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NAZARETH UNDER SIEGE In the dawn hours of July 1 2003, hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers poured into Nazareth on a mission to dig up the foundations of a mosque being built in the city centre. The pretext for the military operation was that the mosque had been built without a permit. In truth, however, the Israeli government sent in the troops because a long-standing policy of "divide and rule" in Nazareth effected by fanning the flames of religious hatred had inadvertently rebounded. For years the government had cultivated a group of disgruntled observant Muslims in Nazareth, who were encouraged to build a mosque provocatively close to the city's main church...(continued below)
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These Muslims, mostly from poor refugee families expelled from villages close to Nazareth during the 1948 war, were bitter that they were now a majority (about 70 per cent) of the local population but that power, land and influence remained with Nazareth's Christian institutions. The imminent arrival of the Pope for the Millennium celebrations in Nazareth, and the international attention it would receive, served only to further antagonise them. The building of the mosque was a symbolic challenge to the dominance of the church and by extension local Christians. Bitter street fights between Christians and Muslims erupted at Easter 1999 over the siting of the mosque. Two Israeli committees of inquiry backed the Muslim group's claims to the land on which they wanted to build. But when the group started laying the foundations in early 2003, first the Pope and then President Bush began leaning on the Israeli government. The show of military force was a reminder to all Nazarenes Muslims and Christians of where real power resides in a Jewish state.
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Jonathan Cook News Archive, last updated on Friday, 14 September 2007 |
