At Joseph Banro's souvenir shop in the centre of Nazareth's Old City, on the incline that leads up from the nondescript tomb of Shihab al-Din to the imposing Basilica of the Annunciation, you can buy olive-wood nativity scenes, silver icons, worry beads, nine-branched candelabras, hand-shaped "hamsahs" to ward off the evil eye, bottles of multi-coloured sand and T-shirts extolling the virtues of "peace" in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Whether it's an object of deep religious significance you're looking for, or a cheap trinket, and whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or anything else, you'll be welcomed and treated with courtesy, and every effort will be made to make sure that you leave fully satisfied.
Which is somewhat ironic. Because 50 yards up the hill from Joseph Banro's shop, outside what is said to be the largest church in the Middle East, Muslims are distinctly bad news. Fifty yards down the hill, in the tarred parking lot adjoining Shihab al-Din's burial place, Christians are the veritable enemy.
And in both places, it's the Jews who are getting the blame for all the trouble.
On the cusp of the new millennium, tidings of comfort and joy are in somewhat short supply in the town where Jesus spent his boyhood.
After centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence, and a growth spurt that has turned Nazareth into the "Arab capital" of Israel - a focus for the million Arabs who constitute a sixth of the overall Israeli population - relations between the faiths have soured dramatically in the past two years:, bitterness has reached its peak at the very moment when the city was set for a leading role in the Holy Land's millennium celebrations.
For the Israeli government, anxious to retain sovereignty throughout Jerusalem, and thus happy to underplay that city's Christian centrality by shifting as much millennial attention to holy sites elsewhere, Nazareth was seen as a godsend. Israel has been backing an $80 million restoration project designed to turn the hilly streets of the Galilee town into a modern pilgrim's paradise, and millions of Christian tourists were expected to inspect its narrow alleyways in the course of the year 2000. As much as Jerusalem, Nazareth was due to dominate a scheduled Papal visit next March.
But now, eager anticipation has given way to nervous apprehension. Inside the vast basilica, Salim Katora, one of the church custodians, says he isn't even certain that the Pope is coming any more. "We've heard nothing official," he says with a forlorn shrug of the shoulders. "We are just waiting to see."
In essence, the tension here is a function of changing demographics. Until this century, Christians were the overwhelming majority, outnumbering the Moslems by three to one. But decade by decade, that balance has shifted, accelerated by the ongoing exodus of Christians from throughout the holy land, and by an influx, especially at the time of Israel's 1948 War of Independence, of Muslim refugees from nearby villages. Today, in a population estimated at 70,000, it is the Muslims who outnumber the Christians, two-to-one.
In a city whose landscape is dominated by the hill-top basilica, the increasingly numerous Muslim majority has sought to reflect its increasing prominence with some soaring religious architecture of its own. Specifically, some of the leaders of Nazareth's Muslim community have been pressing to transform the humble, single-storey domed burial site of Shihab al-Din into a spacious, imposing mosque - complete with four, maybe five, soaring minarets - in flagrant competition with the church further up the hill.
Jamal, a fifty-ish regular for daily prayers at the al-Din tomb, fingering worry beads that match his green head-covering, says the plan is to build the minarets "all the way to the heavens". When I suggest to him that the government won't give a planning licence for anything like that, he beams and looks skyward. "God," he laughs delightedly, "gives the licences around here."
The Tomb OF Shihab al-Din is set in the back left corner of a patch of wasteland - tarred over, for now, to serve as a parking lot. Previously a school, it is envisaged by the Muslims as the site of the future mosque. The land is part-owned by the Waqf, or Muslim Trust, but mostly owned by the state. In front of the tomb, multi-coloured prayer mats are laid out in a rectangular area, its borders marked off with metal pipes. It is here that Jamal and dozens of other regulars gather for prayers each day, here that thousands of local Muslims congregated on November 23rd for a ceremony formally laying the "cornerstone" for the new mosque.
Today, that cornerstone stands in proud isolation, a small tree growing improbably by its side out of the tarmac. No firm commitment has been given by the Israeli government as to when the mosque itself will be built, or what design will be acceptable. Among the local Muslims, the consensus seems to be that no building work will start until the Pope has been and gone - if, that is, he comes at all - but that, once the millennial spotlight has moved on, the tractors and bulldozers will rapidly get busy.
The faces of the two Christian women staffing an official government tourist office just across from the parking lot turn sour when the vexed subject of the mosque is raised. "The whole thing is absurd," says one of them bitterly. "There's nothing really holy to them over there. It's only in the last two years that they've started to make a song and dance, and that's only because they can't bear the fact that the Church is the most important site in this town. Their so-called hero isn't even buried here. His body is in Damascus."
Jamal chuckles good-naturedly when this assertion is put to him. "She's talking about Saladin (the Muslim warrior and sultan of Egypt who captured Jerusalem and triumphed over the Crusaders in the late 12th century.) Shihab al-Din is Saladin's nephew, a great warrior in his own right. And his body's here all right. No doubt about that. I went to school right on this spot, and the tomb has always been here."
That school, indeed, was knocked down by the local council two years ago - when the idea was to transform the area into a Venetian-style piazza for the busloads of millennial Christian visitors to the church. But when some local Muslims began demanding it be used to expand Shihab alDin's burial site, the piazza plans were put on hold and the tension began to build - escalating into Muslim-Christian riots last April, in which several local people were hurt, and a number of mainly-Christian cars and shops had their windows smashed.
Attempting to play Solomon, the Israeli government set up a committee to try and resolve the conflicting claims to the area, and proposed a "compromise solution" - whereby the piazza would be built on three-quarters of the site, and the mosque, smaller than proposed by the Muslim planners, would occupy the final quarter.
But the plan has backfired. While many of the Muslims see the deal as a victory, local, national and international Christian leaders are furious. In an unprecedented act of protest last month, church leaders closed the doors of all Christian holy sites throughout the land, and they have threatened further protest action in the weeks ahead.
Amid rumoured threats that the Papal visit may be cancelled, the Vatican has publicly blamed Israel for causing the crisis - provoking tension between the faiths, as a Vatican spokesman put it last month. Israel's Internal Security Minister, Shlomo BenAmi, the man who devised the unhappy "compromise," responded plaintively that he had merely been trying to demonstrate respect and tolerance for the requirements of both Muslims and Christians.
The Pope may yet come to Nazareth. Workmen at the church are, even now, laying new stone floors around its perimeter in anticipation of his visit. But the lustre of millennium celebration here has been dulled.
Yasser Arafat, who tried to mediate his own compromise by suggesting that the new mosque be built elsewhere, and who won a pledge of Saudi funding for such construction, has scored some precious points with the Vatican - critical to him as he struggles against Israel to win the right to establish his Palestinian capital in Jerusalem - without losing too many among the Muslims. And Israel, which has sought to prove itself a dependable guardian of sites holy to all faiths, has managed to spend $80 million restoring Nazareth and still left the Christians in the town of Jesus's boyhood feeling mistreated and undervalued.