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Newsletter : 9fax1221.txt
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>JN Dec. 21, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 232
"Disneyland" on the Eilat-Aqaba border
By IsraelWire
An American investor will be spending $1.2 billion on an entertainment project on the Eilat-Aqaba border between Israel and Jordan. The project is being labeled a Mideastern "Disneyland" type facility. The planned facility will encompass an area of 100 acres. Five luxury hotels, action and water parks, amphitheater, a medical facility for cosmetic surgery, golf course and a high-class casino to be built on the Jordanian side, will accompany the project.
Catastrophe May Await Jerusalem Pilgrims
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
The dream of many Christians around the world is to one day visit the Holy Land. But there are fears a catastrophe could be awaiting pilgrims at one major religious site, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, the traditional site of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Israeli authorities have declared the church a "firetrap" but rivalry among Christian groups who control the shrine has blocked any improvement in security.
The Syrian Christians, who pray and sing in their native Arabic, are just one of six sects who have rights to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Their chapel is close to the Tomb of Jesus, which many Christians regard as the holiest shrine on earth. But a pilgrimage to the site may also prove risky because the church has only one door, from which visitors enter and exit.
The situation is worrying for Uri Mor, the director of the Department for Christian Communities in the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry. He fears that unless Christian leaders agree to make a new exit, then innocent pilgrims may die during an accidental fire.
"It's very dangerous. It goes without saying. I'm saying it publicly and writing every month another report about it. Its obvious that if you put 20,000 people or 70,000 people with candles or burning torches in one place which only has one exit it's a catastrophe."
Mor believes the matter is urgent with the year 2000 fast approaching, and millions of pilgrims expected in the Holy Land. The leaders of the six Christian sects in the building -- the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, the Egyptian Coptics, the Armenians and the Ethiopians -- all agree in principle. But in practice, not one of them is willing to voluntarily give up any part of its area to make way for a new opening.
This refusal is deeply rooted in the church's troubled history. It was first built in the 4th century CE, on the order of the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena, who identified the sites in the Holy Land associated with the life and death of Jesus.
The church has been destroyed and rebuilt many times since then. The existing structure was erected by the Crusaders. Over the centuries, different Christian groups have fought for domination over the site and in 1852, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire sought to end the bickering by imposing an edict known as the "status quo in the Holy Places."
As a result of this charter, no one party could make any alterations to the building without consensus. But getting the different Christian sects to agree on anything is difficult because of their historical mindset, as Daniel Rossing, an expert on Jerusalem's sacred sites, explains.
"Because of the longevity of the history of this place and the longevity of the conflicts here, one might say that no one is under pressure of time to solve them. That is a reality not only of this shrine, it's a reality of this land also, I would argue that this shrine and the problem of this shrine is a kind of microcosm of the problems of this land."
Rossing and other experts agree that the greatest danger to pilgrims is during the mass lighting of candles during the Greek Orthodox Holy Fire ceremony at Easter. When the annual ritual was performed in 1834, more than 300 people died when panic spread through the crowd. Many perished from suffocation and others were trampled to death as people rushed to the only door, which had been closed to prevent the masses outside from entering the already packed church.
Rossing says he fears history may repeat itself. "What if there is some kind of -- God forbid -- fire, because it is the Holy Fire ceremony. How would these large numbers of people get out of the church and being trampled. Indeed that did happen a century and half a go. So there is a certain danger, not in most of the days of the year where it is much easier to control the flow of people coming in and out."
But he says it would be wrong for the Israeli government to impose a solution. "If you open this opening and the churches don't want it open, what are you going to do -- stand there with soldiers and policemen and guard the opening. It's just out of the question. You've got to have the cooperation of the churches."
A senior Roman Catholic Church official in Jerusalem advises the Israeli government to act now and impose a solution, with all the diplomatic skills at its disposal -- because, as he put it, another millennium may pass before the Christian church leaders can decide among themselves.
