Rami K. Isaac - The Politics and Power of Tourism in Palestine

The Politics and Power of Tourism in Palestine

Tourism in Palestine has been receiving an increasingly important profile given its economic and religious importance and the significant role it plays in Israeli-Palestinian relations, representation of Palestinian statehood and identity, and wider Middle Eastern politics. Nevertheless, Palestine, like much of the Middle East as a whole, remains extremely underrepresented in tourism literature. This title aims to fill this void by being the first book dedicated to exploring the significance of tourism in relationship to Palestine.

The book examines the role of tourism in Palestine at three main levels. First, it provides an overview of destination management and marketing issues for the tourism industry in Palestine and addresses not only the visitor markets and the economic significance of tourism but also the realities of the difficulties of destination management, marketing and promotion of the Palestinian state. Second, it provides chapters and case studies that interrogate not only the various forms of tourism in Palestine but also its economic, social, environmental and spiritual importance. This part also conveys a dimension to tourism in Palestine that is not usually appreciated in the Western mainstream media. The third part indicates the way in which tourism in Palestine highlights broader questions and debates in tourism studies and the way in which travel in the region is framed in wider discourses. A significant dimension of the book is the attention it gives to the different voices of stakeholders in Palestinian tourism at varying levels of scale.

This timely volume will offer the reader significant insight into the challenges and issues of tourism in this area now and in the future. It will benefit those interested in tourism, Middle East studies, politics, economics, development studies and geography.

Rami K. Isaac is currently a Senior Lecturer in tourism teaching at the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. His research interests in the area of tourism development and management, cultural heritage and political aspects of tourism. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on critical theory and tourism and political (in)stability, occupation, tourism and war, violence and transformational tourism.

C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and is also Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland. He holds visiting positions in Finland, Sweden and South Africa. As co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism he has a long legacy of publications on tourism politics and policy as well as its role in regional development.

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Management of the University of South Australia. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on justice and human rights issues in tourism, indigenous tourism and policy, planning and management of tourism.

Contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and mobility

Series Editor: C. Michael Hall

Professor at the Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

For a complete list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

The aim of this series is to explore and communicate the intersections and relationships between leisure, tourism and human mobility within the social sciences.

It will incorporate both traditional and new perspectives on leisure and tourism from contemporary geography, e.g. notions of identity, representation and culture, while also providing for perspectives from cognate areas such as anthropology, cultural studies, gastronomy and food studies, marketing, policy studies and political economy, regional and urban planning, and sociology, within the development of an integrated field of leisure and tourism studies.

Also, increasingly, tourism and leisure are regarded as steps in a continuum of human mobility. Inclusion of mobility in the series offers the prospect to examine the relationship between tourism and migration, the sojourner, educational travel, and second home and retirement travel phenomena.

The series comprises two strands:

Contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and mobility aims to address the needs of students and academics, and the titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include:

1 The Moralisation of Tourism

Sun, sand.and saving the world?

Jim Butcher

2 The Ethics of Tourism Development

Mick Smith and Rosaleen Duffy

3 Tourism in the Caribbean

Trends, development, prospects

Edited by David Timothy Duval

4 Qualitative Research in Tourism

Ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies

Edited by Jenny Phillimore and Lisa Goodson

5 The Media and the Tourist Imagination

Converging cultures

Edited by David Crouch, Rhona Jackson and Felix Thompson

6 Tourism and Global Environmental Change

Ecological, social, economic and political interrelationships

Edited by Stefan Gssling and C. Michael Hall

7 Cultural Heritage of Tourism in the Developing World

Edited by Dallen J. Timothy and Gyan Nyaupane

8 Understanding and Managing Tourism Impacts

An integrated approach

C. Michael Hall and Alan Lew

9 An Introduction to Visual Research Methods in Tourism

Edited by Tijana Rakic and Donna Chambers

10 Tourism and Climate Change

Impacts, adaptation and mitigation

C. Michael Hall, Stefan Gssling and Daniel Scott

11 Tourism and Citizenship

Raoul V. Bianchi and Marcus L. Stephenson

Routledge studies in contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and mobility is a forum for innovative new research intended for research students and academics, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include:

40 Scuba Diving Tourism

Edited by Kay Dimmcock and Ghazali Musa

41 Contested Spatialities Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism

Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas

42 Contemporary Issues in Cultural Heritage Tourism

Edited by Jamie Kaminski, Angela M. Benson and David Arnold

43 Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility

Edited by Scott Cohen, James Higham, Paul Peeters and Stefan Gossling

44 Green Growth and Travelism

Concept, policy and practice for sustainable tourism

Edited by Terry DeLacy, Min Jiang, Geoffrey Lipman and Shaun Vorster

45 Tourism, Religion and Pilgrimage in Jerusalem

Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Noam Shoval

46 Trust, Tourism Development and Planning

Edited by Robin Nunkoo and Stephen L.J. Smith

47 A Hospitable World?

Organising work and workers in hotels and tourist resorts

Edited by David Jordhus-Lier and Anders Underthun

48 Tourism in Pacific Islands

Current issues and future challenges

Edited by Stephen Pratt and David Harrison

49 Social Memory and Heritage Tourism Methodologies

Edited by Stephen P. Hanna, Amy E. Potter, E. Arnold Modlin, Perry Carter, and David L. Butler

50 Affective Tourism Dark routes in conflict

Dorina Maria Buda

51 Scientific Tourism