The religious cleansing continues.

(VOA) – A senior Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land says the Christian community is in danger of dying out in Nazareth, an Israeli Arab city where Christians believe Jesus spent his youth. Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo says many of Nazareth’s minority Christians began emigrating more than a decade ago largely because of tensions with local Islamists who tried to build a mosque next to the city’s main church. Israel terminated the mosque project in 2003 and Nazareth has been calm ever since. But, Bishop Marcuzzo says several threats remain to one of the region’s oldest Christian communities, whose first church was built in the 5th century AD.

Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo says the emigration of Christians from the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth is endangering the survival of the Christian community in a place of biblical importance to Christianity.

The bishop says the main cause of that emigration is a campaign by Islamists to boost their political power in Nazareth at the expense of Christians and moderate Muslims.

Tensions erupted in 1997 when Islamists set up a prayer tent near Nazareth’s Basilica of the Annunciation, located where Christians believe an angel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.

The Islamists’ goal was to establish a large, permanent mosque at the site, which houses a shrine to Shihab e-Din, a nephew of 12th century Muslim warrior Saladin. Christians in Nazareth and abroad objected, fearing such a mosque would block access to the Basilica and disrupt Christian services.

Christian leaders lobbied for the site to be developed into a plaza for tourists. That idea angered some Islamists, who rioted in Nazareth on Easter Sunday in 1999, smashing Christian-owned cars and shops.

“For us, that problem caused the reaction of many families who wanted to go away, because life became difficult here in Nazareth in those days, in those years,” stated Marcuzzo.