Political tourism in the Israeli-Palestinian space

With the violent clashes that took place in May 2010 during the attempt by the Free Gaza movement flotilla to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the remarkable strength of pro-Palestinian networks became globally apparent. Drawing on an ethnography of political activism in the Israeli-Palestinian space, we suggest that the striking visibility of these networks does not exclusively derive from the prominence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but is also a consequence of the activists' ability to produce innovative forms of sociality. However, some of the approaches taken can exist in problematic relation to the experiences of people who live with the conflict. In this context, the issue is not so much the precise relationships between indigenous 'truths' in Palestine and their foreign representations, but the way in which encounters redefine the conflicts that activist networks seek to represent. © RAI 2011.