NAZARETH, the largest Arab city in Israel, and Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government in the West Bank, recently signed the first agreement twinning towns in the two places. Ramallah is paired with towns abroad, but Nazareth is different, says Maha Shihadeh, the official behind the plan. She hopes the accord could prompt pilgrims visiting Jesus’s hometown to head to Ramallah as well and help it emulate Nazareth’s conversion from a dilapidated town into a tourist destination.

Above all, officials hope it will go some way towards linking the fractured parts of old Palestine. “We want to reconnect,” Ms Shihadeh says, harking back to a time before Israel’s creation in 1948 when Palestinians roamed unobstructed by Israeli security barriers. Her counterpart, the mayor of Nazareth, Ramez Jaraysi, says: “The two cities are Palestinian cities divided by geopolitics. We’ll continue being citizens of Israel, but our nationality is Arab-Palestinian.”

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