IN STEREO

I don’t remember exactly, but about ten years ago, some Palestinian alternative tourism agencies made the code of conduct for tourism to Palestine, mainly about fair tourism. This is about the fact that people should not ignore the reality of today when they visit here and should use Palestinian resources: stay in Palestinian hotels, eat in Palestinian restaurants, and hire Palestinian tour guides. It was about that time that I started coming as a participant of one of the olive picking programmes, where they do olive tree planting and olive harvest, and it was mainly about awareness-raising. In Palestine, you cannot ignore the political reality, because it can be seen and felt in every aspect of life, even if you didn’t imagine that it could have such an effect on people’s lives. So coming through such an olive harvest programme, and actually seeing, learning – but also doing something – made me realise that kind of combination is really relevant.

People understand what’s going on here, then take that experience back home and talk to other people about it. Maybe people will become motivated to actually take action in whatever way. Some people become activists, and they take banners and stand on the street to protest the military occupation; others are artists, and they use what they learned in their work; other people like to sit and write to their congressperson. But usually, when people come from here having seen so much injustice, they want to do something. I hope that through that awareness, there will be, at some point, a change in policies in the world. I’m not really thinking that the leaderships will make that change. But usually change doesn’t come from the top; usually change comes from the bottom. So I think if we work on that part of the pyramid… It’s not something that happens fast. It might be slow, but it’s better than doing nothing. – Kristel