Traveling to places associated with death is not a new phenomenon. People have long been drawn, purposefully or otherwise, towards sites, attractions, and events linked in one way or another with death, suffering, violence, or disaster. War-related attractions, though diverse, are a subset of the totality of tourist sites associated with death and suffering. This article aims to assess how "dark" tourism may play a role in leveraging tourism in Palestine, which has largely relied on pilgrimage tourism in the past. This article investigates the potential for developing this form of tourism, since Palestine has been undergoing death, suffering, violence, or disaster through political tension and instability since 1948 and arguably for a generation earlier, but has not yet developed a strategy for tourism development that considers this type of tourism.
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In this article, Isaac argues that since 1948, Israel's control of water resources has been the result of military actions that forced between 700,000 and 800,000 Palestinians into exile and claimed the most fertile part of the disputed territory for the state. It thereby paved the way for subsequent military occupation. Isaac maintains that the Israeli occupation has violated the Palestinian right to the equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. In his view, from the end of the 1967 war, Israel initiated its occupation of the territories of Palestine and quickly imposed military order with a view to achieving full control over land and water resources. To Isaac, these military orders served to dissolve the pre-1967 legal systems and which consisted of Ottoman, British, Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian (Gaza Strip) laws. This critical review article concentrates on the concept of justice tourism as a response to these assumed Israeli violations of Palestinian rights to equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. The article sheds light on why and how justice tourism conceivably contributes to the Palestine host communities' transformation and hence to the development of higher level self-consciousness about their rights as "a sovereign nation".
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Settler colonialism has been theorised as a form of oppression and domination distinct from other colonisation and imperialism processes. This paper aims to deconstruct settler colonialism domination by illuminating both the power of oppression and the power of resistance in Palestine and in the establishment by Israel of settler colonial tourismscapes. Building on Foucault’s examination of power and resistance, settler colonialism is theorised as a disciplinary, bio-power, and sovereign power, and the paper explores how different stakeholders resist the dominant settler discourse in a tourism context. Theoretically, this study contributes to understanding settler colonialism and tourism through the lens of power and resistance. The outcomes of the study find that Israel has contributed to the reorganisation of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and suppress stories of colonial brutality and oppression while selling imaginary geographies that normalise the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestine. Findings also shed some light on how Palestinian tourism initiatives, such as the Kairos Palestine in Bethlehem, produce spaces of constructed Palestinian visibility through tourism. This initiative highlights how alternative tours through the ‘Come and See’ experience might contribute to the re-articulation and reordering of venues, thereby forming a counter-discourse and resistance.
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This study aims to understand how alternative tourism can contribute to the destination image of Palestine, given its negative image in the media. It proposes a framework for various destination image aspects and applies this framework in the context of alternative tourism in Palestine. It seeks to explore the key image formation factors, the perceived images of Palestine, and the post-visit behaviours of tourists who had engaged in alternative tourism in Palestine. This research contributes in fulfilling intriguing gaps in the Palestinian destination’s image literature, as well as the alternative tourism field that has emerged manifestly in Palestine. This study is exploratory in nature applying qualitative methodology by using open-ended questions in email interviews, and the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. The empirical results proved that tourists who had visited Palestine and engaged in alternative tourism, had positive destination images, opposite to the ones portrayed in the media that show Palestine as a dangerous place to visit. Finally, this research provides academic and managerial implications.
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This commentary summarizes the conference held in Bethlehem from 30 April-1 May 2010 entitled 'Sumud and the Wall Conference'. It further explores the relationship between the (colonization of) life worlds of the Palestinian people and the tensions between life worlds and political systems. Finally it moves on to link the relevance of this to tourism and tourism development in Palestine.
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The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has classified Israel as an ‘apartheid regime’ for the first time in its history of documenting human rights violations in occupied Palestine, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The primary goal of this conceptual paper is to investigate Israel's exploitation of Palestinian tourism and international complicity by focusing on critical examples of international companies and businesses that contribute to the business of Israeli colonisation by confusing tourists and exploiting a lack of knowledge. The study finds that Israel abides by the concept of apartheid in international law, which involves inhumane acts carried out by one racial group to create and retain dominance over any other racial group of people and systematically oppress them.
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Attending to the emergent debates on tourism and (in)justice, this study critically examines the role of the Walled Off Hotel, Banksy's tourism-artistic intervention in Palestine, in constructing justice. Utilising the evidence from 15 in-depth empathetic interviews, it explores the ways in which local residents make sense of the Hotel and how they frame and experience (in)justices. While demonstrating how these interpretations are entangled with the broader geographic, social and political context, the paper discusses how different forms of justice circulate in this particular context. The new knowledge generated contributes to our further understanding of achieving justice-through-tourism as an affirmative praxis, while addressing the broader humanitarian, earthly, or otherwise existential crisis.
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Purpose – This study aims to investigate the tourism stakeholders’ opinions about developing smart tourism(ST) in the West Bank, Palestine. This research fulfils intriguing gaps in the literature on stakeholders’perceptions and views on developing ST in the West Bank, Palestine.Design/methodology/approach – The research study employed a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews with nineteen respondents. All data collected were in April and May 2022.Findings – The findings show that the understanding of ST-related stakeholders in the West Bank is mainlylinked to information communication and technology, digitalisation, and online use of technology within thetourism industry. Moreover, the results show the high potential of developing the ST industry in the WestBank. However, this study revealed that challenges could affect the West Bank’s development at differentlevels, such as managerial, technological, awareness, public sector restrictions, infrastructural, financial andpolitical challenges.Research limitations/implications – This research has some shortcomings. The first restriction of thisstudy was the political restrictions and the checkpoints, which limited the reach of some of the participants whoreside in Jerusalem or other cities outside of the West Bank, which delayed the time of the interviews orconverted it to be done through a digital platform. Secondly, the sample of this study was small in tourismstakeholders in the West Bank.Originality/value – To the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first on ST from the stakeholders’perspectives. Therefore, this study has set the first step in closing the existing gap in the literature.
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Palestine is a physical and symbolic space of great importance to three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The land of many narratives stands in the midst of dynamic interactions that affect many aspects of people’s lives. Protecting, conserving, and promoting heritage and history for development are essential responsibilities of many stakeholders in the cultural sector. Moreover, cultural heritage and the creative industries have considerable potential for the economic development and sustainability of a Palestinian state. This chapter will deal with cultural heritage in Palestine and report the recent developments that took place in terms of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and protection initiatives. In addition, this chapter will address the obstacles, impacts of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and opportunities of this particular market.
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