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Journal of Israeli History: Politics,

Society, Culture
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Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis,

Palestinians, and the Political Lives of
Tourism
a
Amos S. Ron
a
Department of Tourism and Hospitality Studies, Kinneret College
on the Sea of Galilee
Version of record first published: 29 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Amos S. Ron (2010): Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the
Political Lives of Tourism, Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture, 29:2, 237-239

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 The Journal of Israeli History 237

when the idea of creating shared political and cultural ties based on both actual and
imaginary notions of “the same sea” seemed more than just a good idea.
Barbara Mann
Jewish Theological Seminary
Email: bamann@jtsa.edu
q 2010, Barbara Mann

Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism, by

Rebecca L. Stein, Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2008, x þ 219 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-8223-4273-1

Itineraries in Conflict is a very well-written ethnography about Israeli-Jewish tourism and

leisure practices and their relations to Arab spaces and Arab culture. The book is woven
Downloaded by [Amos S. Ron] at 06:43 18 February 2013

around the dramatic geopolitical events of the Oslo Accords (1993), the assassination
of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1995), and the Second Intifada (2000). Stein, a
cultural anthropologist, writes in a hybrid style, drawing from two academic disciplines:
anthropology and history. Her ability to use common anthropological sources (fieldwork,
ethnography, anthropological theory) along with recent and contemporary historical
sources (such as daily newspapers, master plans of tourist projects, and unpublished
academic papers) is impressive.
The book comprises seven parts: an introduction, five chapters, and a postscript. The
first chapter focuses on the regional routes (i.e. the neighboring Arab countries) used by
Israeli travelers in the “New [more peaceful] Middle East.” The following four chapters
analyze some of the common domestic tourism and leisure practices of Israeli Jews in
relation to Arab spaces and the Israeli-Arab conflict, within the geographical limits
of Israel. The short postscript (“Oslo’s Ghosts”) suggests that the (good) times of the
post-Oslo agreements are over and Israelis have resumed their usual routine – that
of seclusion, and fear of their Arab neighbors – and concludes adamantly that
“The anticipated tourist onslaught of the Oslo era, producing uncanny resemblances
between incoming Arab travelers and Israeli citizens, threatened to expose the most
foundational of Israeli fictions: that of a nation-state neither in nor of the Arab Middle
East” (p. 152)
Itineraries in Conflict is well researched, but the reader soon receives the impression
that for Stein Israeli Jewish society is reduced to very few types: in most cases, the
Ashkenazi and the Mizrahi. Such reductions and generalizations would be wrong
anywhere, but are particularly misleading with relation to Israel, which is noted for the
heterogeneity of its Jewish population (“two Jews, three opinions”). She thus does exactly
what the Blue Guide to Spain did in the 1950s, according to Roland Barthes: “For the Blue
Guide, men exist only as ‘types’. . . . The ethnic reality of Spain is thus reduced to a vast
classical ballet . . . whose improbable typology serves to mask the real spectacle of
conditions, classes and professions.”1 Stein has a tendency to write in a critical and
unnecessarily cynical style, which creates a narrative of “good guys” and “bad guys.” The
Palestinians are usually the former, while Israeli Jews are quite often depicted in negative
terms. Total “objectivity” is, of course neither a prerequisite nor a possibility for a social
scientist; however, a scholarly study would require at least the aspiration to a more
balanced and objective approach, especially since she creates the impression that as an
American anthropologist she is an outsider to both communities.
 238 Book review

One example of this unnecessary cynicism is her description of non-Israeli Arabs who
try to enter Israel as tourists and stay illegally as migrant workers: “A crime is being
documented here, that of traveling subjects who try to pass as tourists. . . . Crime could be
deduced from material artifacts that didn’t bear the standard markers of leisure travel:
mattresses and kitchen implements rather than cameras and tourist guides” (p. 41). Stein
clearly criticizes Israel for not welcoming them, even though most developed nations,
including the US (her own country), also prevent illegal workers disguised as tourists from
entering.
Another example of her skewed choice of words is when she claims that “The second
Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, spurred by Ariel Sharon’s visit to the
Palestinian Temple Mount” (p. 131). The term “Palestinian Temple Mount” appropriates
the Holy Mount to the Palestinians, thus ignoring the fact that it is holy to all Muslims and
not only to the Palestinians (some of whom are not even Muslim). Characterizing the
Temple Mount as “Palestinian” is misleading and might even suggest to the lay reader
that it was the Palestinians who built the Jewish temples that stood there in earlier
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(pre-Palestinian) periods.
Throughout the book, Stein refers to the Arabs of Galilee as “Israel’s Palestinian
citizenry,” ignoring another term that is quite prevalent in Israeli society: “Israeli Arabs.”
Since she is describing and interpreting Israeli society, this failure to acknowledge the
existence of that term is puzzling, especially as it is commonly used by Israeli social
scientists (Jews and Arabs alike),2 while the Arabs of Galilee frequently acknowledge the
Israeli component of their complex identity.3
Chapter three (“Scalar Fantasies: The Israeli State and the Production of Palestinian
Space”) is a fascinating narrative about the potential tourist spaces provided by authentic
Galilean Arab villages. In her opinion, “The production of Palestinian interiority in the
course of market development was a tool by which to fix Palestinians in space, therein
diminishing their perceived threat in the era of a newly transnational Middle East” (p. 73).
Reality, however, is more complex, and seeing this development only as a postcolonial
attempt to fix Palestinians in space ignores the possibility that it is also an opportunity for
economic development that can (to a certain extent) bring together Jewish and Arab
Israelis. This alternative view could also be supported by the development of the popular
annual regional olive festival and olive route tourism in Galilee, but Stein is not interested
in alternative views.4
Her observations are insightful and important when she contextualizes this
development within the “destruction of the Palestinian city” (p. 94) as a spatial
consequence of the 1948 –49 war of independence. The rapid, imposed de-urbanization,
followed by suppressed urbanization of the Arabs of Israel, is an under-researched topic
that she does well to address.5 The 1948– 49 war of independence emptied most urban
Arab spaces, while leaving much of the rural area untouched. This created an anomaly
because Islam is predominantly an urban religion,6 and Arab rural spaces in Israel are
struggling to become urbanized.
Chapter four (“Culinary Patriotism: Ethnic Restaurants and Melancholic Citizenship”)
is this book’s weakest spot. To begin with, Stein asserts that “The dispossession of
Palestinians as a result of the 1948– 1949 War left Abu Ghosh isolated from other
Palestinian communities,” after which she lists all the Jewish neighborhoods in the area.
However, there are two nearby Arab villages (Ein Rafah and Ein Nakuba), and all three are
members of the same regional council. Furthermore, her claim that the inhabitants of Abu
Ghosh are “melancholic citizens” who betray and sell their identity for a plate of hummus
is hardly substantiated by evidence (through ethnography and documents), and should be
 The Journal of Israeli History 239

regarded as her own impression. Furthermore, Stein assumes that many Jews eat there
because the Abu Ghoshians are friendly non-threatening Arabs (p. 108). But what about all
those Israeli Jews who drive for hours to eat in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of
Jerusalem, in Akko and Umm al Fahm? In New York City, for example, there are dozens
of Israeli restaurants serving hummus and falafel. The documentary movie Hummus Curry
(dir. Noam Pinchas and Yoni Zigler, 2007) describes dozens of Israeli backpacker
restaurants in Dharamsala, India, that serve hummus.7 The simple fact is that Israelis like
Arab food and will travel far to get it. Surely, one of the unmentioned reasons why eating
at Abu Ghosh is attractive is its superb location, right next to the Jerusalem –Tel Aviv
highway.
The book is well written and readable, but it has two main technical problems: first, the
416 endnotes in small print, covering 25 pages, oblige the reader to choose between
skipping the notes or browsing back and forth constantly. Using footnotes instead of
endnotes would have solved this problem. Second, no list is provided for the 26 maps and
figures (mostly photographs and caricatures) that do much to enhance the readability of the
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book, so that they are difficult to locate for later reference.

Despite these shortcomings, this book provides many fascinating insights that will be
of value to scholars and students interested in the cultural aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Amos S. Ron
Department of Tourism and Hospitality Studies,
Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee
Email: amosron@kinneret.ac.il
q 2010, Amos S. Ron

Notes
1. Roland Barthes, “The Blue Guide,” in idem, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London:
Vintage, 1993), 75.
2. Cf. Ahmad Mahajna et al., “Subjective Discount Rates among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews,”
Journal of Socio-Economics 37, no. 6 (December 2008): 2513– 22; Erik Cohen, “Citizenship,
Nationality and Religion in Israel and Thailand,” in The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and
Frontiers, ed. Baruch Kimmerling (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 66 – 92; Gila Ramras-Rauch,
The Arab in Israeli Literature (London: Indiana University Press, 1989).
3. Cf. Riah Abu el-Assal, Caught in Between: The Extraordinary Story of an Arab Palestinian
Christian Israeli (London: SPCK, 1999).
4. Matan Admoni, “Tayarut tarbut ve-zayit be-Bikat Beit ha-Kerem, ba-Galil” (Tourism culture in
the Galilee) (MA thesis, University of Haifa, 2010).
5. Cf. Dan Rabinowitz, Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Galilee
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
6. Cf. Ira M. Lapidus, “The Evolution of Muslim Urban Society,” Comparative Studies in Society
and History 15, no. 1 (1973): 21 – 50; Xavier de Planhol, The World of Islam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1959).
7. Available at http://hummuscurry.com (accessed 8 June 2010).