Competing Indigeneities: Preserving Liberal Zionism through Witnessing Settler Violence in Hebron

Hebron has become one of the most iconic sites of alternative tours to the West Bank. Unlike most settlements that are located on the outskirts of Palestinian towns and villages, Hebron is unique in that Israeli settlements have been erected directly within the city. While touring Hebron, travelers witness Palestinian businesses that have been boarded up by the IDF, settler graffiti that combines Stars of David with threatening messages, as well as checkpoints that bar Palestinians from accessing roads within their own neighborhoods. Against this backdrop, tourists are confronted with competing claims of indigeneity from the Israelis and Palestinians who live in Hebron. The settler community, for example, has installed signs throughout these alternative tours’ routes to defend Jewish claims of indigeneity to the region. As a result, Palestinian guides often find themselves describing their own ancestral ties to the land, while standing in front of billboards that affirm settlers’ “liberation of Hebron.” Though Palestinian guides attempt to push back against settlers’ claims of indigeneity through rhetorical strategies such as explicitly referring to Israelis as colonizers, Jewish participants often report that these tours actually deepen their connections to Zionism. Through analyzing tourists` responses to these competing claims of indigenity, I demonstrate how liberal Jewish tourists rely on distinctions between “righteous” Israelis in Israel-proper and “malicious” settlers in order to carve out a space for themselves within Zionism that legitimizes their own ties to the region.









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