Add this to your web.xml:
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.xhtml</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
I think the cause of the problem is that the request is not being passed through the FacesServlet.
The page URL did not match the url-pattern of the FacesServlet, thus it had not any chance to parse the tags.
