The din of earthmovers and a cloud of dust rise over Mount Precipice as workers scramble to get ready for a papal visit that Israel hopes will bring in tourist dollars and rave reviews.The Jewish state is pumping some 10 million dollars (7.5 million euros) into preparations for Pope Benedict XVI's May 11-15 visit to the Holy Land that will bring tens of thousands of pilgrims to Israel.
It also hopes the papal trip will help polish Israel's international image in the wake of the Gaza war.
In the Bible, the town of Nazareth was the boyhood home of Jesus and a place he returned to with almost fatal consequences after he began his ministry. His fellow townsmen, angered by his teaching, tried to shove him off a cliff.
That was at Mount Precipice, where authorities face the formidable challenge of turning a hillside into a 40,000-seat amphitheatre in time for the May 14 open-air mass the pontiff will celebrate there.
"We are working under a lot of pressure to finish it in time," says Ishai Soker of the non-profit Jewish National Fund, owned by the World Zionist Organisation, which is financing the project together with local and national authorities.
More than 50 earthmovers and other heavy construction vehicles are tearing up a flank of the mountain, overlooking Nazareth. In the distance, a large, tarred blot on the forested landscape marks the spot where the pontiff and his delegation will arrive aboard nine helicopters.
Israeli authorities hope the pope's visit will boost the number of foreign tourists in Israel, which already reached a record three million last year, one third of them pilgrims.
"The government at very short notice has invested a lot of time and money in the success of this visit," says Raphael Ben-Hur, a deputy director-general of the tourism ministry.
Tzvi Lotan, a marketing director at the ministry, says "we want the papal masses in Jerusalem and Nazareth to be the best in the world," a references to the liturgies the pope will celebrate before tens of thousands of faithful.
Christians in Israel, who make up two percent of the seven million population and many of whom are Arabs, hope the visit will help put their small community on the map.
"We consider the visit by his holiness a big support to our community," says Elias Odeh, a parish priest in Reneh outside Nazareth, which are both Arab-Israeli communities.
Plans for the pontiff's visit have not been without controversy.
"Many people, including among the clergy, were not pleased with the visit coming at this time," says Odeh, referring to calls for Benedict to shun Israel to protest the war on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians.
Catholic leaders stress that this will be a pastoral rather than a political visit, though they say the pope is likely to address the seemingly intractable Middle East conflict and call for peace in the troubled region.
The visit has also stirred controversy within the Jewish community, coming after months of uproar over the Vatican's decision to lift the excommunication of Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson of Britain.
Within hours of landing in Israel on May 11 following a visit to neighbouring Jordan, Benedict is set to pray at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
But he will shun the part of the complex where a caption below a photograph of Pius XII says his Nazi-era predecessor never protested the holocaust during World War II.
"Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest... When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the pope did not intervene," the caption states.
The caption has angered the Vatican, which disputes the claim that Pius failed to do anything to help the Jews during the war.
Benedict stirred controversy last year when he defended the memory of the wartime pope, and said he hoped his beatification -- the first step towards sainthood -- would proceed quickly.
While in Jerusalem, the pope will also pray at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest for Muslims.
In Nazareth, he will hold talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pray in the Basilica of the Annunciation, built at the site where Christians believe the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary she would conceive the son of God.
His trip will also take him to the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem where he will celebrate mass, meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and pray at the grotto that marks the spot where Christians believe Christ was born.
"We expect the Pope to come with a message of hope, of peace," says Ricardo Bustos, the Franciscan superior of the Nazareth basilica.
This, he warns, does not mean peace is about to break out.
"It takes time to get things done in the Holy Land; one needs a lot patience," he says, smiling and his eyes raised to heaven.
"But patience here is also synonymous with perseverance."
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(Source: AFP)