Palestine Summer Encounter: Alternative Tourism In The Holy Land

By: Peter Harley - 7/4/2005

Both travel advisories and a guidebook by Lonely Planet said to stay away from the West Bank so, for me, it took some mustering of courage to take part in Palestine Summer Encounter (PSE). However, I wanted to show friendship and support for the Palestinians, see Palestine and Israel, have a new cultural experience and learn another language. Two weeks into the scheduled two-month stay I am glad I came.

The people of Bethlehem and environs are starved for outside contact and tourism and they are delighted to see internationals. Children and adults alike call, “Welcome!” as one walks around town, making the matter of personal safety seem even less a concern than it would be in most urban environments.

As PSE participants we live with Palestinian families who provide us a room, breakfast, dinner and laundry service, as well as friendship, education and plentiful good will. During weekday mornings we do volunteer work in an organization suited to our skills and interests, and in the afternoons most of us study Arabic. There are a few dropouts from the Arabic classes (nothing is expressly required, either by way of volunteer work or study); however, most of us are interested in the complete experience and follow the schedule set up by Middle East Fellowship and Holy Land Trust (HLT). On Saturdays we tour to another city in Palestine or Israel for a $25 fee, and Sunday is free time.

These weekend excursions make clear the advantages of group tourism with an organization dedicated to helping the local population. The knowledge and resources that can be brought to bear on any particular plan vastly exceed anything an individual is likely to have; and again, if safety is a primary concern, nothing makes one safer than being known to have an active interest in the welfare of the people being visited.

When we visited Hebron, the checkpoint on the main road into town was closed. I thought that was going to be the end of our tour, but the guide telephoned into the city and found that there was a route open on the other side of town. Another half hour or so of awkward driving and we were sitting down to lunch in a Hebron restaurant.

There we were met by a second, local guide who led us through the hubbub of the open market that had been displaced when Israel closed its former location in the Old City to introduce about five hundred settlers, guarded by about 1500 soldiers. The Old City market was now a ghost town and we walked through it under improvised steel mesh that had been put up before the place was closed, in order to save shoppers from being pelted with garbage by settlers in their new apartments above. Much of this refuse was still hanging overhead and most of us took pictures of it.

On the way to Hebron we also visited the tiny village of At-Twani, which I had read about before coming but would never have thought to seek out on my own. At-Twani has been in the news lately because nearby settlers have been poisoning sheep, throwing dead chickens in the village well, and scaring children on their way to school. When we got there the hamlet was guarded by a young married couple from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), plus one Italian from Operation Dove, plus a Chilean from another, like-minded group.

CPT first came to At-Twani to walk children to school and prevent their harassment by settlers, but a gang of masked men wielding sticks and chains came out of the woods and hospitalized two escorts. One man had a punctured lung; the other, a broken arm and some memory problems. The settlers, we were told, also bring dogs and guns into the more remote houses of the village in the middle of the night. CPT now sleeps in those houses with the families, apparently deterring the settlers by virtue of potential international publicity.

Returning from Hebron our guide called Israel’s District Coordinating Office to see where we might exit the city and return to Bethlehem. That information proved inaccurate and we might have had to sit at the checkpoint for a spell, but a Jewish woman in our group told the soldiers we were a busload of American tourists, and that opened the gate. The Palestinian traveling public, of course, remained waiting.

Our group of thirty participants contains perhaps six to ten people who are ethnically Arab or Jewish, and we have age representation in every decade from the teens to sixties. The vast majority are Americans but other nationalities represented are: Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese and Canadian. For many this is our first visit to the Middle East. There are slightly more women than men, and a variety of motives have brought us: many come from backgrounds or ongoing programs in religious studies, peaceful conflict resolution, Middle Eastern studies, third world development, and so on. Others have been activists in Palestine peace and solidarity work, and still others may be here simply to see the country and The Wall and what’s happening generally.

Let me conclude with another handful of examples illustrating how the resources of a program such as this are greater than the resources of an individual: 1) When we arrived, we were welcomed and addressed by the mayor of Bethlehem, thus hearing his perspective on The Occupation. 2) We heard two other inspired speeches by activists advocating peaceful initiatives that are strategic and proactive, rather than simply reactive to Israeli incursions. 3) We have seen pertinent films at a rate of more than one a week. 4) We learn about organizations (where some of us actually work but which are new to me despite their apparently being famous worldwide). SOS, for example, is an orphanage system where a woman makes a commitment to look after a houseful of children for a period of years in a village of similar houses.

In all, it’s an educational and stimulating experience.

By: Peter Harley - 7/4/2005