Palestinian past, Zionist future: vocabularies of tourism in Mandate Palestine

ABSTRACT

During the 1920s and 1930s, local actors in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean encouraged tourism not only in order to foster economic growth, but also to present their countries to an international audience. In British Mandate Palestine, tourists were confronted with the competing narratives of both Arab Palestinian and Zionist actors. This paper identifies the vocabularies these two groups adopted in reaching out to tourists. Arab Palestinian actors emphasised historical continuities, multi-religious coexistence and local traditions, producing narratives for a future Palestinian nation and countering imperialist allegations of an ‘empty’ Palestine. Zionist actors, by contrast, advertised the modernity of ‘New Palestine’. Ultimately, the Palestinian vocabularies of history and tradition proved inadequate compared to a Zionist approach that used vocabularies of transformation in order to direct tourists to strategically relevant places, thereby fostering the implementation of a Zionist state.

KEYWORDS:

• British Mandate of Palestine
• tourism
• 1920s-1930s
• nation-building
• politics and culture
• Zionism

Acknowledgements

This article has been written as a contribution to the conference ‘Vocabularies of Tourism,’ which took place in Leiden (Netherlands) on 1–3 June 2022. I am grateful to the participants of the conference for stimulating exchange and fruitful discussions, and especially to Sarah Irving, Karène Sanchez-Summerer, and Sary Zananiri for organising the conference and for their helpful comments on this paper at various stages. Moreover, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The geographers Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Noam Shoval, for example, who based their estimates on local newspaper reports, assumed that more than 50,000 travellers visited Palestine in 1925 (Cohen-Hattab and Shoval (2015, p. 42). Michael Berkowitz (1997, p. 125), referring to Jewish newspapers from Europe and the US, stated that 70,000 visitors from Western countries visited Palestine during 1924.

2 There existed the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land and a local tourism promotion society in Haifa (Daam 2023, p. 148), I am not sure though who the members and supporters of these associations were. Stanton (2018, p. 57) mentions a Palestinian Society for the Encouraging of Tourism, which may correspond to the Tourism Development Association of Palestine but just as well be a different one.

3 In the photograph album of Rowland Christopher Jerram, five photographs represented Jerusalem, three of which showed the inner city. The clearest and best shot was certainly a clearly structured black-and-white photograph showing the cupolas of the Dome of the Rock and the smaller Dome of the Chain (Kubbet al-Silsileh) next to it (Jerram 1924). Cf also Messinger Murdoch (1930, p. 101), Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes, Southgate. To ascend the Mount of Olives and enjoy the view as the first thing to do in Jerusalem is recommended by Matson (1930, pp. 54–55). The view of the Dome of the Rock is described on p. 60.

4 It seems, they in fact did. Smith (1929, Nov 28, 1929) mentioned the brochure in his diary, and other visitors seem to have deemed the information trustworthy too, since they copied information on the monuments from Antonius’ text (Williams 1925, pp. 175–178).

5 Sarah Irving pointed out to me Canaan’s previous work on ‘Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine’, which he published in the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society and subsequently as a monograph of more than 300 pages with the British publisher Luzac (Canaan 1927). These detailed works are certainly the basis of his contribution to the TDA booklet; and it is likely that the TDA editors approached Canaan as a potential contributor because they were aware of his previous work.

6 The Keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) was the major fund-raising and financial institution of the Zionist Organisation. The Fund provided financial aid to immigration to and settlement in Palestine: cf Reich and Goldberg (2008b). On the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel (Jewish National Fund): Reich and Goldberg (2008a). Cf also Pappé (2006, p. 97).

7 On a practical level, Arabs were under-represented among the board members and Arab and Jewish workers lived in segregated camps under very different conditions (Palestine Bulletin 1932a, Zionist Information Bureau for Tourists in Palestine 1934, p. 63, Vilnay 1935b, p. 267, Norris 2013, p. 201).

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Jasmin Daam

Jasmin Daam worked as a teaching and research assistant at the University of Kassel (Germany) at the chair for Global History from 2015 to 2020. In addition, she has been a member of the research network ‘The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region, 1800–2000’ since 2016. Her monograph, ‘Tourism and the Emergence of Nation-States in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, 1920s–1930s’, was published in 2023 with Leiden University Press. https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/JasminDaam