One day as I was walking down the street [apparently when all of the most notable things happen], this guy approached me asking where I was from and if I wanted to see the famous Banksy artwork on the wall around the corner. I responded to him in Arabic, saying I knew about the graffiti and actually lived in Bethlehem, as a student--not a tourist. However, he continued with his spiel, not quite believing me...which bothered me a little too much. Slightly frustrated, I kept walking and saw the guy's friend waiting for him nearby. Funny enough, it just so happened to be someone I know (a friend of a friend from Atlanta) who I greeted enthusiastically by name. "Oh, I guess you really aren't a tourist..." the guy who had been talking to me earlier admitted. Ha! I had proved myself! [and obviously felt some pride about this feat].
Later that afternoon, I met up with an American friend and relayed the story to him as a somewhat momentous success. Also living here in a more long-term sort of way, he understood how I felt in regards to this desire to somehow be differentiated from the tourists who constantly come and go. We talked about seeing them on the streets and feeling some sort of slight aversion or annoyance at their apparent naivete. But we also both recognized that there are some egregious flaws in this mindset... Why is it that we react to them this way? Why do we go out of our way to try to show that we are in a separate category (as my story so clearly reveals)? Perhaps this can be attributed to a subconscious belief that we are somehow superior to them...but is this really true?
Sure, I speak enough of the language to get around and have tried my best to study the region in a sensitive way and have actual friends who live in Palestine. I have been here long enough now to grow accustomed to my daily routine without constantly feeling like an outsider without a clue. But still, this doesn't erase the fact that I am a white-skinned, light-haired, western-raised foreigner in this place (regardless of my shifting degrees of awareness about this reality). This in and of itself represents and communicates something wherever I go--in a way that I'm not sure differs so substantially from the tourists who I tend to view with some level of inexplicable disdain.
Working through this, my friend and I came to the conclusion that perhaps we seek to place these tourists on the outside in order to define ourselves [you know, the familiar model of any sort of categorization or modern-day citizenship configuration]. We want to be different, in order to be considered somehow better, or at least convince ourselves that this is so. Beyond this, perhaps our criticisms of them are actually projections of our own faults and fears regarding our role here... Wow.
Realizing this is helping me to re-shape my thinking, and hopefully my future actions [a sometimes tiring process that feels especially incessant yet necessary here]. It serves as a good reminder to remain continuously aware of my "outsiderness," even as I become more comfortable in my surroundings. I must keep working to ask thoughtful questions, shy away from assumptions, and have an attitude of humility rather than arrogance. Also I must strive to be aware of the role that my own country and government has in this specific environment [it's not positive], as I think this requires me to acknowledge a certain sense of liability.
Additionally, thinking about this provokes a passion in me to actively advocate for more responsible tourism (and foreign living) in whatever ways possible--whether through educational means or economic awareness or just basic sensitivity towards people's humanity and suffering [i.e. it is in most cases not okay to take pictures of people or their homes without their permission, just as an example]. As another example, it is good to be aware of who is benefiting from the tourism industry vs. who is being exploited. This has particular relevance in the West Bank, where tourism-dependent Palestinian industries are crippled by Israeli-run tours coming in for the day, advising tourists not to spend money in Arab shops, then bringing them back to Israel for accommodations--leaving the hotels here nearly empty. This is a real reason to be bothered, but the implications are not just for "them"--there are applications in my daily life as well.
In summary, seeing myself as part of the problem, rather than conveniently removed from it, allows me to be much more responsible and sensitive in the long-run. I hope it can also enable me to extend a little more grace and little less anger towards the the outsider (often conflated with the oppressor) in both the "other" and myself--as I think we need to strike a balance between these to be able to produce effective change. Neither naivete [being unaware of potentially harmful dynamics] nor excessive blaming [not seeing these at work in ourselves] will result in a genuine difference made. May we all learn to live better together...
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