The holy war Israel wants

[Resistance]

an EI exclusive from journalist Jonathan Cook

The inhabitants of Nazareth, Israel's only Arab city, often talk of the "invisible occupation": although they rarely see police -- let alone soldiers -- on their streets, they are held in a vise-like grip of Israeli control just as much as their ethnic kin in neighbouring Palestinian cities like Jenin and Nablus are.

In September 2000, for example, when Israel's one million Palestinian citizens, including Nazarenes, demonstrated against Ariel Sharon's visit to the mosque compound in Jersualem -- known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount -- 13 of their number were shot dead by police in four days. Not a single protester had been armed.

Last week the veil was again briefly lifted from the occupation inside Israel. More than 500 heavily armed police officers stormed Nazareth's city centre at dawn, arresting a handful of Muslim clerics and demolishing the foundations of a mosque that has been making headlines since a "holy tent" was first erected in 1998 at the site of the grave of Shihab ad-Deen, the nephew of Salah ad-Deen.

In all the excitement over Israel's withdrawals from Gaza and Bethlehem, the invasion of Nazareth was overlooked, except in the Hebrew press, where it was presented as a brave attempt by the government to rein in lawlessness and calm religious tensions in a city that is now 70 per cent Muslim and 30 per cent Christian.

But the case of Nazareth's "rogue" mosque is far more complicated than this -- and potentially more revealing of the political games Israel is playing with the delicate balance of forces between the country's religious communities.

(snipped the rest -follow link for more)