ABSTRACT
Introduction In the summer of 2014, the small West Bank village of Battir made international news headlines when it was declared a World Heritage Site (Hetter 2014; Lewis 2014). For many tourism host communities, a UNESCO designation is key to putting them on the tourism map, and a likely boost to the tourism economy. For the village of Battir, the expectations were more modest, and simultaneously extremely high stakes. The UNESCO designation process for Battir was less about potential for tourism, but rather about the village’s larger struggle for survival, a struggle that has reached and is waged far beyond the scope of UNESCO and tourism. Battir’s story represents the many challenges facing Palestinian villages suffering under Israeli colonial rule. It is also the story of a long legacy of anti-colonial resistance, demonstrating the ever-evolving creativity and resourcefulness of the Palestinian liberation movement. In this chapter, we use the story of Battir as a case study to describe the wider context in which tourism development, colonialism and resistance are all at play.
