NAZARETH, Israel — The hometown of Jesus has always had its detractors.
A skeptical Nathaniel asked in the Gospel of John if "anything good could come out of it." The visiting Mark Twain unflatteringly described it "clinging like a whitewashed wasp's nest to the hillside."
Inspired by the tourist magnet that is the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes, Ibrahim Boulos and his two sons, Yaacov and Nazar, want to build a cross that surpasses in height the 198-foot crucifix in Effingham, Ill., and a 190-foot edifice near Groom, Texas.
They want festoon it with 7.2 million illuminated glass tiles that will glow at night in colors appropriate to the seasons of the church calendar. To top it off, the family plans to build a church with 4,500 square feet of worship space at the intersection of the cross's arms, 15 stories above the ground.
Not to be outdone in an era when high-tech, computerized theme parks – Christian and otherwise – are springing up around the world, the family and the project's promoters plan to broadcast the worship services over the Internet, as well as supply clerics who, for a fee, can conduct special prayers and rites at the request of logged-in faithful worldwide.
They also promise a digital simulation in the sprawling visitor's center at the foot of the cross that will "take the viewer to key New Testament sites such as Bethlehem, the Galilee and Jerusalem, as they were when Jesus walked there" – just in case the presence nearby of the locales themselves fails to inspire the historical imagination.
"Our objective is to help the city of Nazareth, increase tourism to Nazareth and help people enjoy the fact that they are in Nazareth," the 74-year-old Boulos said.
For the Rev. Riah Abu el-Assal, the former Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, the cross project is nothing less than a means to stake the presence of Christians in the Holy Land as their numbers in the region decline.
"It will encourage and ensure the Christian presence, if not throughout the country, then here in Nazareth, which in my opinion is the mother city of our faith," said Riah, who heads the project's nonprofit arm, which will oversee the distribution of 60 percent of the cross project's proceeds to Nazareth area charities and economic development projects.
The estimated completion date is early 2010, but to date no architect has been hired, no other investors have been recruited and no ground has been broken in the hollow below Nazareth's YMCA, where construction of the cross – at a cost of "tens of millions of dollars," Boulos said - is planned. The rocky ground is currently arrayed with three tennis courts.
The promoters want the complex, with its accompanying visitor's center, to serve as a gateway to Nazareth's traditional Christian attractions - most prominently the Church of the Annunciation, the Roman Catholic basilica that commemorates the site where Mary is said to have been told by the Angel Gabriel that she would give birth to the son of God.
The Vatican and leaders of the Anglican, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Maronite churches in the Holy Land, as well as the Christian mayor of Nazareth, Ramez Jiraisi, have said, in essence, "Nazareth has plenty of holy sites. Thank you very much."
"We should not divert attention" from the existing holy shrines in Nazareth and "reject any use of religion and religious symbols for financial or political profit," the leaders said in a joint statement issued July 20.
Jiraisi says simply: "Nazareth's financial condition can be improved without bombastic acts."
Opposition from powerful quarters has not, however, stopped the Boulos family from already putting up for sale on the project's Web site the mosaic tiles that will decorate the cross. For interested buyers among the faithful worldwide, the cross has been subdivided into different tracts of holy real estate.
A tile on the lofty far reaches of the cross – "the Walls of Love" – can be purchased for $50 each, while a tile located "at the heart of the Cross ... at the center of Christian worship" goes for $300. Each tile will be personalized with an inscription the buyer wishes – in gold, if desired, Boulos said.
The drive by the Boulos family to revive a plan originally intended for Bethlehem to mark the Millennium celebrations illustrates in part how Christian pilgrims have become a key source of tourist revenue for Israel.
Despite the war with Lebanon last summer, some 1,212,500 tourists visited the Jewish state last year, and more than half of them – 843,000 – were Christian, according to Israel's Ministry of Tourism. Next year, thanks to the ministry's promotional efforts, the number of Christians visiting Israel is expected to climb to 1.3 million, the ministry said.
Yet to the chagrin of many of its residents, the town where Jesus spent most of his life has become no more than a two- or three-hour stop for pilgrims on their way to the Sea of Galilee 18 miles to the east, to Jerusalem 81 miles to the south or to Caesaria 38 miles to the west. Nazareth all but seems cursed by geography and the logistics of modern tourism.
With the increase in the number of Christian tourists to Israel has come intensified competition for their dollars.
In June, land was purchased for the construction of a 40-acre Christian theme park on a hillside overlooking the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee.
The $60 million project, led by a consortium of Israeli businessmen and leading U.S. Evangelicals, calls for a broadcast facility, an open-air chapel with the Sea of Galilee as a backdrop, and an auditorium for staging reenactments of the miracles and sermons that Jesus performed in the area.
The case for building the cross and pinning Nazareth more firmly to the Holy Land tourist map has not been well served by the project's promoters, which include a prominent Tel Aviv P.R. firm run by Eyal Arad, a former adviser to the incapacitated ex-premier Ariel Sharon. Their statements have proved a welter of contradictions.
For example, Ibrahim Boulos said in an interview this week that plans for the project would be completed by the architect "within two or three months" and then submitted to officials in Nazareth for approval.
But the architect, the highly-regarded Rudy Riciotti, said he had not signed a contract and had promised no plans after a visit to Nazareth in late July to inspect the proposed building site.
"Without the agreement of all religious and political authorities, I will not work. If I'm sure that the project will bring peace to the Holy Land, I will do it. But for me, today, I'm not involved. I could get involved. Call me in six months," Riciotti said by telephone from his office in Bandol, France.
Riciotti, who was renowned in the 1980s for practicing what one art critic called "a hedonistic architecture involving the pleasure of form and space," was scathing about the proposed scope of the project.
"It will not be the world's largest cross. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous for this land, for the Christian world, and for the sensibilities of Muslims and Jews," he said.
Another shadow hanging over the project is the hint of questionable business practices, despite a phalanx of reputable attorneys and accounting firms that Boulos says are involved in ensuring the endeavor's integrity.
The Boulos family's many business endeavors include a brief foray into a casino ship and Chapter 11 filings, apparently brought about in part by the eruption of wide-scale fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000 and a longtime court case involving compensation by the Israeli government for land it confiscated from the family.
Then there is Riah. The former Anglican bishop of Jerusalem is under investigation by a diocesan committee on charges of corruption and nepotism, said the current bishop, the Rev. Suheil Dawani.
Riah, who heads a sprawling educational complex that bears his name on the outskirts of Nazareth, stepped down as Suheil's predecessor earlier this year. A committee report describes his behavior in an insurance deal involving his daughter and son-in-law as "a dramatic combination of nepotism and violation of trust."
Riah says his conduct was above reproach and common. "I showed them (the committee) how many bishops and priests employed their own from the previous bishops and the bishop who is now in Jerusalem," he said.
The 70-year-old former bishop received both fame and notoriety in 2004 when - citing the ancient Christian tradition of providing a haven to those in need - he gave sanctuary at Jerusalem's St. George's Cathedral to Mordechai Vanunu, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2004 after serving 18 years for treason after disclosing details of Israel's nuclear weapons program.
After Riah granted Vanunu sanctuary, he collected regular payments of between $1000 and $1,800 for Vanunu's rent for more than two years, according to a former diocesan official who requested anonymity.
Asked about the payments, Riah said: "This is a confidential matter between me and those supporting the case of Vanunu."
"There is a perception here that prominent Christians, both clerics and otherwise, are not clean," said a longtime member of Nazareth's Christian community, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Yet while this 34-year-old mother of one opposes construction of the cross, she said that older Nazarenes like her 68-year-old father believe that as the number of Christians in the Holy Land dwindles for many reasons, Muslims are getting stronger at their expense.
"They support the construction of such a cross if it means that Muslims will be envious. They think, 'The cross gives us power. In every place, Muslims are building mosque and mosque and mosque. We are losing everything.' They think it would be a psychological boost for them," she said.
So far, however, Nazareth's Muslims, who make up 69 percent of the town's 65,000 people, have stayed out of the fray.
Ibrahim Sarsur, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel and a member of the Israeli Knesset, said the Christian community in Israel's largest Arab town should follow the example of Muslims who, after years of controversy, scrapped plans in 2002 to build a large mosque next to the Church of the Annunciation.
"We came to believe that building such a mosque would bring instability between the majority Muslim population and the minority Christian population," Sarsur said. "We now believe it is the responsibility of the Christian residents of Nazareth to act in the same way and not to commit a provocation by bringing the cross project to reality."
Come and See Editor adds that the following people lead the the Nazareth Cross project (Based on the Nazareth Cross Web site).
Bishop Riah Abu Al-Asal
Dr. Jaber Khoury
Dr. Mary Mashour
Adv. Elias Shukry
Mr. Adi Bajaly
Mr. Talal Musalam (C.P.A)
Mr. Rashid Safurry
Mr Nizar Bulos
Hisham Saad (C.P.A).
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