News from Nazareth

When Jesus Christ learned recently that another Nazarene had died, he went and asked the newcomer to Heaven: "How are things in Nazareth?" "They are changing," replied the Nazarene. "There are new political leaders and new civic programs, and the citizens are full of hope." "I can see that nothing has changed," sighed Jesus. "And besides, " continued the Nazarene, "they are cleaning up the Cactus Quarter." "So Nazareth really is changing!"said Jesus.

That joke was told in Nazareth last week as bands of volunteers scrubbed down the city's scabrous Cactus Quarter for what may have been the first time in 2,000 years. They painted shabby schoolrooms, removed piles of rubbish and hacked away at overgrown cactus plants. "The city has no money and so we are doing the work," explained Ghassoub Matar, 22, a painter.

In the nine months since Communist Poet Tawfiq Zayad was elected mayor, some surprising things have taken place in Nazareth, the largest (pop. 40,000) all-Arab city within the borders of Israel. New water and drainage pipes have been laid, three new schools have almost been completed and city council meetings have been thrown open to the public for the first time. Local tax collections have increased by 50%.

"And I have other plans," declared Zayad, 47, as he toured the city last week, wearing a yellow T shirt that bore the message RIGHTS TO NAZARETH MUNICIPALITY. "This city is terrible," he said. "There is not one library here, not one museum, not one sports stadium or traffic signal. City hall is an antiquity." Indeed, the city hall is a rundown pile of stone that looks much like a prison--which in fact is what it used to be. Zayad's father was an inmate there in 1936 after an Arab uprising against the British rulers of what was then Palestine. "I remember going to the prison every day to take food to my father," says Zayad, adding with a grin: "Now I go there every day as mayor of Nazareth."

Not surprisingly, the Israeli government has shown little enthusiasm for Zayad and his gadfly coalition of Communists, Christians and Moslems. "When he was elected, we said to ourselves that we would just have to make the best of it," says Shmuel Toledano, the Israeli government's chief expert on local Arab affairs. "Our assessment of Nazareth, after nine months of Zayad, is that things are no better today than they were before."

That is hardly true. Zayad sued the Israeli Ministry of Education for funds that it was withholding, on a technicality, from Nazareth's school system, and he won the case (and $51,000). He is demanding a larger cut of the national budget for municipalities, especially Nazareth, and he loudly complains of government obstructionism.

The effect of Zayad's campaign has been to polarize Nazarenes into a self-conscious Arab minority, and this worries some of Zayad's townspeople almost as much as it bothers Jerusalem. "We are Arabs, yes," says Restaurant Owner Abu Nassir, a Catholic, "but we are Israelis too. For 28 years we have lived in harmony with the government. What Zayad is doing is dangerous. You cannot fight the government and expect to live in peace."

Zayad does not expect to live in peace. He expects it will take quite a lot of fighting to make Nazareth, which he now calls "a mess," a better place.

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