Here's an article I started writing about political tourism when I first arrived. I benched it for several months because I didn't think it was going anywhere. However, yesterday I decided to clean it up a bit, and try to give it a home at the Kuwait Times.
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The Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) bus, innocuously labeled “Shepherds’ Field Tours,” draws mixed reactions from the locals as it creeps along the winding roads in the West Bank town of Hebron. Two teenage boys see the tour bus, exchange befuddled glances and begin to laugh and wave. Hebron is not your normal tourist destination.

While constant friction between Jewish settlers and Palestinians deters most tourists from visiting Hebron, it’s largely what those on the ATG tour have come to see. Over the air-conditioned bus’s PA system tour guide Ayman Abu Al-Zulof explains, “We will be understanding the situation (in Hebron), and you will be feeling the tension.”

In the past tours of conflicts were reserved for diplomats and journalists; however, in Israel and Palestine a growing number of groups like ATG offer tours of the “situation on the ground” to anyone interested. The groups create a new breed of tourists in Palestine who challenge the notion of traditional tourism for better and sometimes for worse.

“Besides the Holy Land, (the Palestinians) have culture and the occupation,” says Ayman expressing his frustration with tourists who visit religious and historic sites in the West Bank and never interact with the local population. ATG tries to combat this problem by encouraging what it calls “human and cultural tourism.” In addition to showing tourists traditional attractions, ATG incorporates aspects of the political situation with its tours and can even arrange for visitors to stay with Palestinian families.

While ATG primarily offers tours other organizations, like the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), use political tours to supplement to their normal activities. ICAHD specializes in protecting Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories from demolition by Israel. To help raise awareness about their cause ICAHD conducts tours of greater Jerusalem, focusing on housing demolitions and Israeli settlement activity. ICAHD also conducts ten-day study tours, and works with other organizations to provide tours of the Negev and Northern Israel.

Political tourists represent a variety of backgrounds. They range in age from their early twenties to their late seventies. Most political tourists come from Europe or America, some have never visited Palestine, and others have visited it over twenty times. Some already support Palestine while others are Jewish Israel supporters. Yet, among all of them there seems to be an interest in seeing the Palestinian situation for themselves.

“The people that do these tours are not ordinary tourists,” explains Lucía Pizarro, who coordinates tours for ICAHD. “It is a special kind of people that are interested basically in with what’s going on with Palestinians.”

“I don’t think you can really imagine (the situation in Palestine) unless you’re here,” says a twenty-eight-year-old journalist from London who asked not to be named. He hopes the ATG trip will give him a personal perspective that will help him enrich the articles he writes about Israel and Palestine.

Denys and Liz Delahoyde, a retired British couple had already traveled to Israel and Palestine as pilgrims. They wanted to experience a different side of the region, so they decided to go on an ATG tour. As the couple prepares to lead a pilgrimage in the coming year, Denys believes “the sense of oppression” he’s felt in Palestine will allow he and his wife to include something in their program they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

Hebronites cram together and push through the turnstile separating Hebron’s old market from the Ibrahimi Mosque as Denys stands watches. He shakes his head in disapproval and sighs, “This like cattle going through here.” On the other side of the checkpoint another ATG tourist asks her friend to photograph her in of the turnstile. Someone makes a joke just as the camera clicks and the tourist now has a photo of herself giggling in front of a checkpoint.

Although political tourism in Palestine strives to educate it creates the danger of turning the conflict into a sort of dark tourist attraction. Lucía Pizarro believes that most political tourists come with good intentions, but says it’s important to acknowledge this danger. Once while conducting a tour the Israelis detained her fellow tour guide. “We were laughing about it saying it’s great for the tour, as if it were a performance for the internationals, a circus almost.”

Ayman leads the tours through the abandoned Arab market on the edge of Hebron’s Avraham Avino settlement. Israelis have welded shut most of the shops’ steel security doors. Palestinians still occupy the apartments above the shops. Bars and iron screens cover the apartment windows overlooking the abandoned market.

A boy looks at the tour group through the iron grate covering his window. Ayman asks him why he’s put the bars over the window. The boy says it’s because the Israeli settlers throw rocks and trash. Ayman shakes his head and asks the tour group, “Do you think the Palestinians want to live in cages?”

Later in his office Ayman explains, “We don’t want (tourists) to cry about our situation, just to show them realities.”