Paper short abstract:

In Palestinian rural localities the safeguard and valorisation of natural and cultural heritage is an important occasion to creatively overcome the disruptive material and symbolic effects of the conflicting and fragmented context. The Battir Landscape Ecomuseum project represents an organic experience in this direction.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed contribution consists of the presentation of an experience of participated landscape safeguarding and valorisation that led to the planning and implementation of an ecomuseum of landscape in the Palestinian rural village of Battir (Bethlehem Governatorate), characterised by a natural and cultural landscape of outstanding environmental, historical and socio-cultural interest.

Main aim of the project is helping the local inhabitants in establishing a territorial platform for the creative and dynamic safeguarding of their natural and cultural heritage, severely threatened by the geopolitical situation of the area.

The project outline was defined during a three years action/research on the local natural and cultural heritage conducted by an interdisciplinary team of local and international experts

(anthropologists, landscape architects), designed through the encounter and interaction with local authorities and stakeholders and the experimenting of different forms of active participation of various territorial actors (local historians, "human treasures", school teachers, students, community based organisations, small farmers, population at broad). Main objective of the research - focused on the investigation of different local perceptions and representations of the history and identity of the place and on the documentation of cultural know-how attached to the shaping and maintenance of the cultural landscape - was involving the local community in a process of exploration and re-interpretation of their natural and cultural heritage and in the concerted individuation of sustainable strategies for its valorisation and for its protection against the disruptive effects generated by the conflicting, precarious and fragmented situation affecting the occupied Palestinian territories.