The Fresh Prince of Nazareth

Tareq Shihada lives, eats and breathes Nazareth, that city perched atop a set of hills that overlooks the Galilee valley and is visible from all directions for miles around. The city where Jesus Christ grew up, lived with his parents, Mary and Joseph.
Shihada, who is the director of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association, likes to tell people when they ask him where he is from that "I am a Nazarene." Not THE Nazarene, of course. But you get the idea that he loves this place. And for good reason.
Approaching Israel's largest Arab city from the west, white buildings capping the hillside give the city an almost magical glow as you see it from a great distance. We could see the new portions of the city for nearly half an hour before we began the climb up hill to where we would meet Shihada for lunch, Muscular, jocular and continually in motion, the Israeli Arab took turns fielding our questions and answering his cell phone, individualized ring tones making me wish I had his cell phone list.
Shihada is unabashedly pro-Nazareth, and he says he often finds himself in a position in which he has to swim against the current when in comes to dealing with government officials in Jerusalem. He's notched a few years in politics as well, serving on the equivalent to the Nazareth city council. And today, he says his primary concern is making Nazareth a critical stop for pilgrims coming to the Holy Land, not only because we believe this is where Jesus lived most of his life, but because the business generated from venerated guests will help insure that the Arab Christians and Muslims living in the southern Galilee city will not just survive but thrive.
"I try to tell groups that Nazareth is a great place to base a visit to the Holy Land," he said. "We are very close to the Sea of Galilee" and surrounding sacred sights. "And Nazareth is a destination in itself that we believe people should take advantage of for a couple of days." Now, he explains, pilgrims will stop for perhaps a half day to visit the Church of the Annunciation, a huge church built at the end of the 1960s that was dedicated by Pope Paul VI (It is said to be the largest church in Israel). Celebrating the spot where it is said the angel Gabriel that God the Father had chosen Mary to be the mother of His son, the current church is built over an Byzantine church, the remains of which are enclosed by the modern church. At the center of the new structure is the grotto where it is said Mary received the news. In total there are at least 30 churches, monasteries and convents in Nazareth, and the Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Israel, Bishop Giancinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, makes his home here as well.
At a meeting Shihada had set up for us with Bishop Marcuzzo, the prelate told us that rather than allowing the Holy Land to become an archeological repository of Christian artifacts, the Holy Land must remain a distinct part of the Christian world, and therefore it is imperative to insure that Christians, Arabs and Jews all can strive to live in some sort of harmony.
And Shihada sees the best way of doing that is to insure that residents of the holy city, Christian, Arab and Jew alike, are allowed to make enough of a living that they can indeed stay and live in the land where they, like Jesus did, are able to enjoy their homes.
But an example of the difficulties that have been encountered illustrates the frustrations Shihada sometimes has to overcome. For years, he said, he has been telling the Israel Ministry of Tourism that Nazareth has enough interests for pilgrims, and it is situated in such a critical way in the lower Galilee, that it should be marketed more strongly as the complete destination. That means people coming to Nazareth, unloading from tour buses into one of the major hotels there, visiting the holy sites and staying overnight, then exploring the region again the next day. "I can't tell you how many times I've given them that message," he said. Then, a couple years ago, the government hired the U.S. firm Ernst & Young to conduct a study for the ministry -- costing more than a million bucks -- and the American company reported back with the same conclusion Shihada had. "It would have saved them lots of money if they'd listened to me," he said, shrugging.
Still, Shihada says he looks forward to the day when the conflicts have ended in the Middle East, when borders are open for all, and people can move about as they did hundreds and thousands of years ago. Then, he said, Nazareth will benefit from its place on the map.
"If you look, we are only two hours away from Damascus; two hours away from Jerusalem; two hours away from Beirut. That puts us right in the middle. Someday, that is going to be a good place to be."