Nazareth, Israel - The view of Nazareth stretching behind Pope Benedict XVI as he conducted Mass Thursday on a hilltop overlooking the hometown of Jesus was idyllic.

Yet it hid the underlying tensions that have simmered for some time between Christians and Muslims in the mixed city.

The festive atmosphere helped. Singing, dancing and playing guitars and drums, tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims and local Arab Christians gathered on the slope as early as dawn, hours before Thursday's Mass.

It was the biggest religious event of the pontiff's eight-day tour of the Holy Land.

If Wednesday's visit to the West Bank city of Bethlehem was the highlight of Benedict's pilgrimage for the 1.9-per-cent Christian minority in the Palestinian territories, Thursday's visit to Nazareth was the highlight for Israel's 2.1-per-cent Christian-Arab minority.

Pupils, holding up the names of their Catholic schools, were bussed from key Arab towns throughout Israel, including Acre in the north and Jaffa south of Tel Aviv for the celebrations. They joined thousands of foreign Catholics who had flown in with the pope from across the globe, as well as the locals from Nazareth.

The only hint of the sensitivities were more than 5,000 police, deployed inside the fenced-off area and on surrounding hilltops, to secure the mass event on the Mount of Precipice, also known locally as the Mount of the Leap. It is the cliff from which, according to the New Testament, an angry crowd attempted to throw Jesus.

Large numbers also deployed inside the town itself. Israel, alone responsible for the pope's safety, was not taking any risks, explained police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld: "We know that there have been statements made against the pope, so we are prepared."

Some of Nazareth's Muslim residents had objected to the papal visit, angry over his controversial 2006 remarks, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor making statements against the Prophet Mohammed.

At least 70 per cent of the town, where Christians once were a majority, are now Muslims.

Tensions between its Muslim majority and declining Christian minority reached a peak in 1999, when then premier Benjamin Netanyahu - who now leads Israel once again following elections early this year - approved construction of a mosque near the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christians believe the angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would give birth to the Son of God.

Christian protests led all the way up to Pope John Paul II. Former premier Ariel Sharon eventually ordered the mosque's illegally begun foundations destroyed in 2003.

The tensions had led John Paul II to hold the main mass of his pilgrimage in 2000 elsewhere in northern Israel. Benedict used Thursday's Mass to call for peaceful coexistence between the two communities, saying "Sadly, as the world knows, Nazareth has experienced tensions in recent years which have harmed relations between its Christian and Muslim communities."

"There were three really bad days," said Francis Abu Nasser, 55, reflecting on the pope's message and recalling the 1999 protests, as he walked down the hill after the Mass among a stream of local Christians who were returning home through deserted, blocked-off roads.

"Thank God nobody was killed," he said, noting it had come close and warning that if this had happened or were to, Muslim-Christian relations in Nazareth would "never return to normal."

The atmosphere between the two religions, he said, "has improved a little, but not 100 per cent."

Many of his Christian cousins and relatives had moved abroad, he sighed, citing the tensions and the general situation in Israel as reasons behind the emigration trend.

"But I am not leaving. This is my place," added the proud builder, who said he was 12 when he helped lay the first bricks of the relatively modern Church of the Annunciation, built by an uncle.

For 21-year-old Sari Matar, who said that as far as he was concerned Christians and Muslims were living in Nazareth "as one family," the tensions were forgotten as he watched the Mass.

"It's very exciting. You see many people who have come from all over the world to one place with the same goal."

Did Abbu Nassar feel strengthened by the papal visit? "A little.

"Had he brought peace it would have been better. I wish there was peace, not only between Jews and Arabs, also between Muslims and Christians."(dpa)