Title: A means to an end: Israeli-run heritage sites in the West Bank of Palestine

Authors: Sophie Craven

Addresses: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0XG, London, UK

Abstract: The following is a study of the manner in which Israel develops its heritage claims in the West Bank of Palestine, as well as the way in which tourists on Israeli tours experience the region. Heritage sites become venues of socio-national memory and commemoration, and their archaeological nature reveals that memory as truth. The semi-exclusive roads between them homogenise the landscape into a Judeo-Christian narrative, a process that may result in the creation of Palestinian towns and villages as non-places in the tourist imaginary. Representations made on these tours then become tangible and all the more seductive as tourists are guided through Israeli national-historical narratives.

Keywords: tourism anthropology; memory; heritage construction; ethnography of archaeology; commemoration; non-place; tourist imaginary; Israeli-run heritage sites; West Bank; Palestine; tourist experience; cultural heritage; socio-national memory; Judeo-Christian narrative; Israel.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2016.081782

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2016 Vol.5 No.3/4, pp.235 - 253

Received: 01 Jul 2016
Accepted: 01 Oct 2016
Published online: 24 Jan 2017 *

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