Summary
Palestinian tour guide and organizer — fieldworker for the Joint Advocacy Initiative and the Alternative Tourism Group’s Olive Tree Campaign at the time of Kelly’s initial research, and later cofounder of an organization running geopolitical tours — whose account of narrative discrediting anchors Chapter 2 of Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.10, 83-84).
Details
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“From the very beginning of the Palestinian issue, there has been so much effort put into discrediting the Palestinian realities and making sure Palestinian voices always have no credibility” (PDF p.83).
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The one narrative that is shared, exposed and supported, he says, is that of Western governments: “Israel is one of the best achievements of the twentieth century, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East”, ending “Israel, Israel, Israel” (PDF p.83).
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Against “Israel made the desert bloom”: “We all know that the land that was made to bloom already bloomed because there is a Palestinian population [living] here” (PDF p.84).
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“From this need for sharing information, exposing reality, we found out that the best way to do it is by having people here, expose them to the reality, and let them decide [for] themselves” (PDF p.84).
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“What Israel tries to do, through tourism, is sell its own story, where the Palestinian is not part of the story. The Palestinian is the problem in the story. The Palestinian is scary in the story” (PDF p.84).
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Kelly contrasts Hilo’s framing — solidarity tourism as disruption of a colonial logic dispossessing Palestinians of land and of the capacity to narrate — with Michel Awad’s framing of rebranding Palestine within an industry under occupation (PDF p.84).
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On the Olive Tree Campaign in Chapter 3, he describes its work in al-Walaja: “The Israelis destroyed one hundred trees. We came back with three hundred” (PDF p.107).
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In Aida Refugee Camp he corrects a fellow guide who argues camp Palestinians should accept they will likely never return: “My grandfather was in a refugee camp. Just because they can’t go home doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be here. Fighting back”; refusing to “move on”, he explains, “We inherit the loss” (PDF p.109).
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On the Jab’a planting he explains the pine groves: “The trees look really nice,” Hilo explained to the tourists, “but Palestinians look on these groves as a place of danger because settlers hide in them and are armed” — a continuity from the Haganah using the forest as a hiding place for snipers (PDF p.111).
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The campaign’s central purpose, he emphasizes, is to keep Palestinians on their land: “We know,” he emphasized, “the situation gets worse by the year in order to force Palestinians to leave” (PDF p.124).
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In Chapter 7, Kelly gives the profession’s labor in Hilo’s phrase as Palestinians “correcting the story the state of Israel sells” (PDF p.237). On a 2019 Bethlehem tour Hilo asked a tourist from Bethesda, Maryland, “and what do the Indigenous people of Bethesda, Maryland, call their land?”; she answered: “They don’t, I don’t know, no one is alive to ask, they’re all dead” (PDF p.243-244).
Related pages
Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Michel Awad, Siraj Center, Olive Tree Campaign, Bisan Kassis, Solidarity Tourism, Edward Said