@JuliusC: #Gallia est omnis #divisa in #partes tres: Pope to Tweet in Latin

This has no direct Mideast connection but since various posts on hieroglyphics, Coptic, Aramaic and other ancient tongues make me suspect I have some readers with an interest in antiquity, who might want to polish up their rusty Latin, I'll just note that Pope Benedict XVI, who's up to now been tweeting in eight languages, is going to start tweeting in Latin. His Latin tweets will be found at Pontifex_ln.

Pope Receives Female UAE Ambassador

Though I'm Catholic (though I wouldn't want to be interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition on my orthodoxy), I find it very ironic that the new UAE Ambassador to the Vatican (a title which is in itself an interesting concept) is a woman. So far as I know, the Vatican doesn't have any female papal nuncios.

This isn't the first female Ambassador to the Vatican or anything, but it's interesting that this is an Arab Ambassador. The Pope is said to have praised the UAE for its tolerance of Christians. (Well, it is pretty dependent on expatriate labor.) Perhaps the Vatican is immune to the irony, but I'm not.

For your weekend reading

If you've been reading for a while you know the drill: on Friday afternoons I sign off for the weekend with a number of links for your weekend edification, enjoyment, or you can just spend time with your families like I plan to. For what it's worth:

• A sentence that has probably never before appeared in the entire history of the English language: "Reactions to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Israel were surprisingly similar to reactions to the concert by the British pop band Depeche Mode earlier this week." Writers are always struggling to find the right lead sentence. I consider that one a reach.
  

• I haven't yet seen much Western coverage of this, but apparently "a team of specialized American sailors" (sounds like SEALS) from the cruiser Gettysburg, with support from a South Korean naval vessel, rescued an Egyptian merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden and captured the pirates. And the buried lede: Iran will be sending two warships to join the international flotilla. Here's the CNN version.
  

• An interesting post at Qifa Nabki on rival Druze leaders' use of YouTube and camera phone video to wage an ancient feud (and the Arslans and Jumblatts have been feuding for a very long time). A contribution to the growing literature of carrying on old conflicts in the era of Web 2.0. And the photoshopped (I presume) graphic "DruzeTube: Broadcast Your Za‘im" struck me as brilliant, if you have an appreciation of Lebanese politics and/or Lebanese humor.
  

• While we're on the subject of the Lebanese election campaign, there's a brouhaha brewing among the Maronites over the campaign platform of General Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, the manifesto of which is called "Towards the Third Republic" (.pdf in Arabic). The basic idea is that the Lebanese "First Republic" was the post-indendence republic based on the National Pact, which was unstable, led to the conflict of 1958 and the civil war of 1975-91, while the "Second Republic" was the reconfigured system set up by the Ta'if accords and in place from 1990-91 onward. The Free Patriotic Mofvement is pushing for a stronger, more stable system. It's a neat catchphrase, and as some others have noted, may be influenced by the longevity of the Third French Republic. Lebanese (and Maronites in particular) tend to think in French terms, and for that matter does anybody else count the number of republics? The French are on their fifth, after all. But Aoun is anathema to some of his onetime allies, and supporters of the March 14 Movement (the pro-Hariri side) are saying that the slogan itself is a dangerous thing, a type of "coup d'etat that threatens state institutions including the presidency, the judiciary, media and the Constitution" Former President Amin Gemayel has also used the "coup d'etat" image. Its probably a tempest in a teapot, but it's raised hackles in the Maronite community. And it's just an electoral slogan.
  

Nakba Day

Today is the day Palestinians traditionally observe as a day of mourning — the yawm al-nakba or "Day of the Catastrophe" — marking the creation of Israel in 1948. Because Israel celebrates its Independence Day (yom ha-atzma'ut) according to the Jewish calendar, the two dates do not normally coincide (Israel has already celebrated its independence day on April 29), but both mark the same events of May 15, 1948. In the Palestinian Authority, the ceremonies held in Ramallah were held yesterday so as not to interfere with Friday prayers.

This year Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which has said some provocative things about Israeli Arabs (who make up about a fifth of the population of Israel proper), now wants to make marking the nakba illegal, threatening a penalty of three years in prison. This has little chance of being adopted (how do you ban mourning?) but it is a reminder of the two very different ways Israelis and Palestinians perceive the events of 1948, and of the quandary of Israeli Arabs who are citizens of Israel but who also see those events as a disaster for their own community. It is probably just as well that Israeli Independence Day and Nakba Day are celebrated according to differing calendars and rarely coincide; a common date might exacerbate the conflicting narratives of 1948.

One delicate issue this year has been the fact that May 15 coincides with the last day of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land. The Pope has already addressed Palestinian aspirations by meeting with Abu Mazin and speaking at the Palestinian Refugee Canp at Aida near Bethlehem, in sight of the separation barrier. He has also said Mass in Nazareth, the biggest Arab city in Israel proper (though the fact that it was Jesus' home town was the controlling factor of course). But on Nakba Day itself he is scheduled to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City, which does not carry a lot of Palestinian-Israeli baggage (though the church is a traditional scene for intra-Christian denominational turf battles).

The Pope in the Holy Land

Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in Jordan on the first leg of his visit to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Here's the Vatican's website on the trip for those who want to follow it over the weekend, and here's the official itinerary. Here's a prelude from Haaretz, a report on how he will visit both the Al-Aqsa Mosque* and Yad Vashem (many Israeli newspapers noting the irony of a German Pope at Yad Vashem), a Jordan Times report on his first event, and much more to come, I'm sure. *The papal itinerary lists the Dome of the Rock rather than al-Aqsa; possibly the Israeli report got it wrong.

I've noted previously the quandary of Middle Eastern Christians: in Iraq, their status is genuinely in peril, but in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the population is declining due to emigration. The Pope will doubtless address this on his trip, hopefully without the awkwardness displayed in his remarks about Islam a few years ago (in which his quoting a Byzantine ruler was interpreted by many Muslims as if it were his own viewpoint). This Pope is a German systematic theologian by background, and that is not necessarily the best background for subtle and nuanced pastoral outreach. This could be an interesting trip.