In the late 1990s, an Islamist attempt to build a new mosque in front of the Church of the Annunciation in order to undermine the construction of an open plaza at the site instigated an Islamist–Christian conflict. The Israeli government-funded project was aimed to encourage tourism in Nazareth around the time of the millennium celebrations. On part of the compound selected for the new plaza, there was a square-meter tomb of a Muslim saint named Shihab al-Din, which lay on land registered officially as belonging to an Islamic endowment, or waqf, that the municipality designated for preservation. For Abu Ahmad, a member of the municipal council and a leader of the Islamic Movement in Nazareth, this presented a golden opportunity to leverage political consolidation for the Islamic Movement in Nazareth. Messengers were sent to search in archives and to recruit experts on Islamic law as well as other regional and international political institutions and authorities.