The voice of a muezzin, calling Muslims to prayer with cries of "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - echoed across central Nazareth yesterday. The bells of the Basilica of the Annunciation, the largest church in the Middle East, by contrast, were silent. For yesterday marked the moment when Nazareth's Muslim residents - who numbered 25 per cent of the population at the turn of the century but now outnumber the Christians by more than two to one in a town of 72,000 - underlined their growing domination in the place where Christ spent his boyhood.
At a ceremony attended by thousands of Muslims, a cornerstone was laid for the Shihab alDin mosque which, according to some blueprints, could rise to obscure part of the view of the adjacent Basilica, a 1960s structure built on the ruins of first century Nazareth, on the spot where the Angel Gabriel is said to have told Mary she was pregnant with Jesus.
The Israeli government's decision to sanction the mosque's construction - part of it on state land and part on land owned by the Islamic Trust that already bears the small tomb of Shihab al-Din, a nephew of Saladin who died fighting the Crusaders in the 12th century - has infuriated the Catholic Church. Christian holy sites in Israel and the Palestinian areas closed for a second day in protest yesterday. Further closures are planned - a move designed to pressurise the Israeli government, worried about the potential loss of millennial tourism, into changing its decision.
The Vatican yesterday blamed the Israeli government for the dispute, with a spokesman accusing it of fomenting divisions between religious groups in the Holy Land. The Pope is due to visit the region in March and Catholic leaders are indicating he may stay away from Nazareth, and perhaps exclude Israel altogether, if a satisfactory resolution is not found.
Significantly, no Israeli government ministers attended yesterday's ceremony. The key minister involved, Internal Security Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, said he had acted only in an effort to reduce friction in Nazareth.
Under the deal, the main construction of the mosque is to start only after the Pope's visit and other millennium celebrations.
Also absent yesterday were representatives of the Palestinian Authority. PA President Yasser Arafat has backed the Vatican's position, apparently hoping for Catholic Church support for his efforts to establish a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.