Holy Land pilgrims: in search of living stones. (alternative tours in Israel-Palestine)

From: The Christian Century - 17th July 1996 by Trudy Bush
While this article is more than a decade old, the issues raised are as relevant today as they were when it was written. Of course in the meanwhile there has also been the 2nd Intifada and the subsequent destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and the strangling of their economy.

Israeli/Jewish dominance of the Holy Land tourist trade is slowly being penetrated by Palestinian Christian firms. They are developing their own network of transport, lodging and restaurants. Contact numbers of 5 such alternative tour, and work-service organizations, are provided.

Medical personnel have long been aware of a strange form of hysteria that attacks some pilgrims to the Holy Land. "Jerusalem syndrome" manifests itself especially among American Protestants - people well rounded in the Bible - who suddenly shout prophecies or proclaim that they are Jesus, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist or some other biblical figure. More than a hundred cases are treated each year at a government mental-health center in Jerusalem. The director of the center believes that the syndrome is triggered by the pilgrim's encounter with a reality that is dramatically different from his or her prior image of the Holy Land. These tourists are disappointed and frustrated, and their reaction is to try and lift their spirits by losing control. They do things they wouldn't do elsewhere."

Most visitors maintain their grip on reality, of course. But many deal with the dissonance between the biblical land of their imaginations and the bustling, conflict-ridden place they actually encounter by distancing themselves from the contemporary reality.

Unfortunately, the standard tour to Israel can encourage such an approach by keeping visitors at a distance from the political, social and religious realities. It gives people almost no sense that an indigenous Christian community still flourishes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Many Christian travelers never meet any of the local Christians or worship with local congregations. Often they are not even aware of the churches from their own traditions in cities like Jerusalem. The groups stay in Israeli hotels and are led by Israeli guides who have a great deal of book knowledge about Christian holy places, but regard the Christian Holy Land as a kind of theme park.

Opportunities for visiting the Holy land are plentiful, especially for pastors, who can often receive a free trip in exchange for recruiting and hosting a certain number of people. Tour companies have these kinds of tour down pat: they are smoothly organized and easy to host. But in such tours the political and economic situation is presented entirely from the Israeli point of view. Tourists are told not to speak about political matters with the Palestinian shopkeepers and service workers they encounter. Tourists are often unaware that many of these Arab shopkeepers and bus drivers are fellow Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers and Episcopalians. And since tour members are discouraged from speaking with these Arabs, Muslim and Christian alike, they learn nothing about their history or political and economic situation.

The frustration that indigenous Christians feel with such tourism is summed up by Father Elias Chacour, a Melkite priest who has founded a high school and a college in Ibillin, near Nazareth. "You Westeners have been coming to the Holy Land for centuries to visit the shrines, the dead stones. But you do not see the living stones - the human beings who live and struggle before your eyes. I say 'Wake up!' What matters are the living stones!"

As Palestinian Christians prepare for the time when they will be free of the Israeli occupation and have some control over their own land and tourist industry, they are working on plans for a new form of Holy Land tourism. Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian Christian who heads the recently formed Alternative Tourism Group (ATG), is working to develop an environmentally sound tourism that would protect the character of Palestinian villages. The more than 800 small villages that dot the countryside of the West Bank were founded 500 to 800 years ago and still retain much of their ancient character. Here, Andoni says, people can experience a way of life no longer available in the Western world.

Andoni proposes to build small, comfortable hotels and open good restaurants, coffee shops and museums in such villages. Tourists can then visit the Holy Land's major religious and historical sites during the day and return to traditional village life in the evening. This kind of tourism, Andoni feels, is far better suited to this dry land of water shortages and inadequate sewage systems than is the kind of mass tourism Israel promotes. Andoni worries that the environment can't sustain Israel's plans to triple the number of tourists by the year 2000 - a number that would double the present population of the area.

But Israel has had almost 30 years to develop its tourist industry, and its political and military dominance has made things difficult for Palestinians who want to work in tourism. Since 1968 Israel has licensed only three new Palestinian guides. It has developed huge tourist hotels and transport companies, created a sophisticated marketing organization in Europe and the U.S. and put together with tour operators travel packages that are profitable and demand little effort to organize. Control of access to airports and highways has for 28 years given Israel the power to discourage Palestinians from trying to enter this lucrative tourism market.

Palestinians hope that even the limited autonomy they have received under the peace process will help them break into the trade. Much of the infrastructure is already in place. Four new hotels are being built in Bethlehem. East Jerusalem has many four-star, Palestinian-owned hotels, such as the National Palace, the Ritz, the Meridian and the Ambassador. Israel has indicated some openness to recognizing Palestinian-licensed guides, and both Andoni's group and Bethlehem University have begun tour-training programs. Many Palestinian tour agents have been in business for years and know how to arrange economical tours for Christian travelers.

Andoni is focusing on niche marketing, developing special tours for the 30-40 percent of visitors who have been in the Holy Land before and don't want to repeat the always-the-same packaged tour or who are sympathetic to Palestinians and interested in their culture. He is taking groups on day trips to places not on the standard itinerary, such as Hebron and Nablus. "When I first proposed going there," he states, "people told me it was impossible. They said, "There's no organization there, no security. Tourists would feel uneasy there.' But local people volunteered to help. Every group we have sent has been invited into people's homes. Nothing unpleasant has ever happened. We take people to the old city and to the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron and to the old marketplaces in Nablus. We go to the bazaar, we visit the Turkish bath, and everywhere we go we meet gentle, hospitable people."

Andoni doesn't want people to hear only the Palestinian Christian point of view, either. ATG tours include meetings with Palestinian Muslims, Jewish settlers and Israeli peace groups. Word of the success of the tours has spread. More than 40 groups have asked him to plan such trips.

To break the Israeli advantage in mass tourism, Andoni and other Palestinian promoters will have to establish their own network of hotels, restaurants and transportation companies so that a tour operator can set up a tour with no more than a couple of phone calls, yet have an itinerary that will do a better job of educating and challenging tourists. Such tours will have to be both smaller and more individual than today's standard package. Andoni's organization has begun marketing in such European countries as Holland and Sweden. He does not yet have a liaison in the U.S., but will work directly with American groups.

There are other alternatives for American Christians. Since the late '70s, the Middle East Council of Churches's Ecumenical Travel Office (ETO), located in Jerusalem, has been arranging tours and study opportunities for special groups, such as seminarians and other students. Recently the ETO expanded its staff to five, and it has begun to serve a wide variety of church-related groups. ETO has arranged for groups to meet with the last Samaritan Jews in the world, still living on Mt. Gerasim, and to visit more out-of-the-way sites, like the old palace ruins in Sebasti, Jacob's well, Abraham's tomb, and the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. It can also arrange tours of the refugee camps in Gaza and meetings and worship with Palestinian Christians.

Of growing importance for Christians seeking alternative tours are work camps. The ETO has worked with a number of denominations to set up 10- or 12-day touring and work-camp experiences. Each group takes a five-to six-day tour and then works on a project to benefit Palestinian Christians for another five to six days in Bethlehem or Ramallah or Jericho. An ETO Baptist group this summer is renovating El Khadar school, an alternative school that focuses on democracy and peace. A series of United Methodist groups have been working at the YMCA Vocational School in Jericho.

ETO is not the only Christian group organizing work camps. Bonnie Jones Gehweiler was spurred to action by a chance remark Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij made about how Palestinian Christians were deeply saddened by the fact that they were too poor to host a proper celebration of Jesus' birth in 2000. Gehweiler has organized the Bethlehem 2000 Initiative of work-study teams with the help of the Alternative Travel Group and Bob and Peggy Hannum, formerly United Methodist liaisons in Jerusalem. For approximately $1,700 per person, groups can have a 16-day experience that includes meeting and working with (and in some cases living and eating with) local Christians. The groups work on a variety of projects, including a children's center, church-run schools, clinics, rehabilitation centers and the homes of the elderly. For those with a more political bent, the Church of the Brethren and the Mennonite churches sponsor Christian Peacemaker Teams that provide observation and mediation in areas of tension such as Hebron. Volunteers monitor human rights abuses, offer their services in conflict resolution and give public witness to peace.

Any church bodies, including the Lutheran Church, the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ and the United Methodist Church, have their own liaison in Jerusalem who can arrange a one- or two-day encounter with Palestinian Christians. John Melin, the Lutheran liaison, says that in the past much of his work consisted of arranging contacts at the last minute for church groups who happened to be in Jerusalem on a standard tour. But it wasn't easy Even if the visiting Lutheran group requested such an encounter, tour operators were often reluctant to oblige if it meant changing the already tight schedule. Melin is encouraging pastor-led tour groups to contact him well in advance and to work ahead of time with the tour operator to allow a day or two free for Christian touring." Working with a Presbyterian pastor, Melin recently set up a two-day trip for only $30 a day per person, including Sunday morning worship with Palestinian Christians, a follow-up dialogue, an afternoon trip to Hebron, and a second day trip to Gaza for half the group and to a Christian village in the West Bank for the other half.

"What was fascinating about that group," Melin reflected, "was that within a day they were thinking about the Holy Land in a whole new way. They thought that they were coming to Israel, but suddenly they realized they had come to Israel-Palestine. Even a day is worthwhile, and it doesn't matter at what point of their itinerary it comes." Melin provides this service for churches of any denomination, as do the ETO and many of the other denominational liaisons.

Motives for pilgrimage are probably always mixed, and many are admirable. By visiting the Holy Land people can increase knowledge and understanding of the Bible and of the faith. Visiting Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem makes the biblical geography become real and the Bible stories come alive. Traveling with other Christians to places important to the faith strengthens the bonds between church members. Reading the Beatitudes on the Mount where Jesus spoke them, sailing on the sea of Galilee, renewing baptismal vows at the Jordan River or taking communion at the garden tomb can enliven faith and renew commitment to the church.

Seldom mentioned but still animating the hearts of some pilgrims are such motives as giving thanks, seeking forgiveness or preparing for death - motives congruent with the Eastern Orthodox understanding of pilgrimage as a conversion experience, ushering one into a new life. And, of course, people have a natural longing to see strange places and encounter the exotic.

But since God also comes to us in and through other people, a journey to the Holy Land is not all it can and should be if it does not put the visitor in contact with the Christian communities living and worshiping there, and with the issues of justice with which they continue to struggle.

In the West Bank, Politics and Tourism Remain Bound Together Inextricably

By DAVID KAUFMAN and MARISA S. KATZ
Published: April 16, 2006 (NY Times)

LIKE many Middle Eastern deluxe hotels, the Jacir Palace InterContinental is an exercise in Ottoman-era ostentatiousness, with an elegant, filigreed facade and soaring domed ceilings. Yet upon pulling back our suite's curtains, it became instantly apparent that the Jacir was anything but a typical luxury hotel in a typical holiday destination. Snaking along the hotel's back side stood Israel's separation wall, a gray cement reminder of our location: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.

Travel to the West Bank under any guise is almost always political. Although most of its tourist sites are Christian and Muslim, the West Bank tourism industry has historically been controlled by Israel since the beginning of the occupation in 1967. Indeed, not only does Israel regulate the movement of tourists to the West Bank and their Palestinian guides, but Israeli tour operators mostly control how and where tourists dollars are spent, according to experts on both sides. And such oversight, observers report, has grown stronger since the Hamas victory in January's Palestinian Authority elections.

Israel's involvement is perhaps most contentious when it comes to hotels, and the choice to house visitors in Jerusalem rather than the West Bank. According to the Arab Hotel Association, occupancy rates in Bethlehem stood at a mere 2.5 percent last year, although the number of tourists more than doubled. "For us to receive the fruits of this tourism," explained Ziad al-Bandak, minister of Tourism and Antiquities for the Palestinian National Authority, "We need visitors to sleep in Bethlehem for a couple of days."

Israeli travel industry executives agree, but point out that cautions from American and European governments about travel in the West Bank — like the one issued by the United States following the recent election — make it hard to insure tour operations in the territories.

"Tourists did keep away for about 10 days after the Hamas win," said Mark Khano, director of the Jerusalem-based Guidingstar tour company. "But today, fundamentally nothing has really changed for tourists just because Hamas is in power." Most problematic, however, is the Israeli government's ban on its citizens — including Israeli guides — from crossing into the West Bank. "If we can't even enter the area," said Ami Etgar, general manager of the Israel Incoming Tourism Association, "there is no way we can have our clients sleep there."

Meanwhile, grassroots organizations like Open Bethlehem and the Alternative Tourism Group are working aggressively to promote West Bank-based tourism alternatives. For instance, Open Bethlehem, which began this year, is developing tours for British operators using Bethlehem as its hub. "We'll take visitors to area wineries and monasteries, on wilderness tours and for courses in local cuisine, " said Carol Dabdoub, Open Bethlehem's director of operations in the Palestinian territories.

Already, Open Bethlehem has attracted some prominent fans: Pope Benedict XVI was presented with an Open Bethlehem "passport" by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, during his visit in early 2006 to the Vatican, while Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the archbishop of Westminster, made a special plea for Bethlehem tourism during his annual Christmas speech last year. The 10-year-old Alternative Tourism Group, meanwhile, is focusing on independent travelers. Its latest venture is "Palestine and the Palestinians," a slick, colorful, 436-page guidebook intended as the first comprehensive guide to Palestine — from a Palestinian point of view. Along with hotels and restaurants, the book touches on political issues like settlements, Zionism and the Separation Wall. "For us politics is tourism," said Ms. Dabdoub of Open Bethlehem.

Infrastructure developed in anticipation of the anniversary of Christ's birth in 2000, coupled with widely revered historical sites, makes the West Bank a destination of tremendous potential. The Jacir Palace in Bethlehem — which reopened this September after being closed for five years — is one of many high-end hotels that have yet to reach full capacity. In Jericho, for instance, the gleaming 181-room InterContinental remains in "soft opening" mode five years after its debut. Fueling a modest recovery, is Jericho's newfound status as an "open city" under direct Palestinian control. Although Israeli troops raided the Jericho jail last month, in normal circumstances there are no checkpoints, no separation wall and no Israeli Jews inside the city.

Instead visitors experience what could be a version of the Palestinian city of the future. Its central square is surrounded by Arab enterprises — sweet shops heaving with syrupy delights, hummus parlors, tiny clothes shops. More compelling, however, is Jericho's legacy. The 12th-century Monastery of the Qurantul on the Mount of Temptation — reachable by a 20th-century cable car — is built on a majestic site where Jesus is believed to have fasted for 40 days while tempted by the devil. Outside Jericho, Nabi Musa is an austere, colonnaded mosque built by a Mamluk sultan at the place where Moses is reportedly buried. The equally remote Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba lies hidden along a silent, empty wadi 15 miles east of Bethlehem.

Back in Bethlehem, Manger Square, the Church of the Nativity and Shepherds' Field remain high on the list of attractions. Just as vital are places like the Salesian Cremisan Monastery — a winery as well as a convent with terraced vineyards and terra-cotta roofs — in the suburb of Beit Jala.

"People never cancel their trips to this region, they only postpone them," said Mr. Khano of Guidingstar, who also serves as Secretary of the Holy Land Incoming Tour Operators Association. "Unlike a beach or mountain destination, the Holy Land has no real competitor."

West Bank's Ramallah Enjoys a Renaissance

June 30, 2008, Oakland Ross, Middle East Bureau, TheStar.com

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK–Basem Khoury eventually abandoned the idea of trying to support his family by selling spices and coffee out of a shop in East Jerusalem.

He began casting around for a better business model and hit on a plan with three vital components.

First, he decided to open an Italian restaurant. Second, he chose to call it Pronto. And third, he opted to locate it – not in East Jerusalem, formally a part of Israel – but eight kilometres to the north, in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, squarely situated in the restive West Bank.

Now, 11 years later, Khoury believes he made the right decision.

"Ramallah has been booming," says Khoury, an ebullient fellow with gelled hair and a stylish fuzz of chin stubble, who is wearing black leather shoes, blue jeans, and a black sport shirt with a Ralph Lauren insignia. "Ramallah has all the restaurants and cafés."

Unlike the rest of the Palestinian territories, and in dramatic contrast to East Jerusalem in particular, this mostly modern city is experiencing a political, cultural, and economic renaissance that has quickened in the past 12 months.

"I call it the five-star occupation," says Sam Bahour, a prominent Ramallah businessman. By "occupation," he means Israel's ongoing military presence in the territory. "This is probably the only place in the West Bank where there's genuine economic activity."

The upswing has two main sources, including the resumption last year of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding to the Palestinian Authority by international donors.

More recently, the soaring price for petroleum has garnered huge additional revenues for Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states, money that has to be invested somewhere.

"We are receiving some of that petro-dollar spin-off," says Bahour.

Meanwhile, to the south, beyond a network of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks – not to mention an impenetrable eight-metre-tall security wall – resides East Jerusalem, the still mainly Arab half of a city known to Palestinians as Al-Quds.

It is the dream of almost every Palestinian to one day see that city, or at least its eastern section, crowned as capital of an independent state called Palestine.

But East Jerusalem is controlled by Israel, just as it has been for the past 41 years. Largely as a result, the Arab sections of the Holy City are a stagnant and declining backwater.

For more than four decades, ever since they seized the eastern city from Jordan following the Six Day War, Israeli authorities have promoted Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem while discouraging Arabs from living there.

Nowadays, Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem are mainly shabby places with pot-holed streets, few sidewalks, inadequate street-lighting, and sporadic garbage collection, where more than half the residences are illegal because it is next to impossible for an Arab to get a building permit in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a construction boom is underway.

To meet the pressure of natural population growth, Palestinian authorities are planning to build 30,000 new units of affordable housing in the next five years, most of it in and around Ramallah.

In a separate project, the government of Qatar is aiming to invest $350 million to build the West Bank's first planned community, to be known as Rawabi, just north of Ramallah.

"Right now, the action is focused on Ramallah," says Bahour. "The economic activity here is not normal compared to the West Bank."

Ramallah was already growing in political importance and cultural sophistication well before these recent infusions of donor-funded largesse.

As he chats with a visitor, Bahour is seated in the dining room at Pronto, the restaurant owned by Khoury.

It's a bohemian-flavoured spot with Palestinian tapestries on the ochre walls, where patrons sip glasses of beer or huddle over their laptops, while the Arabic anthems of a Lebanese chanteuse warble through the still afternoon air.

Across Al-Rashid St., beyond a pair of miniature rubber trees, another restaurant bar – the Pink Parade – is also doing a steady weekday business, while a half-block up the boulevard, well-heeled patrons lounge on the shady outdoor terrace of the swank Café de la Paix.

This is Yuppiedom, Palestinian-style.

In addition to smart cafes and restaurants, Ramallah boasts two centres for the arts, as well as the Ramallah Cultural Palace, whose 740-seat auditorium is the largest in the Palestinian territories.

Of three "national" Palestinian newspapers, only one is based in East Jerusalem. The other two have their offices in Ramallah, no surprise considering this city has been the de facto political capital of the territories since the 1990s.

And yet it is all but impossible to find a Palestinian who believes the eventual seat of government of an independent Palestine should be located anywhere but in Jerusalem.

"The majority of Palestinian children have never seen Jerusalem," says Bahour.

"But it's part of their mindset. Don't assume too quickly that Jerusalem could not be reconstructed as our centre of life."

Until then, however, Ramallah rules.