, a city known principally for its Christian Holy Places, notably the Church of the Annunciation.

At the end of 1997, the Islamists invaded the plaza at the foot of the Basilica, which had been earmarked as the linchpin of the festivities of the Millennium. By squatting in the plaza and demanding that a mammoth mosque be built there, which would dwarf the Basilica, the Islamists were intent on wrecking the festivities and determined to fixate in public opinion the idea that Nazareth has become a Muslim city and has shed its ancient image as a Christian site.

The Israeli authorities were slow and clumsy in responding to the challenge. They pursued the legal track through courts, but also adopted intermediate measures of mediation in an attempt to come to a "compromise", which by definition would have imputed legitimacy to the Islamists' false claim that the terrain was a waqf land (Muslim Holy Endowment). A Commission of Inquiry was also appointed to deal with his issue.

But the problem was not resolved. The courts rendered their verdict that the Islamists had usurped rights they did not have, but two successive governments, before, during and after the May, 1999, elections, stuck to the "compromise" which allowed the building of a mosque on part of the terrain, thus bringing about a sense of triumph among the Muslims and consternation amidst the Christians, in Israel and throughout the world.

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