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Rick Steves travels to Palestine and comments on nearly everything but the occupation

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Travel guide Rick Steves poses with Palestinian women in a West Bank cafe.
(Photo: Huffingon Post)

While the Israeli government tightened travel to the West Bank in recent months, requiring some tourists to sign statements of non-entry, the occupied Palestinian territory couldn’t be more full of foreigners. The post-Intifada era is ripe with activists from North America and Europe who frequent the weekly Friday protests as a badge of glory. Aid workers shuffle in and out of the embattled region, fluffing their resumes with missions. And gaggles of journalists feed off of the instability.

It is only inevitable then, that tourist savants would follow.

Anthony Bourdain, celebrity chef and travel host known for an imperishable appetite and careening towards political unrest, is expected to film here—or at least in Israel and by heavy assumption also the West Bank. As an aperitif a much less famous, but nonetheless influential, television host and author, Rick Steves, recently penned a series for the Huffington Post that left some readers with rancor.

“Frankly, Palestine is not a very pretty place,” opened Steves in his post on Palestinian women, from their modest clothes, to “demure” sex appeal. “I also looked for beauty elsewhere,” he said transitioning from the landscape to the female form. “Like many Westerners, I’m fascinated and perplexed by the tradition of women needing to be covered in public for modesty.”

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Image from Steves’s post on Palestinian beauty. (Photo: Huffington Post)

Steves’s goes on to post a few pictures of different women he met and saw on the streets of the West Bank. Uncomfortably, there is a Humbert Humbert quality to his images. The travel guide grabbed not only stills of women whom he had actually met with, but also others that passed him, unaware that he documented their young bodies based in high heels for a meditation on their culture. The highlights of his accompanying text are: society is segregated by gender; marriages are arranged and often loveless; everyone is strictly religious; and Steves—the maverick John Wayne in a sea of traditionalism—eye flirts with a young lady. Tantalizing.

Readers took notice. The post, “The Beauty of Palestine: Olives, Women and Scarves,” quickly sparked condemnation over social media and on the travelogue page itself. “This article left a bad taste in my mouth–disgusting!” wrote one commenter. “How can even try to contextualize Palestinian society without one mention of 65 PLUS tears of repression and occupation is completely ignorant!” she continued.

Where Steves goes astray is that he goes beyond being a guide to a city and becomes a guide to a society. His gaze as a visitor with knowledge over the women subjects and Islam, is used as an explanation for contemporary behavior. This dips into the aesthetic of conquest, for the 21st century online news outlet.

Taking a look back one hundred years ago, Lord Balfour famously said to the House of Commons in 1910 (well-known for being quoted in the first page of Edward Said’s Orientalism):

‘We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the civilization of any other country. We know it further back; we know it intimately; we know more about it.’

Said uses this quote to show how assumed knowledge over a subject is in itself a form of domination. “Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its decline–and of course, it means being able to do that,” wrote Said. In turn, Steves employs the same knowledge-power dynamic.

Also from his beauty in Palestine article:

For Muslim men, it’s a sin to look lustfully at a woman who’s not your wife. Around here, hair is sexy, and in the strictest of Muslim societies, women carefully cover up every strand in public. (Of course, in the privacy of their own domestic world, they are welcome to be as sexy as they like for their husbands.)

Elsewhere, Steves leaves the women of Palestine and focuses on politics. Just one day before his beauty in Palestine post, Steves takes on the Oslo delineated districts of the West Bank, or Area A, B, and C. But curiously in it he perceives Area A, a region of disconnected islands of the major Palestinian cities under the security control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as “free”—or without occupation. Area B is presented as a “garbage dump” and Area C, which comprises 59% of the West Bank and under full Israeli control, is shown largely as an “uninhabited”—obfuscating the impact of the occupation on Palestinian society. Here’s Steves:

Area C, holding most of the West Bank’s uninhabited land, is under complete Israeli authority. While Area C is kind of a part of Palestine, there can be no Palestinian building in Area C without a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration — and that’s usually difficult to get. A problem with Area B is that, since Palestinian security forces can’t really work there and Israel doesn’t care to enforce Palestinian laws, it tends to be a more lawless place…and also serves as a convenient garbage dump.

Throughout Steves’s some 20 posts on Israel and the West Bank the occupation is ubiquitous, but never outright addressed in relation to its negative impact for those living under Israeli military law. There are consequences presented, though. However, these sentiments are mostly macro and often mitigated by the sentence that follows. For example, Steves states settlements are expanding and have comprised the ability for an independent Palestinian state, but then he juxtaposes his analysis with a visual like, “Bethlehem is a ramshackle Arab city.” Here Steves mentions the wall, but doesn’t provide context beyond painting it as an eye sore:

Bethlehem is not a pretty town but it has a special energy. Most homes and businesses stand behind security walls and fences. The Arab market is colorful. And the skyline is a commotion of satellite dishes, minarets, and church spires.

Then the piece on Bethlehem is wrapped up by stating Palestinians happily leave their dump during the day “for better-paying jobs in Israel.”

What Steves fails to do is explain why houses are behind a concrete wall and why droves of day labors are in Israel. A deeper look into the West Bank for a writer who has decided to tackle the cumbersome alphabet districts of Oslo would explain that even though Bethlehem is in Area A, it has been carved up and disconnected from neighboring villages by the wall. In fact the hallmark of the wall—for its critics—is that it is located over the Green line and therefore is not a border between Israelis and Palestinians, but a manufactured security apparatus between Palestinians and Palestinians. It does not play a role in curtailing “terrorist” activities as Steves suggests, because it’s role is to limit internal Palestinian movement, not external.

Presently the wall is being expanded in the Bethlehem area, most notably in the village of Battir and in the Cremisan Valley. These two areas are important because Battir houses a Roman pool and the valley is home to a historic monastery where clergy produce wine. Battir is fighting to keep their land from confiscation by filing for a UNESCO world heritage status. And Cremisan just lost their court case, meaning the Christian house of worship, school and vineyard will be separated from one and another by meters of gray concrete.

Steves makes no mention of these kinds of impacts in his articles on both cities. In Battir he scouted for nature location shots, walking a 3,000 year old trail with Roman-era olive trees. “You plant it for your children, knowing that they will plant it for their children, too,” wrote Steves of the fruit-bearing orchard “for poor people.” Yet many of those trees he filmed may not be around for another year, let alone another generation. Battir’s petition to UNESCO is expected early next month.

Despite major omissions Steves series shouldn’t be overlooked. There is an underlying excitement to his work. Like most Orientalist travel literature he comments on historical changes. Where Steves discusses the occupation, but refers to Area A as “free,” it becomes clear he thinks Palestine is an independent country. Steves seemingly is chronicling life in the newly created “State of Palestine,” the PA’s official new name legislated at the begnining of the year, and a hat tip to last November’s upgrade to non-member observer status at the United Nations. Times are changing and the radioman from Oregon is on the precipice, “Google has decided to go with the term Palestine, and I will too,” wrote Steves.

And so it is without shame that Steves venerates the Jewish pioneers of Tel Aviv (in an early post), never mentions the Nakba, and places the blame of the West Bank’s “squalor” on the Palestinian leadership alone. He sees the governing bodies of Israel and Palestine as separate entities.

Of course, life in the West Bank is controlled by Israel. Water use was decided by the Oslo Accords, same with taxes and imports and exports. There is no economic sovereignty. The West Bank is a state insomuch as Iran was independent after World War I when the European empires drew a line on the map, dividing the country into spheres of interest. Back then, Iran didn’t even own its natural resources, as they were negotiated away in a concession. And neither does Palestine.

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wake up ninnys…..what the hell did you expect?

probably was told & made aware of what he could & couldn’t say, & most likely was a PR attempt by the aparthied occupationists to show the world another side of what could be, if any occupation & aparthied were civil. Wait till the USA is occupied & people are in fema re education camps, will Rick be doing shows about them too?

I don’t know why but I expected better from Steves. I hope he does some investigation for himself and addresses these concerns.

Just read the piece referred to. Gods what nauseating…..guaghhh! This guy is the very embodiment of the obnoxious American tourist despised throughout the world. Please US Govt. for the sake of your nation’s already tarnished image, take away his passport.

Although it’s got to be said, Jasmine (the girl Steves flirted with in the first pic) is super beautiful and it’s completely irrelevant that she’s covered from head to foot. I don’t get that America’s biggest travel guy has got this big hang up about their perception of modesty. He just cuts across as ignorant.