Monday, July 11, 2011

To see or not to see

My brother was visiting for a week; he left yesterday. This was his first trip to Israel/Palestine. Preparing the program of the week, I wanted to make sure he would get a chance to see pieces of the whole picture. It is a big challenge I realized: what is the whole picture? What do you choose to highlight? We went to Bethlehem and Hebron; we visited Yad Vashem and the City of David; we witnessed protests in Sheik Jarrah and attended a service at the synagogue; we ate Palestinian food and drank Israeli wine…

The Palestinian Initiative for Responsible Tourism (PIRT: http:// www.pirt.ps/) published some time ago a Code of Conduct for Responsible Tourism in the Holy Land. The main objective of it is to encourage tourists "to choose a balanced and inclusive itinerary and… to get first hand information from local contacts about safety issues, but also questions regarding culture and customs." Balanced and inclusive are the keywords I suppose, and yet they are open to many interpretations. Is my version of "balanced and inclusive" right? I know many people who would have done it differently: a little bit less Israel and a little bit more Palestine or the other way around. The most important element in either case may be to contextualize each step and to always think critically. And, as we know, the latter represents a big challenge for many pilgrims coming from whole over the world to this land; maybe that is why the Code of Conduct addresses tourism in the Holy Land and not in Israel/Palestine.



When my brother and I left Bethlehem last Wednesday, we stopped at the Wall and I took this picture: a new graffiti I hadn’t seen yet. A Pieta of a different kind: what do you see when you look at it?





*Here are four Palestinian travel groups offering alternative tours; they all collaborate with Israelis:

1) Green Olive Tours: http:// www.toursinenglish.com/
2) Siraj Center: http:// www.sirajcenter.org/
3) Alternative Tourism Group: http://www.atg.ps/
4) Walk Palestine: http://hijazih.wordpress.com/

*In addition to travel agencies, some associations (mainly Israeli) offer alternative tours as well; here are four of them:

1) Breaking the Silence: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
2) Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions: http://www.icahd.org/
3) Emek Shaveh: http://www.alt-arch.org/
4) Hebron-France: http://www.hebron-france.org/en/
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1 comments:

  1. Powerful picture. I see the Statue of Liberty weeping. Is she weeping over the loss of liberty for Palestinians? Is she weeping over the lack of cooperation between Israel and Palestine? Being the iconic symbol of the United States, is she weeping for America, whose government supports only one side of the conflict instead of trying to help the countries reach a mutual accord? She is weeping over all the children -- our future and our hope for peace.

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