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Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the role of walking and hiking as performance associated with the imagining of both internal and external geographies. It builds on the biblical/qur’anic accounts of Abraham’s journeys from his home in the Chaldean city of Ur through Canaan to Egypt and back to Hebron and also the reflections by JJ Rousseau in his Memories of a Solitary Walker. It contrasts the role of walking tours in Israel and Palestine, reflecting on their distinctive ideological end products, the former with ideas of nation and nationalism, the latter with cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

The journey of the prophet Abraham from the Chaldean city of Ur, through Canaan, to Egypt, and ending in Hebron is described in both bible and Qur’an. This iconic journey inspired the founding in 2006 of the Abraham Path Initiative by colleagues from the Harvard University Negotiation Project as a means of encouraging walking on the re-imagined route of the prophet as a means of knowing and understanding the region better. In 2014 Masar Ibrahim al-Khalil, a specifically Palestinian version of that part of Abraham’s journey through what is now Palestine - co-founded by Ra’ed Sa’adeh, chair of the Rozana Association and other organisations (notably the Network for Experimental Palestinian Tourism Organizations (NEPTO)) supporting Palestinian identities, culture, rural tourism, fair trade, and the arts - was launched with a World Bank grant to “encourage economic development in fragile communities”. Since then Masar Ibrahim has developed from strength to strength and has become the subject of a number of subsequent projects and work by researchers and writers in Palestine and beyond, including the UK.

Inspired by the story of Abraham’s journeys, Rousseau’s Memories of a Solitary Walker, and other walking and hiking projects within and outside the region, this paper considers how walking tours in both Palestine and Israel have become significant activities concerned with the expression of socio-cultural identities. However, the ideological productions of the walking/hiking projects in both countries differ. While walking tours in Israel are associated with nationalist ideas and practices, walks in Palestine – in particular on the Masar Ibrahim – are framed by emphases on cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism. Reflecting on these distinctions allows us to explore the role of walking in both internal psychological reflections (a la Rousseau) and in performances of external geographical and political exploration (as in Masar Ibrahim).