Unlike in Western Europe, hundreds of mosques make part of Israel''s landscape, they are highly visible and their number and ever rising minarets is constantly expanding. This reality is generally respected by the Jewish majority authorities and population, mostly due to the fact that the presence of Islam in the region and that of the indigenous Arab Muslims dates back for many centuries and preceded the current religious and national majority. At the same time, several question arise, particularly in view of the ongoing Jewish–Arab political struggle, the close association of nationality and religion on both sides, and the importance related to territorial control and the symbolic identity of public space in such a context. In a broader perspective, these involve issues concerning the differential religious attitudes of tolerations of Judaism and Islam (and Christianity) towards the other religions in spatial terms and under changing historical and political conditions. This farther relate to the social organization of space of a multicultural society, determined on the mutual desire of each group to preserve its cultural heritage on the one hand and the nature of majority minority power relations on the other.
