THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

HERITAGE FROM ISRAEL/PALESTINE TO THE HOLY LAND: USING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT FOR THE FUTURE

JOHN MICHAEL GURKLIS SPRING 2020

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in History and Archaeological Sciences with honors in History

Reviewed and approved* by the following:

Nina Safran Associate Professor of History Thesis Supervisor

Cathleen Cahill Associate Professor of History Honors Adviser

* Electronic approvals are on file. i

ABSTRACT

This thesis develops a dynamic understanding of heritage as a process; actors use the past in the present for the future. The thesis explores this view of heritage through three case studies in

Israel/ Palestine. The first chapter investigates ongoing conflict between stakeholder heritages at

Akko, Israel over the conservation of Khan al-Umdan; the second chapter interrogates how two prominent post-1967 authors—one Israeli, one Palestinian—construct their personal and political conceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through their heritage; and the third chapter explores how three nineteenth century Americans constructed their individual relationships to the

Holy Land through their wider Christian and American perspectives. The thesis brings together a wide range of periods, peoples, and scenarios to test the concept of heritage across a wider context. Careful analysis within each chapter and throughout the thesis demonstrates the innate nature of the process of heritage and its applicability as a framework for historical analysis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv

Heritage as a Process ...... 1

Chapter 1 The ‘Wicked’ Problems of Heritage Management at Akko, Israel ...... 7

Methodology ...... 9 The Many Histories of Akko ...... 11 Stakeholder Perspectives ...... 15 Stakeholders in Conflict ...... 25 Akko in Context ...... 30

Chapter 2 Between Two Heritages: Amos Oz and Raja Shehadeh and the Israel-Palestine Conflict ...... 31

Structure ...... 33 Oz: The Sabra Identity ...... 33 Application of Heritages ...... 44 Intersection ...... 49 Two Heritages ...... 53

Chapter 3 Nineteenth Century American Travels to the Holy Land: The Confluence of Individual and Collective Heritage ...... 55

Early Lives ...... 58 In the Holy Land ...... 63 Materialization of the Dream ...... 70 Parting Thoughts ...... 76

Conclusion ...... 78

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 82

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Khan al-Umdan from the air, 1960s. In Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan. In Recognizing and Preserving the Common Heritage of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority: Preliminary Report: Volume II...... 7

Figure 2 Interior of Khan al-Umdan. Photo from Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project, 2012. 10

Figure 3 Old City residents at the market. Personal photo, 2019...... 15

Figure 4. Position 7 of Hurlbut's Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope ...... 55

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dr. Nina Safran for dedicating the time and effort to help me grow into a better writer, researcher, and person

Dr. Cathleen Cahill for guiding, and at times, pushing me along the process of writing this thesis

Dr. Ann E. Killebrew for generously supporting and guiding my research on Khan al-Umdan in Akko, Israel

Friends & Family for giving me the support to pursue my education and, more realistically, putting up with me 1

Heritage as a Process

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past —TS Eliot, Burt Norton from Four Quartets ❧

When Amos Oz, an Israeli author, or his contemporary Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian author, look out their windows they do not see their respective homes of Israel and Palestine just in that moment. Rather, they see the land and people around them in reference to what those elements were, have been, and continue to be. The past bleeds into the present. Similarly, when biblical scholar Edward Robinson looked out at a bustling Jerusalem in 1838 he did not see it just in that present temporal slice, rather he saw it through the lens of the Bible—one that reached back nearly two-thousand years. When Anna Spafford stood upon the same stone paths of Jerusalem, in 1881, she too saw Jerusalem not just then but also through its biblical past. But, at the same time she also saw it reference to her own past, her life as an immigrant growing up in Chicago, dealing with the painful effects of the Chicago Fire which sent her, her husband, and their religious followers to colonize Jerusalem. Neither did Charles T. Walker who traveled to

Jerusalem in 1891. He did not see the Mount of Olives for what it was—a small hill amongst many others, rather he saw it as the hill where Jesus wept when he first saw Jerusalem. A place where Walker too wept, as he, in Jerusalem, felt free from painful effects of racism that defined home. When conservators from the Israel Antiquities Authority look at the kurkhar stone blocks that make up the massive Khan al-Umdan in Akko, Israel today they too do not just see a 2 building, they see what the city was nearly three hundred years ago. Along the same line, developers in Akko see a history that can be deployed for increased tourism, while Akko’s Arab-

Israeli residents see a building that represents their community’s past, a stronghold potentially threatened by gentrification.

Each of these examples highlights how individuals interact with the past. Time, as we conceive it, bends in ways which appear contrary to how we understand it to work. Every person reflects on their past in their present moment. The two temporal slices are interrelated despite our rigid conception that what was will always be was and what is now will only be now for a short time. In the same way, what will be only exists in that state until it becomes a now and then a then. This can be confusing because how time works and how we relate to it muddy the straight metaphysics of temporal passage and our experience of it. Eliot’s poetics on time both makes intuitive sense and at the same time are incomprehensible. This thesis, on its most abstract level, is an investigation of how individuals interact with their past and how this interaction forms their relationship to specific places.

More concretely, this thesis is about residents, conservators, and developers in Akko,

Israel confronting the ruins of a khan today; about Amos Oz and Raja Shehadeh seeking a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict following the 1967 War; and about Edward Robinson,

Anna Spafford, and Charles T. Walker, three Americans seeking out the Holy Land in the nineteenth century. These are individuals from disparate times with little relation to each other.

But I bring their stories together because there is much to glean from their similar yet quite different interactions with the past. Each actor seeks to process their experience of the past and convey their understandings to themselves and to others in a manifold of forms. From books to buildings, colonies to discoveries, each person makes something tangible out of this interaction 3 and use of the past. I make the argument that each person sees the geographic area of

Palestine/Israel through a framework of ‘heritage’ and that each defines heritage for his or herself and uses that to construct their present and future. These individuals from disparate backgrounds and time periods all engage in what I will call the process of heritage—meaning that they use their notion of the past, in the present, for the future. The intention of the thesis is to make a dynamic view of ‘heritage’ visible by applying it to a range of contexts and to contribute to the definition of the term with its application.

In the summer of 2019, I worked in Akko, Israel researching issues of heritage management in Akko’s Ottoman Old City. The question there was how to preserve and make the old Ottoman buildings economically viable without changing the fabric of the city. Withstanding the various pragmatic concerns regarding development and conservation of several hundred- year-old buildings, the more pressing issue that stakeholders faced were the social issues connected to ideas of heritage. Heritage is a term that has a broad base of definitions and uses. In common parlance, the term expresses something which nations, peoples, and individuals inherit.

The heritage can be something tangible, such as a place or a building, or something more culturally comprehensive such as a set of traditions and customs. This basic definition suggests that heritage is something passive, something that people receive, and thus the conception of heritage is seemingly fixed. If this were the case then there would likely be fewer issues regarding heritage at Akko and certainly no need for an idea such as heritage management to exist.

In reality, different stakeholders at Akko have their own notions of heritage and opinions on what ought to be done in the city. The future of Akko, in this light, follows modern developments in the literature regarding heritage and heritage management. Scholars have 4 shifted away from basic conceptions and have pivoted towards definitions that focus on the idea of heritage as a process. Joe Watkins and John Beaver provide a general definition saying,

“‘heritage’ transcends time, drawing on the ‘past’ to create a ‘present’ to be protected for the

‘future’.”1 Giving a more practical use definition, Frans Schouten differentiates heritage from the past noting that heritage is “history processed through mythology, ideology, nationalism, local pride, romantic ideas or just plain marketing, into a commodity”.2 These ideas are echoed by

Gregory Ashworth who details heritage as an “activity in which the past as imagined from the present is treated as a quarry of potential resources for the construction of products for current consumption.”3 The various uses of heritage denote it as “anything but benign” as its uses and applications can have a myriad of social, political, economic, and cultural impacts.4

Through these various definitions, a core common process is made visible that defines heritage as the past used in the present for the future. Heritage here is an active process in which choices are made regarding what the past is, what it means, and how it is applied to achieve that meaning. Heritage is not set, but rather made and constantly changing for different uses and settings. The past thus becomes a product in which it can be consumed in a plethora of different ways. The tenet of the past acting as a ‘product’ or a ‘commodity’ arises in part from the development literature. Actors I analyze throughout this thesis make their heritage and use it, just as a factory makes goods from raw resources into products for consumers. At face value, the parallels are hard to stomach as we typically do not see the past and history in such economic

1 Watkins, J. and J. Beaver. 2008. What Do We Mean by “Heritage”? Heritage Management 1 (1): 10. 2 Schouten, F.J. 1995. Heritage as Historical Reality. In Heritage, Tourism and Society. Edited by David T. Herbert. New York: Mansell: 21. 3 Ashworth, G. 2014. Heritage and Economic Development: Selling the Unsellable. Heritage and Society 7 (1): 6. 4 Watkins, J. and J. Beaver. 2008. What Do We Mean by “Heritage”?: 12. 5 terms. But there is important information to be understood here. In abstracting the process in such terms, we can see how this ‘product’ can be, in the same way, cultural, political, and personal. The heritage management literature gives this thesis a theoretical grounding in an area adjacent to historical analysis that can be used to expand how we think of heritage in reference to historical actors.

I came home from Akko with these ideas of heritage fresh in my mind and began to connect it to what I had been learning about Israel and Palestine for this thesis. Authors such as

Neil Silberman in his Digging for God and Country and Nadia Abu El-Haj in her Facts on the

Ground probe the ways history and archaeology were used in the formation of the modern state of Israel.5 They investigate how history making can influence one’s view of the past and how the past is used in the present and future. For example, Abu El-Haj illustrates how archaeology was used by the early Israeli state to develop an idea of a connected past that tied Israelis to the

Israelites and thus legitimized settlement on that land. In a similar vein, Jan Assmann created notions of cultural memory that articulate the process through which organized views of the past build the basis of civilization.6 While Assmann, Abu El-Haj, and Silberman focus on the process of using the past, they often concentrated on larger institutions—society as a whole, the state, etc., rather than on the individual. This thesis offers a shift towards the individual, seeing the processes of heritage on a scale of people who resided in a place at a time. In doing so, it aims to lay bare the innate nature of this interaction with the past. The individuals were all involved in

5 Abu El-Haj, N. 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self- Fashioning in Israeli Society; and, Silberman, N. 1982. Digging for God and country: exploration, archaeology, and the secret struggle for the Holy Land, 1799-1917. 6 Assmann, J. 2011. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. 6 the common endeavor of pulling from their history to make their present and future—across time and place—and I invite my reader to consider how we do the same.

In this light, this thesis will use the dynamic definition of heritage as a framework for historical analysis, looking specifically at three case studies: modern heritage management in

Akko, Israel; an Israeli and Palestinian author writing after 1967; and American travelers to the

Middle East during the 19th century. I am specifically looking at how individuals in a specific context are involved with making heritage, even if they do not think of it in these exact terms.

The first chapter investigates conflict between stakeholders at Akko, Israel, looking to see how different notions of the same past create barriers to historical conservation. The second chapter focuses on how the personal experiences of Shehadeh and Oz influences their notions of the past in ways that inhibit their ability to make peace between their respective sides. The third chapter analyzes the confluence of individual and shared cultural heritages by examining three different

19th century American travelers to the Holy Land. Across these chapters, I aim to display the flexibility and nuance that the framework of heritage as a process can provide to historical analysis.

7 Chapter 1

The ‘Wicked’ Problems of Heritage Management at Akko, Israel

Figure 1 Khan al-Umdan from the air, 1960s. In Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan. In Recognizing and Preserving the Common Heritage of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority: Preliminary Report: Volume II. Fifteen miles north of Haifa, the Old City of Akko7, Israel sits at the tip of a triangular peninsula that juts out into the Akko-Haifa Bay. The Old City is a walled Ottoman port-town that dates back to the 17th century and has remained a living, breathing city that is home to roughly

7 Akko has multiple naming conventions: in English typically Acre, in Hebrew Akko, or in Arabic Akka. To confuse matters, UNESCO refers to the city as “The Old City of Acre.” The Old City or simply Akko will be used here. 8 8,000 Arab-Israeli residents.8 Inland, nearly 40,000 Jewish-Israelis live in the more modern

“new” city. At the heart of the Old City sits Khan al-Umdan, a large two-story caravanserai built in the late 18th century. The building’s arches and clock tower symbolize the fabled history of the city and make the khan one of the most recognizable feature of the city. However, despite its historical significance, the khan has decayed for decades and has been closed to the public for more than five years. Cracks have formed across the building allowing water to seep in and eat away at the rock; the marvelous interior arches have shifted over time jeopardizing the structural integrity of the entire building; and flora and fauna have made their homes in and on the building’s facade as a public showcase of the building’s deteriorating health. Khan al-Umdan has transformed from the crown jewel of the city to a public hazard.

Three of the major stakeholders of Akko—residents, conservators, and developers— view the bleak state of the khan as unbefitting but have been unable to work together to address the concerns. Meanwhile, over the past several decades the Old City has undergone a renaissance with burgeoning tourism and international recognition from UNESCO, who designated the city as a World Heritage Site in 2002. Developers have poured money into new restaurants, hotels, museums, and tourist attractions hoping to cash in on the trend. Yet, Khan al-Umdan has sat unused. Issues of ownership, public concern over the direction of potential development, and the cost of restoring the massive, centuries-old structure have all contributed to a stalemate.

However, in 2018, outside developers purchased the khan and have made progress with plans to turn the khan into a luxury hotel. Their plans for Khan al-Umdan represents a major point of contention, as the diverse population of Akko holds many disparate and at times contested views

8 Arab-Israeli is used throughout this chapter in reference to the ethnically Arab residents Israel. However, in recent years the terms ‘Palestinian in Israel’ or ‘Palestinian Arab Israeli’ have gained growing acceptance by Arabs who live in Israel. 9 on the heritage of the khan and how specifically that heritage ought to be used. This chapter aims to investigate the ongoing processes of heritage at Akko to see how competing socioeconomic, cultural, and political interests impact the future of the khan and the city as a whole.

Methodology

This chapter is based upon personal research conducted with the support of an Erickson

Discovery Grant in the summer of 2019 in Akko, Israel with the Tel Akko Total Archaeology

Project. To study the ongoing developments in the Old City I conducted document-based analyses on historic archives and interviewed local stakeholders in Akko. I analyzed British

Mandate archives, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) oral histories with Old City residents, and past planning and legal tender material on the Khan in order to develop the historical context of work at the khan. To better understand current work at the khan I interviewed ten individuals involved with or effected by current developments. These included IAA employees, Old Acre

Development Company (OADC) officials, administrators, entrepreneurs, and residents. Their identities have been masked here for privacy concerns.

My research was focused on a broad set of questions: how will development keep the building authentic while being economically feasible; what will the building be developed into and does this meet the needs of all stakeholders, especially its Arab inhabitants; and for whom is the work being done—is it for tourists or will residents and the urban fabric of the city be respected and fostered through the work? This paper will address these many questions through an analysis of the ongoing actions, however, it is not the only goal here. While conducting my research I became interested in the malleability of the term heritage, and how different 10 stakeholders viewed and used their conception of the city’s past to attempt to alter its current and future plans. Different stakeholders held inherently different conceptions of the city’s past and used these to argue for their prescribed solution for the khan. Thus, moving forward this chapter will seek to answer the questions prompted at the top of this paragraph in light of their different heritages. To do so, a brief historic overview of the khan, the city, and its stakeholders will be given to see how their frames of heritage are developed. Then focus will shift towards seeing these various entities in action.

Figure 2 Interior of Khan al-Umdan. Photo from Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project, 2012. 11 The Many Histories of Akko

When Ottoman official Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar rode victoriously into Akko in 1775 the city was not more than a small town built atop the ruins of the former Crusader capital of Acre.

The Ottomans had previously seen Akko and Palestine as a whole as an unimportant backwater due to its relatively low economic value. However, an increased demand for cotton from Europe had begun to transform Akko into a regional powerhouse that local warlords strived to control.

Al-Jazzar quickly defeated these warlords and made Akko his regional capital, himself its governor.9 Al-Jazzar ruled Akko as the city grew into a thriving regional center with its harbor tapping into the Mediterranean trade routes. With this prosperity, al-Jazzar began a massive building project that included building new walls, the central market, a major mosque, and Khan al-Umdan. These features remain today and symbolize Akko’s golden era.

Khans are lodgings and warehouses that merchants have historically stayed at during their journeys throughout the Middle East. Khan al-Umdan, built towards the end of the 18th century, acted as a control valve on the goods that came and went through the harbor, helping facilitate and monitor trade. Travelers could take advantage of the khan’s twenty-five warehouses on the bottom floor and the forty rooms on the second floor for boarding; the massive size of the building is reflective of the large quantity of goods that moved through

Akko.10 Al-Jazzar endowed the khan’s profits to the waqf, which was an institutionalized act of charity that funded the upkeep and running of the major mosque he built in his namesake.11

9 Philipp, T. 2001. Acre: the rise and fall of a Palestinian city, 1730-1830. New York: Columbia University Press. 10 Dichter, B. 2000. Akko: Sites from the Turkish Period. Edited by A. Carmel and Z. Baumwoll. University of Haifa: Haifa. 11 Beeri, R. 2004. Akko in the 18th and 19th Centuries Based on Notes of Endowment. In Recognizing and Preserving the Common Heritage of Israel and the Palestinian National 12 Over time, the importance of Akko as a major port dwindled as Beirut and Haifa built their own harbors that siphoned trade. After Muhammad Ali of Egypt’s son, Ibrahim, captured

Akko in 1831 the city was pushed aside and failed to recover its former importance. Khan al-

Umdan’s size no longer fit its economic role and residents transitioned the khan from a caravanserai to a multi-use building. Citizens eventually began to live on the top floor, while the bottom floor was used for storage and light industry usage.12 By the time that the British arrived in 1919, the khan was still occupied in this mixed-use fashion, but the khan, and a majority of the

Ottoman buildings in the city, had begun to show their age. Percy Winter, a British Mandate city planner, described the condition of Akko as “appalling” despite being “one of the finest architectural and archaeological monuments of Palestine.”13 In response, the British instituted the first wave of focused preservation efforts in Akko through the British Department of Antiquities, which began to extensively survey and monitor the status of historic buildings in the city. Naim

Makhouly, the department’s investigator for the region, noted that modern latrines and other concrete additions had been added to Khan al-Umdan over the years.14 Makhouly and the

Department of Antiquities saw the modern additions throughout the city as harmful to the city’s historic character and aimed to remove as many additions as possible. Mandate officials sought to ‘freeze’ the city in time, however, Akko was never of special import to the Mandate

Authority: Preliminary Report: Volume II. University of Haifa, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, and Israel Antiquities Authority. 12 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan. In Recognizing and Preserving the Common Heritage of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority: Preliminary Report: Volume II. University of Haifa, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, and Israel Antiquities Authority: 185. 13 Winter, P. 1944. Acre Report. Vol 1. Acre: Government of Palestine: 1. 14 Acre. Khan el-Umdan ATQ_8_23(6/6). The Scientific Archive 1919-1948. Jerusalem: The Israel Antiquities Authority. More of Makhouly’s work can be seen in the Acre I and II archives. 13 government and before tangible changes could be made, the British hastily left Palestine in

1948.15

The demographics of Akko changed dramatically over the course of the 1948 War. The

British recorded 13,560 residents in a 1946 census, of which only ~3,000 remained in the city after the Haganah attacked on May 14, 1948.16 Residents fled in fear of the incoming attack and were barred from returning after the war. Their homes were expropriated by the Israeli state via absentee laws and 100-150 Jewish families, mostly new immigrants, were settled in the Old

City.17 A vast majority of the Jewish-Israeli immigrants did not remain in the Old City, and soon moved out to Akko’s growing New City once houses and funds were available. Meanwhile, Arab families from the surrounding villages—areas also negatively impacted by the 1948 War— moved into Akko’s Old City in the late 1950s.18

In the 1960s, the Israeli government started to see Akko as a potential tourist destination and formed the Old Acre Development Company (OADC) in 1965 with the expressed goal of turning the Old City into a tourist destination. Since then, Akko has undergone major changes.

Tourism and conservation efforts in particular have increased dramatically, seen by the city’s

2001 designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.19 Major infrastructure improvements have been made across the Old City which have introduced modern pluming, internet, and electricity to houses throughout the city. To this day, Akko’s old city remains a living, breathing city with

15 To see legal framework of Mandate policies, see Bentwich, 1924. 16 Abbasi, M. 2010. The Fall of Acre in the 1948 Palestine War. Journal of Palestine Studies 39 (4): 24. 17 Rajagopalan, M. 2002. Dismembered Geographies: The Politics of Segregation in Three Mixed Cities in Israel. Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 13 (2): 35-48. 18 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 176. 19 Fuhrmann-Naaman, Y. and A. Kitov. 2001. Nomination of the Old City of Acre. Acre: The Conservation Department of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. 14 the mix of Arab-Israeli residents in the Old City and the Jewish-Israeli residents in the New City making inhabited by 8,000 predominately Arab-Israeli residents. Outside the old city walls, the

Akko one of six official mixed-cities in Israel.20

Across this same timeline, however, Khan al-Umdan has not seen the same level of development as the rest of the city. Following 1948, residents continued to use the khan in the same Mandate-era mixed-use fashion. Atrash estimates that there were nearly 240 people living in the khan, making it a hub for the local community as they used its square to host a variety of social functions, including weddings and festivals in the central square.21 In 1973, the OADC agreed to a ninety-nine-year lease with the Islamic waqf, bought out the building’s remaining tenants, and prepared the khan be bought and renovated into a hotel. However, Khan al-Umdan remained unsold until 2018, due to the attempt of bundling its sale with surrounding buildings, including Khan esh-Shune. Expanding the hotel to the other nearby khan would increase the room count, but made the price of the project astronomical and stalled several tender negotiations.22 Additionally, the purchase of esh-Shune would have required the eviction of residents who currently reside within it, which prompted protest from residents who hung signs that read “NOT FOR SALE” in 2014.23 Over this fifty-year span, respective owners of the khan have failed to maintain the building. Despite the success of the recent sale of the building in

20 For discussion on urban space making in mixed-cities see (Yifachel and Yacobi 2002). Mixed- cities are an official designation of a city that has a sizable Arab minority within its boundaries, the others are: Jaffa, Haifa, Lod, Ramleh, and Jerusalem* (depending on which borders used). 21 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 205. 22 Local Conservator, Personal Conversation, July 10, 2019. Note that 99-year-long leases are quite common across Israel, the Knesset, for example, is partially on land that is leased similarly. 23 Killebrew, A.E, D. DePietro, R. Pangarkar, S.A. Peleg, S. Scham, and E. Taylor. 2017. Archaeology, Shared Heritage, and Community at Akko, Israel. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 5 (3-4): 384. 15 2018, major questions remain unanswered as stakeholders are concerned about the developer’s intentions to build a hotel.

Stakeholder Perspectives

Figure 3 Old City residents at the market. Personal photo, 2019. Three main groups of stakeholders with distinct notions of heritage exist within Akko: developers, conservators, and residents. Each stakeholder holds their own view of Akko’s heritage and how it ought to be used. Although opinions within stakeholder groups are variable, analysis of their general perspectives provides significantly diverse approaches to heritage and a way to get at the term’s flexibility.

Developers 16 The OADC, founded in 1967, has controlled the pulse of development within the Old

City since its inception. The Israeli government, through the Ministry of Tourism, entrusted the

OADC to specifically develop the Old City into a tourist attraction.24 The Ministry of Tourism holds partial ownership of the OADC, which gives the company flexibility, allowing it to remain somewhat independent while also leveraging partnerships with other government agencies, such as AMIDAR, Government Tourist Corporation, National Parks Authority, and the local municipality.25 The OADC has sought to restore and preserve the city’s archaeology, architecture, and historic sites, developing them, and the city around them. The OADC, in their 1995 masterplan for the city, placed an emphasis on conservation as a tool to ensure the “continued existence” of the physical historical assets in the city as they provide the basis for the economic development.26 A representative from the development company explained the OADC’s outlook saying, “Akko doesn’t have gold, it has history and people need to turn that into cash.”27 To spur development, planners determined that a “professional committee” of relevant experts would decide what actions ought to be done to improve all aspects of the city so that the tourism industry would be able to sustain its growth.

In the masterplan, the OADC proposed for Khan al-Umdan to serve as a key asset for the city by being developing it into a hotel. The OADC involved themselves with the khan in 1973 when they signed a ninety-nine-year lease with the Islamic waqf in Akko who had originally owned the building. The waqf signed over full control of the building, allowing the OADC to:

24 Old Acre Development Company. 2019. Acre Tourism Development Strategy. About Us. 25 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 209. 26 Old Acre and Nazareth Development Company LTD. 2018. An invitation to receive proposals for renovations and sublease of the complex known as Khan al-Umdan and the Hamam in Old Acre Tender No. PA/2018/771. Annex J2: 13. 27 OADC Employee, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 17 transfer [lease] rights, all or part thereof, to another, to lease, rent, mortgage, and carry

out any other transaction whatsoever with them without exceptions, to build, demolish,

split, change designation, or do any other kind of action with the leased property.28

The agreement ceded decision making power without consultation of the waqf to the OADC. The waqf and residents have continued to hold some power, but this is limited and symbolic in nature. OADC planners specifically required that the khan be developed into a hotel, positing that the hotel would act as a ‘southern-anchor’ for the city. Tourists, in theory, would enter the city at the north near the Hospitaller Compound and then move towards the south and stay at the khan for a night and spend their money at the various restaurants and businesses nearby. The khan as a hotel would help the city meet the explicit goal of 1,000 available beds within the city, which would, in theory, put Akko on the map for larger tourist companies.29 In these plans, the

OADC set specific guidelines of how the khan must be restored and preserved by whoever buys it, stressing that the look and the feel of the building must be maintained.

These details help illuminate the economic-centric perspective of heritage that the developers hold. The OADC views improving the physical appearance of the city and its buildings as their paramount objective; the rich history of Akko must be preserved so that future generations of tourists will be able to come and visit. The results of this focus are seen throughout the city. For example, doors and window shutters are often painted an appealing blue—making Akko feel like a Mediterranean destination spot. But these aesthetic designs are only placed in public and heavily trafficked areas, the same ‘improvements’ are not carried out

28 Old Acre and Nazareth Development Company LTD. 2018. Tender No. PA/2018/771. Annex O1:2, 29 Old Acre Development Company. 2019. Acre Tourism Development Strategy. About Us. 18 into residential areas.30 The OADC argues that economic growth through tourism will benefit all stakeholders and that developing the khan into a hotel will develop the local economy through jobs and increased foot traffic. The development will, in turn, generate money for residents and conservators alike. To show their good faith, the OADC has articulated that the buyers of the khan must follow the conservation regulations regarding construction and keep the first-floor open to residents.

Despite their potential positive outcomes, the efficacy and sustainability of the OADC’s development plans has been questionable. The OADC failed to successfully lease out Khan al-

Umdan for over thirty years, as only in 2018 did they find a purchaser in the Nakash Brothers— an American-Israeli real-estate developer.31 During this time, the OADC failed to maintain the building as they ignored ten hazard removal orders from the Akko Municipality that date back to

2005.32 The OADC’s failure fits the popular narrative that developers in the field of heritage management are exploitative, and that they lack a ‘legitimate’ notion of heritage, that their only interest is to use heritage for monetary gain. However, this view does not sit square with the notion of heritage itself. Developers at Akko are using the past just as individuals or other agencies might use the past. Similar to potential social or political uses of the past, an economic product oriented perspective on using heritage is legitimate. This is not a carte blanche defense of developer actions in Akko, but rather it illustrates that even in their potential failures developers are keenly involved in producing and consuming heritage.

Conservators

30 Former conservator and current developer, Personal Conversation, July 14, 2019. 31 Unfortunately, I was not able to contact anyone from the Nakash Brothers who purchased the khan in 2018 and are currently in the beginning stages of development. 32 Old Acre and Nazareth Development Company LTD. 2018. Tender Annex Q. 19 The field of conservation has undergone a dramatic paradigm shift over the past decade.

Conservators who previously viewed economic development as something to be shunned now see it as integral.33 Previously, conservation was identified with preservation, the idea that keeping buildings in an almost frozen state was the most effective method of managing them.

However, current conservators and advocates see the act of ‘freezing’ as paradoxical because the decision to cease development is itself an act of ‘development’ that fundamentally changes a place. Buildings are part of living culture: people over time change their relation to buildings and thoughts on how they should be used. Notions of heritage in Akko have changed and will continue to do so, thus conservators focus on managing that change.34 This means that conservators today are more open to development, if thoughtfully done, and are more interested in the involvement of the residential community.

Meanwhile, the field of conservation has become increasingly global over the past half- century. The post-World-War II creation of UNESCO reflects western powers’ concern to preserve and protect locally designated heritage sites around the world.35 At Akko, UNESCO designated the Old City as a World Heritage site because of its living Ottoman city and rich

Crusader remains exist in the city’s foundations. The philosophy of an international heritage means that Akko ‘belongs’ to the world, and should be conserved in a manner in which everyone has the opportunity to visit the site in the future. These ideals are theoretically beneficial and potentially bring in large amounts of monetary investment into sites for development—though

33 Araoz, G. 2011. Preserving heritage places under a new paradigm. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 1 (1): 55-60. 34 Silberman, N. 2014. Changing Visions of Heritage Value: What Role Should the Experts Play? Ethnologies 36 (1-2): 433-445. 35Silberman, N. 2013. Discourses of Development: Narratives of Cultural Heritage as an Economic Resource. In Heritage and Tourism: Place, Encounter, Engagement, edited by Russel Staiff, Robyn Bushell, and Steve Watson. London: Routledge. 20 the degree to which the efficacy of such actions are a topic of disagreement.36 Detractors argue that the outsider expert influence that UNESCO champions ignores the heritage perspectives held by local residents and funnels development profits to external sources.37 Lynn Meskell notes how this has resulted in UNESCO seemingly choosing buildings over people, with technocratic bureaucracy diminishing local wishes.38 Returning to Akko, the local conservators there, the

Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), are engaged in Akko with the knowledge of these debates.

They are tasked with striking a balance between both the new “develop—preserve” spectrum and global and local perspectives.

Khan al-Umdan serves as an important opportunity for the IAA to demonstrate its ability to manage the multitude of problems and notions of heritage. The last significant effort by the

IAA at the khan was in 1996 when they developed a conservation report on the building at the request of the OADC. The report detailed needed repairs and illustrated potential issues for moving forward.39 Since then, the IAA has not had any concerted efforts regarding the status of the building besides writing a 2004 incident report filed after a small fire inside the khan.40 Other than these incidents, the IAA has had little impact on the direction of the khan’s future status despite their role as the main regulators within the city. An IAA conservator that I spoke to said during our conversation that the IAA is in a difficult spot in terms of what they can actually accomplish within Akko. The IAA has the legal ability, for instance, to order specific changes or

36Ashworth, G. 2014. Heritage and Economic Development: Selling the Unsellable. Heritage and Society 7 (1): 3-17. 37 Singh, J.P. 2014. Cultural Networks and UNESCO: Fostering Heritage Preservation Betwixt Idealism and Participation. Heritage and Society 7 (1): 18-31. 38 Meskell, L. 2018. A Future In Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace. New York: Oxford University Press. 39 Israel Antiquities Authority. 1996. Khan al-Umdan Conservation Survey. Akko. 40 Israel Antiquities Authority. 2004. Reconstruction Work Due to Fire Damage. Akko. 21 alter the future plans for the khan, but their ability to implement these goals depends on a variety of political and economic factors.41 Two current architects for the IAA seconded this notion and suggested that their ability to enforce potential work on Khan al-Umdan would depend on their ability to leverage their own political assets against those of the political and economic assets of the developer.42

IAA officials that I talked anticipated that the impending planning sessions over Khan al-

Umdan would be a political skirmish. A high ranking IAA architect expressed concerns over the new developers coming in and dictating how the conservation work would be done, given the economic power associated with taking on an expensive project like the khan.43 Other IAA employees offered more positive perspectives and argued that if the IAA concentrated its efforts, especially at early planning meetings, then they could instill their core ideas about what sorts of conservation ought to be implemented.44 This perspective, however, demonstrates the ways in which the IAA has inadvertently lessened their ability to have conservation play a more central role. IAA officials have primarily focused their efforts on ensuring the structural integrity and outward appearance of the building and, in doing so, have forgone their ability to direct the overall plan for the khan. One IAA official I spoke to argued that this plan of action precludes more holistic work on the khan that would go beyond the aesthetics and money-making potential of the hotel. When asked what they would do with the khan if money were not an object—an idea that they noted as naïve—they responded that the building should be preserved conservatively and be used by the local community in a mixed-use fashion.45

41 IAA employee, Personal Conversation, July 31, 2019. 42 Two IAA employees, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 43 IAA employee, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 44 IAA architects, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 45 IAA official, interview with author, July 31, 2019. 22 The debate within the IAA illustrates that officials there are well attuned to the newfound role that conservators play when it comes to managing heritage. However, the IAA has instituted a rather one-dimensional application of efforts with a focus on the preservation of the building, due to political and economic constraints. These impediments have diminished the IAA’s ability to effectively manage both the development and conservation of key sites in the city, while the perspective of the residents is nowhere to be found. IAA officials countered this narrative by pointing to exemplary past work, such as the Pilot 10/50 program, which attempted to repair the façades of residential buildings in Akko. However, this program was mostly unsuccessful because it failed to adequately engage the residents lacked any non-exterior work on the houses.46 The pilot program and the lack of past and future work on the khan demonstrate a divide between the scholarly intentions of the conservators and the pragmatic application of them.

Residents

The residents of the Old City hold a unique perspective on how heritage is defined and implemented in their home. Living in a 17th century Ottoman city in modern times comes with challenges: infrastructure is poor; the stone buildings are at times unsafe, space is scantly available, and repairs are often prohibitively expensive. Lines of systemic inequality that exist across Israel in terms of wealth and privilege add further layers of complexity and potential injustice between the city’s Arab and Jewish-Israeli stakeholders.47 Thus, the 8,000 predominately

Arab-Israeli residents are forced to consider their claims of heritage to their homes in a context in

46 For discussion on pilot program 10/50 see: Fuhrmann-Naaman, Y., A. Nitzan-Shiftan, and R. Kallus. 2018. The Role of Conservation in the Production of Urban Space in Acre, Israel. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 6 (4): 311-329. 47 Semyonov, M. and N. Lewin-Epstein. 2011. Wealth Inequality: Ethnic Disparities. Social Forces 89 (3): 935-959. 23 which economic and political forces continue to systemically disadvantage them. To develop resident notions of heritage, this subsection will rely on oral history interviews collected by

Walid Atrash through the Wye River program and limited personal correspondence with residents.

The relationship between the Old City residents and the other stakeholders in Akko has been historically fraught, as they are embittered by lack of development and decades of vacancy at Khan al-Umdan. Residents interviewed by Atrash reminisced over the period of time when the khan was inhabited. Despite the then poor condition of the khan and the meager wealth of its inhabitants, those who lived there focused on the community that they formed when they lived there.48 More than just a home, the khan served as a center for civic life within the city during and after its period of inhabitance. Residents hosted fairs, art galleries, weddings, and other festivities in the khan’s courtyard, lending to their view of the khan as a symbol of not just the city’s strength, but also of their own solidarity as an ethnic minority.49 The OADC eroded almost all trust with the city residents by evicting the khan’s residents in the late 1960s-1973 and then subsequently failing to develop the building for decades. While the former khan residents were compensated for these actions, they were often relocated outside of the city, enforcing the belief that they were not wanted in Akko.

For past and present residents, the khan is not simply a historic Ottoman building. It reflects a broader notion of community and shared belonging; the khan, like the city, is their home. The actions of conservators and developers, in comparison, feel like a wedge between

48 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 212. 49 Old City resident, Personal Conversation, July 22, 2019. 24 themselves and their city. In an interview conducted by Atrash, Mikyed Shamili, who grew up in al-Umdan, complained about the khan’s status, saying:

I do not believe there is any desire on the part of the Old Akko Development Company to preserve and operate the khan. We have been hearing about this from them for many years. The only aim of the Old Akko Development Company was to evict the Arab

residents from Old Akko.50 Since that interview in 2004, the Old City has seen a rather dramatic surge in tourism with tourist numbers rising by 20% per annum over the past several years.51 Residents have changed their tune slightly because of these changes, which Shamili even noted in the same interview when he said that if the khan were to be developed properly then the company would “have my blessings and those of all the residents of Akko.” However, residents feel that these economic increases do not reach them equally. They find that top-down approaches of both development and conservation ignore their thoughts and wishes. And residents are right to be suspicious. There is a recent surge in outside Jewish-Israeli developers who partake in a slow gentrification of the residential areas of the city, buying resident houses and turning them into ‘Air BnB’s’ for tourists.52 Developments such as this push gentrification and do little to directly help residents.

When I asked one resident what they thought about the recent developments, they chided, “there is no development in Akko only destruction.”53

However, the residential population of the Old City has recently become more confident and economically stable due to the overall increase in tourism. They have asserted themselves as an integral part of the city’s tourist industry and have made Akko a hub of Arab and Muslim

50 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 213. 51 Statistic sourced from personal conversation with OADC employee, July 29, 2019. 52 Fawcett, H. 2018. Palestinians in historic town face Israeli gentrification threat. Al-Jazeera. 53 Old City resident, Personal Conversation, July 22, 2019. 25 identity within the region. During Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan, Muslim tourists from Israel and the West Bank travel to Akko and fill its streets.54 These developments reflect that the residents of Akko are real people who have real ideas about the problems that the Old City faces and the potential solutions to those. This is an obvious conclusion for many, but the other stakeholders in Akko are reluctant to see this in the same light and fail to meaningfully include them in planning and decision-making.

One resident I interviewed noted that if he were in charge of developing the khan he would turn it into temporary low-rent housing for newly married couples.55 The former khan inhabitants, interviewed by Atrash, also held ideas regarding what the khan should be. Some called for it to be turned into a market space, others thought that it should become housing again, and one even suggested it become a theatre.56 The combination of wanting to make a difference while being ignored underscores the negative effects that a top-down administration of development and conservation has. Khan al-Umdan is an important symbol for the residents and their lack of inclusion in planning not only justifies their suspicions surrounding those in charge, but justifies their frustrations.

Stakeholders in Conflict

Stakeholders at Akko hold many differing notions of heritage. Residents frame ongoing actions in terms of their community, developers do so through the lens of the market, and

54 Lynfield, B. 2017. Surge of Muslim Visitors during Ramadan emphasizes Acre’s Arab identity. The Jerusalem Post. 55 Old City resident, Personal Conversation, July 22, 2019. 56 Atrash, Walid. 2004. Khan al-Umdan: 210-222. 26 conservators focus on the historic buildings and feel of the Ottoman city. Across stakeholders, no one perspective of heritage exists that all agree upon, rather there are multiple, distinct notions.

These differences do not override the fact that these heritages are deeply interrelated to one another; in sharing the same space there is only so much room for the implementations of these different heritages. Thus, attempting to manage the disparate views on what Akko’s past is and how it ought to be used has resulted in increased tensions between stakeholders. The questions that need to be correctly addressed are infinite. Whose heritage should be endorsed? Who makes that decision? What problem do they aim to address? Can a consensus be synthesized from this tangled mass of conflicting perspectives? Is it possible to focus on one problem, or are more holistic approaches necessary? And, if so, will the end result favor one specific group over another based on socioeconomic and ethnic reasons? Stakeholders at Akko face this manifold of questions, on top of economic, political, and social forces, daily in their efforts to effectively manage the heritage of the city.

The nature of heritage management at Akko is reflected in the notion of ‘wicked’ problems, a term commonly used in planning and policy theory. Frank Fischer defines ‘wicked’ problems as those “in which we not only don’t know the solution but are not even sure what the problem is.”57 ‘Wicked’ problems escape easy definition because stakeholders each frame problems and solutions in dramatically different fashions. Thus, deciding how to go about solving them is difficult, if not impossible, as stakeholder groups are each inherently talking about fundamentally different problems. Developers face problems that are drastically different than residents, and solutions for developers, such as expanding their business by buying a

57 Fischer, F. 2000. Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge. Duke University Press. 27 residential home, are seen as destructive by residents. This does not preclude the existence of identifiable problems, but the interconnected nature of heritage management issues leads to a degree of complexity that cannot be managed by brute force.

Conservators and developers that I spoke to while in Akko stated that they were aware of the sorts of complexities involved in managing multiple threads of heritage in current work. In this context, one would expect to see increased interaction between the various stakeholders in

Akko and attempts to bridge divides and make progress in areas where common ground is held.

However, in practice, stakeholders at Akko conceive their notions of heritage in terms of a zero- sum game in which heritage resources are limited and if not secured, other stakeholders will take advantage. In an abstract sense, the stakeholders at Akko view implementing their notion of heritage within the city as doing so in opposition to the notions of heritage from other groups.

Through my interviews with the various stakeholders, I came to the conclusion that despite their rhetorical acceptance of one another, stakeholders more often than not framed their interactions with other stakeholders in a negative and frustrating light.

While historically friction has existed between conservators and developers, the recent paradigm shifts within heritage management suggest that the two should now be cohesively working with one another. But the ongoing planning meetings for the development of Khan al-

Umdan are marked with conflict between the stakeholders. IAA officials I interviewed described their preparations for these meetings as if they were about to enter a bureaucratic battle.

Developers, on the other hand, cite that the IAA’s intentions are economically constraining and have the potential to bankrupt their attempts to repair the neglected three-hundred-year-old khan.

One IAA architect I spoke to noted that while their department will certainly work with the developer, it will only do so at a distance to that the IAA can maintain their impartiality in 28 conserving the building.58 This divide has its merits, if the IAA did work closely with the developers they could risk losing their own notion of heritage for the building. However, the need for a divide and the potential issues associated with working too closely with another stakeholder illustrates the inherent conflict between the two. Conservators and developers at

Akko view themselves as working towards the same goal, but in practice it is simply not the case. Instead, developers and conservators vie for the upper hand against one another in generating their own view of Akko’s heritage as opposed to a shared goal.

Within this same conflict-free portrait of ongoing work at Akko, conservators and developers both portray their relationship with residents as equals. They attempt to add some nuance to their perspective through commenting on the potential past challenges that the residents have faced. But these are often afterthoughts and frame issues like gentrification as in the past and, importantly, passive incidents. Conservators at Akko, in particular, often repeat the phrase: For whom is Akko conserved?59 The question reads progressive in its intentions and, at face value, appears to strike at the core of potential inequality. However, the semantics of for whom entails that the questions of who gets to, what for and what that conservation looks like have already been answered in a satisfying manner. The question reflects the reality on the ground: conservators and developers act as top-down appliers of heritage, even while they are working against one another. Scholars across the board in the heritage management field have come down on such top-down approaches, attacking the efficacy and ethics behind such practices.60 They argue that these approaches push aside the wants and needs of the residents at

58 IAA employees, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 59 This can be seen explicitly in (Fuhrmann-Naaman et al. 2018) but is common throughout. 60 See: Assi 2012; Cohen-Hattab and Shoval 2007; Shoval 2013; Khirfan 2010; Herzfeld 2015, Kyriakidis and Anagnostopoulosand 2017, and others. 29 many different UNESCO sites, which invites gentrification and a sharp disconnect between the residents and those managing heritage.

Residents in Akko repeat many of the issues laid out by scholarship against top-down implementations of heritage. In particular they argue that they are not incorporated in the decision-making process. The OADC’s painting of doors and certain trash cans a vibrant

Mediterranean blue, noted earlier to make the city look nicer, take away the organic ability for communities to design their space (Firestone, 2019). In a similar vein, the municipality named various ‘un-named’ street and landmarks across the Old City which had colloquial names that had been used by residents for over fifty years. The result is streets and landmarks named after the Haganah or historic Crusader features as opposed to the residential nomenclature. Residents interviewed by Noam Shoval noted that they felt a strong disconnect between these officially determined names that, in effect, attempt to erase the names that they have attached to their own home.61 Regarding Khan al-Umdan, a resident I interviewed complained about the lack of residential inclusion and legitimate representation in the planning process. They remarked how they had watched countless conservation attempts fail within the city because conservators and developers did not understand the city like they and other residents did.62 When stakeholders such as the IAA do attempt to reach out to the community, the work that they do is framed in rhetoric of doing work for the community as opposed to with the community.63 Residents feel that those in charge have robbed them of their idea of Akko and its past, one that focuses on their personal life histories growing up there and their connection to the place as their home. The top-

61 Shoval, N. 2013. Street-naming, Tourism Development and Cultural Conflict: The Case of the Old City of Acre/Akko/Akka. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 (4): 619. 62 Old City resident, Personal Conversation, July 22, 2019. 63 IAA official, Personal Conversation, July 29, 2019. 30 down framework in place makes conflict between residents and the other stakeholders inevitable and has eroded trust between the groups over the past several decades.

Akko in Context

Across Akko, one thing is certain: stakeholders view the history of Khan al-Umdan, the city, and themselves in very different ways. Residents see their community, conservators see the historic buildings, and developers see economic opportunity. Each seeks to build their city in reflection of this light, to use their conception of the past to better their future. Underlying this process is a real sense of power vested in and around individual notions of heritage. Evident in the existence of heritage management as a growing field, the use of heritage is something that needs to be monitored and even controlled in situations in which political, social, and economic outcomes can be perilous. The conflict seen between stakeholders in Akko is not a violent one, but it is present throughout. What the city’s past is is a question that has been put up for debate and one that has a variety of answers that differ greatly. Above anything else, what is important to see in Akko is that this process of deciding what to do with Khan al-Umdan is as much to do with defining its future as defining its past. The implication of supporting or pushing aside a stakeholder’s notion of history is in effect elevating or muscling out their potential future. What we see in pausing Akko at this moment, freezing it in time, is a set of messy and tangled interpretations of the past.

31 Chapter 2

Between Two Heritages: Amos Oz and Raja Shehadeh and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Only ten miles separates Ramallah, the home of Raja Shehadeh, from Jerusalem, the home of Amos Oz. On a high hill and on a cloudless day, one might think that the preeminent authors might be able to see one another—to direct a quick glance into the other’s valley and see into their life. Truthfully, however, one cannot see Ramallah from Jerusalem or Jerusalem from

Ramallah. The hills obstruct. An eight-meter high, concrete border wall stands between the territories of the two men; a wall that figuratively and literally serves as a barrier between them.

Armed Israeli guards control Palestinian movement and strict curfews keep them in their cities and villages at night. Oz and Shehadeh cannot see one another. But, to suspend our disbelief, even if they could see one another, would they really be seeing each other? Or would the literal and figurative divides distort their ability to understand and interpret?

Many writers and policy makers see the seventy-year lack of peace and stability between

Israel and Palestine as the result of two dueling nationalisms. They focus their attention on the minutiae of past wars and failed peace talks and deploy geopolitical stratagems to arguments of land claims. Oz and Shehadeh, two prominent authors within their respective communities, criticize these perspectives and call for openness and compromise between Palestinians and

Israelis—an idea that has earned them respect, but also generated controversy both home and abroad. For many identified with the ‘secular left’ or the ‘doves’ within their communities they represent hope for a solution. The two authors seek a reconciliation for their communities that relies upon compromise that forgoes the status quo and invites respect for one another. Oz and

Shehadeh are, in theory, individuals who can see one another as they are and use that as a basis for growth. 32 In this chapter, I will explore how each writer came to this common aspiration for peace and how their commitment to dialogue expresses how each embodies and actively promotes a strong identification with the land of Israel/Palestine. I argue that Oz and Shehadeh exist as both the product and producers of their heritage, and that their writing serves as a window into their personal constructions and outward views. I hope to answer the question: does the process of heritage, using one’s past in the present for their future, inhibit or help one’s ability to see one another? To investigate the question, this chapter analyzes and contextualizes the written works of Oz and Shehadeh. The books exist as intellectual and material evidence of the author’s conception of heritage and its uses. The self-reflection within their stories illustrates how they frame their understanding of the past in terms of their daily lives and futures.

The previous chapter investigated the notion of heritage in a field where it was explicit.

Individuals who work on Khan al-Umdan think in terms of heritage and the narratives and motives that inform heritage directly. In this chapter, I turn to the work of two writers as another form of heritage-making. In this instance, Oz and Shehadeh do not deal with a building’s stone walls, but rather construct books about their lives that build and define heritage. While books are no less products and statements of heritage making than historical conservation, neither author writes in the technical terms seen previously. Rather, their perspectives and uses of the past are implicit. Surveying their work from a heritage perspective allows us to see obstacles to compromise in another light. Careful analysis of their published works demonstrates that the authors embody radically different notions of the past. 33 Structure

This chapter investigates each author’s expressions of heritage through the analysis of several of their key works, emphasizing writings that have a more personal orientation to highlight how both understand and convey their relationships to past and place. Shehadeh’s Strangers in the

House and Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness key the reader into the formative years of each author and how their experiences impacted their overall lives. In the Land of Israel and

Palestinian Walks examine how Oz and Shehadeh respectively began to develop their notions of place and identity as they grew older and experienced the world around them for themselves. In

How to Cure a Fanatic and The Third Way, Oz and Shehadeh articulate the culmination of their thoughts on the conflict and suggest ways forward. While each text is not a direct parallel to the other they represent widely similar themes, with each interrogating a different aspect of their individual processes of heritage creation.

Moving forward, this chapter will construct each author’s notion of heritage through examination of representations and expressions of self and identity. Then, the chapter will shift gears and focus on how each has gone about using these notions of heritage, looking at the specific political arguments they raise within their works. The chapter concludes with discussion of how each author’s involvement with the process of heritage complicates and at times even counteracts their interest in a mutually beneficial Israel-Palestine peace agreement.

Oz: The Sabra Identity

Emerging in the 1960’s, Amos Oz joined the trailblazing Israeli literary “New Wave.” Oz and authors such as Binyamin Tammuz, Yitzhak Orpaz, and Avraham B. Yehoshua shifted their 34 focus away from the diaspora and wrote about the lives and matters of Israeli people.64 Ardent

Zionists held that one’s history outside of Israel was to be negated and that moving to Israel and cutting ties with the old would allow a fresh start. The new wave authors were the first to be born in Israel proper and their focus on Israeli born characters worked to fulfill the Sabra ideal. Oz epitomized this Sabra identity—that is, native born rather than immigrant—as he defined himself by the land and his labor. At the age of fourteen he moved to a kibbutz and lived for the community. In his early fiction work, Oz wrote about the subdued melodrama of this new Israeli existence, sketching life in Jerusalem (My Michael) and on kibbutzim (Where the Jackals

Howl).65 David Remnick of The New Yorker noted how early on:

reviewers and readers routinely commented on his rugged, emblematic looks: the light hair and light eyes, the deep tan, the spidery wrinkles near his eyes and the corners of the mouth…Oz became part of the mid-century Zionist iconography: the novelist- kibbutznik, the Sabra of political conscience.66 The terroir of the land leathered the Israeli skin and added thick calluses to the Israeli hands, protecting the thoughtful yet pragmatic Israeli minds; a parallel shared by their namesake cacti.

Early Israelis built the identity of the new Jew, which resulted in the Sabra mold being cast in the firm outline of the white, European Ashkenazi Jews who made up the majority of the early

Aliyahs, waves of immigration to mandate Palestine. As more bourgeois immigrants fled Europe and subsequent waves of Jewish immigrants came from the Middle East and North African

64 Gillon, A. 1972. Contemporary Israeli Literature: A New Stance. Books Abroad (46) 2: 192- 199. 65 Oz, A. 2003. A Tale of Love and Darkness. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. New York: Harcourt, Inc: 490. 66 Remnick, D. 2004. The Spirit Level: Amos Oz writes the story of Israel. The New Yorker, October 31, 2004. 35 regions, and later from Russia, the new state slowly lost its ability to enforce conformity across society.

Oz, in many respects, represented and supported the conforming beliefs and values of labor Zionism that he is said to have epitomized in his early works. Oz brushed past details of his upbringing as a child of immigrant parents and instead spoke about his life on the kibbutz. In a

1973 interview, he reflected upon Zionist ideals saying, “We have an awesome duty not only for the people of Israel and the redemption of this particular wilderness, but also for the entire world that is…as it was two thousand years ago, when from Israel came the world.”67 Here, Oz defends the core tenets of the Zionist project, which in itself acted as evidence of the success of those very Zionist goals. He—the Israeli—was a laborer yet also an intellectual who held a profound sense of morality, a peacenik who would carry a rifle when his country needed as he did in 1967 and 1973. But by then, Oz was already in tune to potentially unflattering image that the Zionist mold had begun to attract. Only a year before the above quotation, Oz noted in a 1972 interview,

“I am a Zionist, but I am a sad Zionist. I am a Zionist in that fundamental sense, though I hold that nationalism is an anachronistic and violent concept.”68 Oz struggled with the hegemonic and violent aspects of nationalism within Zionism that he saw both at home and in the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict.

Coinciding with Oz’s personal journey, in the years following the 1973 War, Israelis became increasingly disillusioned by the totality of the Zionist project. David Ben-Gurion had championed a zealous form of statism, or mamlaktiyut, during Israel’s infancy that placed the

67 Taken from: Kaplan, E. 2007. Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” and the Sabra Myth. Jewish Social Studies (14) 1: 127. 68 ibid: 127. 36 state in the center of political, economic, and social power.69 The state campaigned against the diversity that the many disparate Jewish communities had brought with them from the diaspora and instead envisioned a new and original state-centered culture. Many Israelis, however, viewed

Ben-Gurion’s goal of cultural homogenization as overbearing and counter to their individual notions of a Jewish state. Eventually, the Labor Party was unable to contain or satisfy the needs of a growing and diverse population. Menachem Begin and the Likud party, identified with

Vladimir Jabotinski’s Revisionist Zionism ideals of territorial maximalism, rode widespread and multi-origin discontent with the Labor Party to a general election victory in 1977. Israel had become fractured along lines of substantial ethnic minorities as the original goals of the Zionist project were questioned and some of its ideals ultimately thrown aside.

Oz took part in the internal and country-wide debate and reflection over the goals and ideals of the Jewish state some thirty years after its establishment in his 1983 book, In the Land of Israel. At each place across Israel that he visited, Oz found Israeli communities that held their own distinct views of the country’s past and present and freely shared their opinion about what ought to be done regarding current domestic and international affairs. He met fervent Zionists in

Ofra, a settlement deep into the West Bank; residents of Bet Shemesh who argued endlessly with

Oz at a smoke-soaked cafe; and, in the quarters of Jerusalem, various Israeli and Palestinian communities who lived just blocks away from one another yet were profoundly ignorant of each other. Eran Kaplan and other critics argue that Oz, throughout In the Land, patronizes the very people who he reported on and considered Israeli.70 In an exemplary passage, Oz visits his

69 Don-Yehiya, E. 1995. Political Religion in a New State: Ben-Gurion’s Mamlachtiyut. In Israel: The First Decade of Independence. Edited by S. Ilan Troen and Noah Lucas. SUNY Press: 171-190. 70 Kaplan, E. 2007. Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” and the Sabra Myth: 121. 37 childhood home in Jerusalem, and, upon finding his neighborhood now home to an ultra- orthodox community, reports:

Zionism was here once and was repelled. Were it not for the stone, and the olive trees

and the pines…you might think you are standing in some Eastern European Jewish shtetl

before Hitler.71

Oz, as argued by Kaplan, views those he reports on with a smug, judgmental eye as he set himself as the standard against which he judged the non-Sabra Israeli. Nonetheless, we can read

In the Land of Israel as Oz’s effort to work past his Sabra-oriented Zionist ideals of what it meant to be Israeli. Oz implicitly recognizes all of the people he meets as fitting under the banner of living In the Land as Israeli, even those he visited in Ofra, the settlement deep in the West

Bank. The day after his visit to Ofra, Oz notes that:

…even when certain positions enrage me, I never lose my fascination for the sight of the

spectacle—that people of different intentions and viewpoints all fundamentally agree

with one another that Jews must come home, though they do not agree, and even fight

bitterly over the blueprint of that home and its furnishings. I lovingly accept (for the

most part) this mosaic of faiths and tastes.72

The testy, holier-than-thou attitude that Oz wields throughout the book is evident as Kaplan suggests, but Oz clearly sees the diversity and the bottom-up creation of the Israeli state as essential. His book recognizes and acknowledges that the cultural hegemony of the Sabra identity was waning.

71 Oz, A. 1983. In The Land of Israel. Translated by M. Goldberg-Bartura. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 4-5. 72 ibid: 127-128. 38 The decline of the Sabra opened possibilities to define identity outside the frame of

Israeli history, which Oz explores in his 2004 memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness.73 In the memoir, Oz writes an intensely personal, autobiographical account of his upbringing in

Jerusalem, and uses the narrative to explore the lives of his parents and their generation. Oz focuses not strictly on his own childhood and instead invests time describing the European diaspora. He details his parents’ lives prior to coming to Israel as if he had uncovered a secret history that had been unknown before. Oz relegates momentous events in the history of the nation, such as the passing of the 1947 UN partition plan and the 1948 war, to relatively few pages. Fanina, Oz’s mother, defines the major plot line, her battle with depression and insomnia—one that she loses and one that Oz partially blames on the move to Israel—forms the core of the book. In recounting his family’s past, he reframes his own identity to acknowledge that the Sabra identity is mythic and fails to works as a way of defining and interpreting Israeli identity. By the end of the book, Oz reveals that his decision to join the kibbutz was not ideologically driven, but rather one made in defiance of his stern father and in mourning of his mother.

With A Tale of Love and Darkness, Oz forgoes his status as the Israeli voice and instead writes as an Israeli voice—one of many that acknowledges the significance of a personal past that extended beyond the borders of Israel and the temporality of Israel’s national story. Oz had started this shift with In the Land but it had not been apparent or nearly as overt as he makes it in his memoir. At the tail end of his career, Oz writes to tie together the cacophony of voices within

73 Oz, A. 2003. A Tale of Love and Darkness. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. New York: Harcourt, Inc. 39 Israel into a new, quasi-plural vision of Zionism that rejected the previous hegemonies. He remarked in 2011 at the Monash Israel Oration in Melbourne that:

The Jewish people, as a people, never had any homeland but the land of Israel. As

individuals yes, many Jewish people have found homes in many other countries, but as a

people, as a nation, the Jews never had another.74

Oz uses this notion of common Israeli identity to develop a more widely applicable and diverse notion of Zionism that incorporates the diverse backgrounds and ideals of his fellow Israelis.

Distinguishing home from homeland expresses an acknowledgement of Jews in the diaspora while, at the same time, affirming the importance of Israel as a homeland. Oz “evolves” in his thought process on national identity, acknowledging that the heritage of Israeli individuals may be diverse, but an ancestral heritage to the land of Israel is a common bond for the Jewish people.

That heritage is fundamental to his conception of an Israeli state and potentially limits how much

Oz can concede to Palestinian nationalisms that assert the same bond to the land. It is with this core understanding of his and his country’s past—his conception of heritage—that he looks towards the conflict.

Shehadeh: life under occupation

Raja Shehadeh grew up in Ramallah following the 1948 War and experienced a childhood that shared little with that of Oz. Shehadeh’s family originally lived in Jaffa where they ranked in the upper echelons of society; but, when Israeli forces closed in, his family was forced to flee to

Ramallah. They left behind their belongings and much of their wealth, but more notably, their home. Shehadeh notes that while growing up, he “saw Ramallah and its hills not for what they

74 Oz, Amos. 2011. Israel: Peace, War and Storytelling. At The Monash Israel Oration 2011. Melbourne: Wheeler Centre: 28 min. 40 were but as the observation point from which to view what lay beyond, at the Jaffa I had never known.”75 His grandmother, in particular, never felt that Ramallah was her home, rather a temporary refuge from the beachfront metropolis that was theirs. And while his grandmother was more ardent in her belief that Jaffa, not Ramallah, was home, the sentiment was an undercurrent shared amongst the family. Jaffa was never Shehadeh’s residence—he was born in 1951 in

Ramallah—yet he understood it to be his ‘home’. Shehadeh illustrates his feelings in the title of his memoir, Strangers in the House, as he felt estranged from the West Bank despite it being all he had ever known. For him, for his family, and for thousands of fellow refugees that were forced out during 1948, home was elsewhere.76

Israeli forces exacerbated Shehadeh’s confused understanding of home when the 1967

War and subsequent occupation of the West Bank ushered in major changes to Ramallah.

Shehadeh reflected on the significance of this specific war noting, “I do not know if all wars mark a break in time so great that all other events come to be arranged about them.”77 Like many

Palestinians, Shehadeh viewed the 1967 War as a deadly aftershock that hit the already precarious ground on which Palestinians stood. The Arab armies that were supposed to retrieve the lost Palestinian homes and make Jaffa home had failed. Instead, Israeli forces made the already strange land stranger. Shehadeh experienced this historic shift shortly before attending college at the American University of Beirut in 1971. Shehadeh’s parents, by sending him to college, gave him an opportunity to jumpstart his career and escape the increasingly draconian

West Bank. The Israeli army had established what became an enduring occupation of the West

75 Shehadeh, R. 2002. Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press: 4 76 Palestinians were also often referred to as "Arabs" throughout this era; the UN plan called for a Jewish and Arab state; Palestinians had to define themselves against both Israel and Jordan. 77 Shehadeh, R. 2002. Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine: 53. 41 Bank, as well as East Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights, instituting military law and rule across the region.

While in Lebanon, Shehadeh did not adopt the aggressive positions held by fellow politically active Palestinians despite the area being a hotbed for radical and at times violent responses to Israel and the occupation. Instead, he attempted to follow the path tread set by his father, who was a prominent lawyer in the West Bank. His father emphasized that the surrounding Arab world and international community would not solve their issues, rather leadership within their own communities in the West Bank could work with the Israeli government, instead of boycotting them, to make peace. Many Palestinians saw these views as antithetical, arguing that working with the Israeli government legitimized their actions; however,

Shehadeh’s father—and increasingly Shehadeh—saw this as a way of stopping the escalation of injustice. After graduating from Beirut, Shehadeh continued to follow his father’s footsteps by attending law school in London.

When Shehadeh returned to Ramallah in 1976 he was the first western trained lawyer to return to the West Bank since 1948.78 The facts on the ground had both changed and remained the same since he had left. Israeli troops remained in control while Palestinians remained unorganized, lacking an official body recognized by the international community. Meanwhile, the Israeli military breached international legal conventions through changes to the laws of the

West Bank in ways that restricted the land rights and overall agency of Palestinians. Israeli settlers, soon after the election of Begin, flooded into the West Bank, while the Israeli government turned a blind eye to the illegality of the situation and in some circumstances even

78 Shehadeh, R. 2002. Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine: 130. 42 assisted settlers.79 The Israeli military asserted control in the West Bank through curfews, movement restrictions, land claims, and consistent use of violence, claiming that they only did so to ensure the safety of their soldiers and country as a veneer of legality. Shehadeh watched as he and his people were pushed to the margins. In response, he started to use his legal background to fight the human rights abuses that he saw. Shehadeh and several of his colleagues grouped together to form the legal group Al-Haq in 1979 in order to combat the Israeli occupation on legal grounds.80 Al-Haq aimed to document and fight against the unfair treatment that

Palestinians were facing.

Through Al-Haq, Shehadeh slowly found his footing in the West Bank. Many

Palestinians, with the means to leave the country and get an education like Shehadeh had, did not return. Jobs in the diaspora were—and remain—more plentiful, better paid, and safer. However,

Shehadeh felt a strong moral conviction that he had to use his education and status to help

Palestinians across the board. He chose to stay among other refugees from territories in Israel proper and those who were raised in the West Bank. Shehadeh did not look back to any long-lost home in his resolution to stay in the Occupied Territories but was determined to work for his real home of Ramallah.

In Palestinian Walks, written in 2007, Shehadeh describes taking long walks during the period of time when Al-Haq began to form. These walks, sarhas, were an opportunity for

Shehadeh to “wander aimlessly not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself;” an opportunity to ruminate on the condition of

79 Lesch, A. M. 1977. Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-1977. Journal of Palestine Studies (7) 1: 26-47. 80 Al-Haq. 2019. History. 43 country and self.81 Shehadeh connected to his older relatives, such as his uncle Abu Ameem who had lived in Ramallah before 1948, who had connected to the hills in a similar way. On one sarha, Shehadeh found a qasr, a small stone house, that his uncle had built years ago with his newly-wedded wife. Shehadeh reflected upon the act of retracing of his uncle’s steps and thought that his uncle “belonged here, why pretend otherwise? This was his home, where he would remain until his dying day. This was his world and it was a world he preferred to any other.”82

While Shehadeh developed his deep connections to the West Bank, Israeli forces continued to occupy and carve more land out for themselves. The Oslo II accords codified the

Israeli control of the West Bank, giving them control of roughly sixty percent of the territory through Area C. Palestinians, confined to their discontinuous patches of Area A and B, had political control in only a minority of their own country. Oslo rendered Palestinians economically and politically kneecapped within their own territory while Israeli settlers continued to expand.83 Meanwhile, Israeli built roads cut through Palestinian land, leaving some communities divided in half with residents unable to tend to their land due to restrictions on free travel. Shehadeh and Al-Haq fought against these actions, taking on cases of Palestinians like that of François Albina, who owned an empty lot outside of Ramallah seized by the Israeli government. Despite documentation that the land belonged to Albina, the Israeli military court sided with Israeli developers while admitting that there was, “no doubt in our eyes that the appellant [Albina] is the legal owner of the land in question.”84 Palestinians are second class

81 Shehadeh, R. 2007. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. New York: Scribner: 2. 82 ibid: p 32 83 Orhan, N., N.N. Eddin, and M. Cali. 2014. Area C and the Future of the Palestinian Economy. The World Bank: Washington D.C. 84 Shehadeh, R. 2007. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape: 81. 44 citizens in their own land, living and working in a legal system that is not theirs and does not treat them justly. Shehadeh remarks on the situation, saying “when I looked at night toward the north I saw a continuous stretch of settlements and roads that were creating a noose around

Ramallah.”85 He found himself, once again, a stranger in his own home.

Application of Heritages

Oz and Shehadeh, through their work, develop a sense of themselves in reference to the past and the land they live on. Both place an emphasis on reflection by writing memoirs and books that touch on the impacts of past historical events on their lives, their people, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a whole. In writing their life histories, both authors key their readers into the life long process of heritage that is embodied in their cumulative work. Oz develops a pluralist notion of

Zionism that must accept and embrace the disparate voices of his people. Shehadeh develops a

Palestinian identity that is rooted in the West Bank not Jaffa of old, averring that Ramallah is his home. The two writers used their self-reflections to form the basis for their political beliefs. In establishing these ideas, they engage in the second half of the heritage process.

Oz and ‘Right vs Right’

Through his notion of a pluralist form of Zionism, Oz absorbs the many Israeli voices.

Israel, he argues, consists of a manifold of ethnic and ideological backgrounds, to be Israeli, for

Oz, is to take part in this messy array of perspectives and arguments. Oz frequently accuses the

Western media of not ‘getting’ his notion of Israel, asserting that CNN incorrectly thinks that,

“Israel…consists of eighty percent fundamentalist, ultra-religious West Bank settlers, nineteen

85 ibid: 33. 45 percent ruthless soldiers, and one percent wonderful intellectuals like myself.”86 In Oz’s eyes,

Westerners understand neither Israel nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thus describe the two parties in black and white terms: Israelis bad, Palestinians good. Oz, however, inherently sees nuance in not just himself, but across Israel. In his books, Oz creates Israeli characters that fit into his pluralist vision. His characters are complex and tackle a host of historical, philosophical, and pragmatic questions—their ability to do so affirms the moral existence of Israel.87 These

Israelis, like Oz, are ones who jumpstart groups such as Peace Now, a NGO dedicated to pushing for Peace with Palestinians: the Israelis who understand that cool-headed individuals will prevail over hot-heads.

Oz defends the existence of Israel and the morality of his pluralist notion of Zionism, while simultaneously viewing the injustices against Palestinians as evils that reflect “the Jewish

[people’s] talent for self-destruction.”88 He views the Palestinian side of the conflict with his same prescribed nuance, suggesting that the vast majority of Palestinians—just like their Israeli counterparts—are tired of fighting and want peace. Thus, Oz defines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of two rights—‘right versus right.’ Well-intentioned people populate both sides and share a common history of being the victims of historic misdeeds (the Holocaust and the

1948 War). Additionally, each side has violently acted against the other and as a result, in Oz’s eyes, neither cannot lay a claim to the moral high ground. Oz realistically does not suggest that both sides being ‘right’ provides a panacea. Rather he suggests that if Israelis and Palestinians

86 Oz, Amos. 2011. Israel: Peace, War and Storytelling: 9 min. 87 Bernard, A. 2013. ‘Israel is not South Africa’: Amos Oz’s Living Utopias. In Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine. Liverpool University Press. 88 Oz, A. 2009. Israel’s voice of reason: Amos Oz on war, peace and life as an outsider. Interview by John Hari. Independent. March 19, 2009. 46 can see each other as ‘right,’ then, through “painful compromise,” they each can give up stipulations near and dear to their hearts.89 Oz interjects here and suggests that such a compromise would be based upon Israel removing itself from the West Bank and Palestinians recognizing that “the Jews have the right to be a majority in one small land.”90 To solidify his point, he cites the Robert Frost quote, “good fences make good neighbors,” a wall that wields the power to paradoxically separate and bring together Israelis and Palestinians.91

Late in his career, Oz formulated these ideas into an accessible format by writing essays and appearing globally on the radio and television to campaign for his solution. In these media,

Anna Bernard argues, Oz convincingly sells two main objectives:

On the one hand, Oz eloquently represents the hopes and fears of many Jewish Israelis

and insists that there is no moral or political alternative to the Jewish state. Yet on the

other, he advances a stern critique of what he sees as the excess of the same desires,

condemning Israeli expansionism and insisting that both Palestinians and Israelis must

be willing to compromise.92

The western world thus has typically pictured Oz as a reformist, one whose humanist views allow both the Israeli and Palestinian states to exist in harmony with one another. As a result, the idea of ‘right versus right’ itself works to produce the conception of territorial peace that Oz dearly wishes for. One where Palestinians and Israelis can live at peace, separated together in two distinct states. Oz places these notions of peace in the context of his pluralist notion of

89 Oz, A. 2004. How to Cure a Fanatic. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 8. 90 ibid: 26. 91 Avishai, B. 2019. The Israel of Amos Oz. The New Yorker. January 5. 92 Bernard, A. 2013. ‘Israel is not South Africa’: Amos Oz’s Living Utopias. In Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine. Liverpool University Press: 90. 47 Zionism, arguing that, like himself, his fellow Israelis are ready for compromise. The question is, then, where are the Palestinians?

Raja Shehadeh and the Third Way

Throughout his books, Shehadeh focuses on the physical landscape as a connector between his notion of place and his identity as Palestinian. Shehadeh used this connection to the land and its history to make Ramallah his home. However, Israeli settlers and officials challenge Shehadeh and his conception of home at every turn. Israeli control wears Palestinians thin through the monotonous, bureaucratic, micro-aggression filled rule of law that they implemented after 1967.

Shehadeh compares the cold, structural violence to a “slow strangulation,” the daily drudgery of occupation limiting the ability of the oppressed to empower themselves.93 As a result, Shehadeh argues that Palestinians have been forced to choose either “submissive capitulation” or “blind, consuming hate” in relation to Israel.94

However, Shehadeh was fortunate. His family was of means and steeped him in a culture of political involvement, allowing Shehadeh to be able to conceptualize the plight of Palestinians and their claims to Palestine from multiple perspectives. He saw the international legal and political perspectives through his father and education, while still feeling the morale breaking oppression of occupation. These elements allowed Shehadeh to see the metaphorical noose that

Israel had put around the necks of all Palestinians and to fight back. Shehadeh calls for

Palestinians to contextualize their situation—from the perspective of themselves and the outside

93 Shehadeh, R. 1982. The Third Way: A Journal of life in the West Bank. New York: Quartet Books: 4 94 ibid: 38. 48 world—and see that neither blind hate and violence nor submission and acceptance of the status quo are acceptable. Rather, Shehadeh calls for a new answer that he describes as the ‘third way.’

Shehadeh explains his ‘third way’ succinctly through the term sumud, which translates to

‘steadfastness’. To counter the Israeli expansion, Palestinians must “stay put” and “cling to our homes and land by all means available.”95 While potentially reading as a call for violence,

Shehadeh disarms this notion. He asserts that violence on the part of Palestinians would lead to harsher violence upon them, essentially giving Israeli troops a justification for their force. If, however, Palestinians are meek, then Israelis forces would be free to continue their slow strangulation. With the ‘third way’, Shehadeh calls upon Palestinians to find a compromise in which they can resist oppression and while avoiding harsher punishment upon themselves.

Shehadeh embodies the ‘third way’ through remaining in Ramallah despite his law degree and international teaching. There Shehadeh, with his work at Al-Haq, began to show the world the ongoing human rights abuses that Palestinians face. He prolifically wrote about his experience and ideas, both of which have spread around the world and earned him status as an influential voice for Palestinians. At each step of the way, Shehadeh calls upon his readers to either rethink their position on Israeli occupation or spur them into further action.

For Shehadeh, the ‘third way’ gives him an opportunity to both cope with and attack occupation without losing his humanity and dignity. In conceiving this perspective, Shehadeh combines the multiple threads of his life history as a Palestinian. He holds an understanding of himself that is deeply from the West Bank and not in Jaffa. Certainly, the pain of exile remains, but Shehadeh calls Ramallah his home. His roots in Ramallah form his ability to consider

95 Shehadeh, R. 1982. The Third Way: A Journal of life in the West Bank: vii. 49 himself Palestinian and the Israeli occupation threatens the very notion of his heritage frame. At every turn, Shehadeh finds his homeland swallowed whole. Through his experience abroad obtaining his legal degree, he is able to bring together the pieces of his personal and Palestinian past and fight against Israeli oppression. Shehadeh engages in heritage, using his notion of his past, one which is under attack, in order to attempt to save it. The ‘third way’ is thus a product of his heritage and the way in which he intends to protect that conception of past.

Intersection

Oz and Shehadeh develop their individual ideas of heritage in a striking parallel. Each reflects on his own and his people’s past to delineate where he personally stands in relation to his present and future. They do not simply take the past as a distant, concluded entity, but rather they pull from it directly as they construct their daily lives. These authors highlight the process of heritage in the creation of their written works and expressions of political ideas; creations that simultaneously reflect the past from which they come from and their efforts to realize future hopes and dreams. They inhabit roles as spokesmen of their people, individuals who clearly and calmly see the relations between the past, present, and future and are positioned to make their beliefs tangible. Yet, despite these parallels, their views diametrically oppose one another. Oz’s absolute moral opacity in ‘right versus right’ fails to dovetail with Shehadeh’s clear cut distinctions of oppressed and oppressor seen in his ‘third way.’ The intersection of ‘right versus right’ and the ‘third way,’ is where the best of intentions come up against the hard realities of circumstance. Oz and Shehadeh, ultimately, have unequal positions in a power relationship. Oz, an Israeli, never experiences the oppression that Shehadeh and other Palestinians face constantly. 50 This difference impacts their perspectives on past, present, and future, and their expressions of heritage. Between them there are two distinct heritages that, despite the parallels, result in radically different interpretations of what ought to be done on the ground.

Oz downplays the difference in privilege and suggest that rational thought can overcome past traumas. In a letter to a Palestinian friend, Oz explains himself, arguing that:

The purpose of peace is not to erase all past sufferings but to prevent further suffering.

We must both choose now: either we learn to live with the traumas of the past and

overcome them, or we go on fighting, thus creating even more traumas.96

Oz emphatically insists that letting go of the past and moving forward is the only way to reconcile their differences. In parallel, Shehadeh, in his book Where the Line is Drawn, writes about his relationship to his Israeli friend Henry Abramovich. The two became great friends before the 1967 War over their shared interest in peace and a willingness to see one another, not as enemies, but as people with reconcilable differences. As national tensions increased, the two began to grow apart. Abramovich increasingly failed to empathize with Shehadeh’s simmering indignation over the harsh realities of Israeli occupation. Shehadeh rebuked Abramovich saying,

“unlike Henry, I did not have the luxury of ignoring politics.”97 He—in a parallel response to

Oz’s letter to his Palestinian friend—questions the ability for Israelis, like Abramovich and, implicitly, Oz, to see his perspective.

Israelis view peace from a position of privilege. For Oz and Abramovich, occupation and oppression are not strictly ‘present’, which reflects their failure to meaningfully include

Palestinian voices, like that of Shehadeh, that call into question the Israeli perspective.

96 Oz, Amos. 1996. A Letter to a Palestinian Friend. The New York Review of Books. March 5. 97 Shehadeh, R. 2017. Where the Line is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine. New York: The New Press: 25 51 Throughout his career, Oz avoids the idea of using placeholder Israeli characters that fit into predetermined archetypes and have set, abstract, political ideas.98 Yet he fails to give Palestinians that same light. In A Tale of Love and Darkness, Oz painstakingly details the Mount Scopus massacre afflicted upon Israelis, giving it several detailed filled pages while the Deir Yassin massacre, afflicted upon Palestinians, is leafed by.99

One could argue that Oz writes in such an exaggerated manner to highlight his personal shift in the book where he becomes more understanding of Palestinian causes, but an analysis of this shift only highlights his blind spots. In a pivotal scene while on guard duty at the kibbutz, Oz casually refers to Palestinians as “murderers” to which his fellow kibbutznik retorts:

Murderers? […] From their point of view, we are aliens from outer space who have

landed and trespassed on their land, gradually taken over parts of it […] Is it any wonder

they’ve taken up arms against us?100

Oz gives his former self an opportunity to see Shehadeh’s point of view, to see Israel as the settler-colonizer state that inflicts harm upon Shehadeh and other Palestinians. Yet, Oz, through the guard, writes himself an easy out, justifying the Israeli armed presence with the logic that

Palestinians “made it a simple question of either them or us.” Oz wipes himself of any potential wrongdoing, a notion that he further highlights in interviews in which he argues that “Israel is not South Africa, and the Israeli-Arab conflict has very little in common with imperialist and colonial histories.”101 Oz sidesteps the colonial comparison and rather sources the conflict in

98 Bernard, A. 2013. ‘Israel is not South Africa’: Amos Oz’s Living Utopias: 94-97. 99 Oz, A. 2003. A Tale of Love and Darkness: 367-369 and 384. Mt Scopus refers to the attack on a Hadassah medical convoy in, killing 79 Jewish individuals. Dier Yassin refers to attack on Palestinian Arab village, killing several hundred villagers. Both occurred during the 1948 War. 100 ibid: 435. 101 Bernard, A. 2013. ‘Israel is not South Africa’: Amos Oz’s Living Utopias: 106. 52 some ambiguous ether that goes well beyond either himself or Palestinians, saying, “[S]ome of the worst conflicts are precisely the conflicts between two victims of the same oppressor. Two children of the same cruel parent do not necessarily love each other.”102 His shift towards

‘seeing’ the Palestinian perspective is not one that empowers individuals like Shehadeh, but rather absolves him and his country of their original sin.

Oz’s views on the Oslo Accords in the same letter to his Palestinian friend illustrates the full extent of his inability to see the Palestinian perspective. Here, Oz explains that, “the essence

[of the Accords] is clear and simple: we stop ruling over you and suppressing you, and you recognize Israel and stop killing us.”103 Shehadeh, however, does not see Oslo in the same light.

He describes the Oslo Accords as his generation’s on nakba and argues that the accords had

“promised real peace” but their conclusion in 1993 had instead “delivered a mere repackaging of the occupation.”104 Oz and Shehadeh see the Accords as fundamentally different. Oz sees it as a shining hope, while Shehadeh sees it as an acceleration of oppression. The intersections of the products of their heritages leave Oz and Shehadeh empty handed, with no clear reconciliation moving forward.

102 Oz, A. 2004. How to Cure a Fanatic: 19. 103 Oz, A. 1996. A Letter to a Palestinian Friend. 104 Shehadeh, R. 1982. The Third Way: A Journal of life in the West Bank. New York: Quartet Books. 53 Two Heritages

In an article for The Guardian, Shehadeh reflected upon the past fifty years of occupation saying,

“look where we’ve got to—defeated and dominated.”105 Shehadeh and the Palestinians of the

West Bank continue to face the brunt of occupation. Oz and Shehadeh, through ‘right versus right’ and the ‘third way,’ attempt to bridge the divide, but the intersection of their heritages leave them both empty handed. In sitting on opposing sides of the conflict, each has viewed the same history from a different perspective for his entire life. From Shehadeh’s vantage, ‘right versus right’ is incomprehensible; how can Israel be ‘right’ when their oppression precludes his ability to live peacefully? On the counter, Oz sees the logic of the ‘third way’ as counter intuitive, too focused on the past instead of the present and future. Even though their arguments call for empathizing and working with the other, the inability to see what the other has seen inhibits fruitful understanding between the two.

The reality of the situation is that neither Oz nor Shehadeh are seeing one another as they see themselves. but that is to be expected. Each has their own heritage. Their own history and life story that cannot be replicated and is unique to themselves. This shared inability to see one another fully, however, does not preclude responsibility for the failure of peace talks. Oz frequently fails to see the Palestinian perspective for what it is and, in defining the Israeli perspective as pluralist, ignores the fact that Israel was born out of Palestinian suffering and loss.

Shehadeh, on the other hand, cannot escape that reality. Regardless of his understanding of Oz, he feels the direct effects of oppression, and seeks to remove them. In portraying both sides as

105 Shehadeh. 2019. ‘Look where we’ve got to-defeated and dominated’: my generation’s failure to liberate Palestine. The Guardian. August 9. 54 ‘right’, Oz diminishes the validity of Shehadeh’s reasoning for the ‘third way’ and ignores the history of power imbalance that rewards him and his people.

Shehadeh ends Palestinian Walks with an anecdote that reverberates around the discussion of the two heritages. While on a sarha, he stumbled upon a young Israeli settler smoking hashish at a stream—a gun strapped to his back. At first scared, Shehadeh eventually converses with the Israeli. Through the conversation, Shehadeh noted that both he and the Israeli saw the land similarly. They both appreciated the wadi and appreciated the serenity of the hills around them. But the Israeli had a gun and he could kick Shehadeh off the land that belonged to his fellow Palestinians for hundreds of years. The young man, like Oz, fails to recognize this difference, he fails to see where Shehadeh comes from and understand why ‘peace’ is much further away than it seems. As Shehadeh walked away from the young Israeli he heard the question “Would you like to smoke with me?” Shehadeh accepts, and finishes Palestinian Walks:

I was fully aware of the looming tragedy and war that lay ahead for both of us,

Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jew. But for now, he and I could sit together for a respite,

for a smoke, joined temporarily by our mutual love of the land. Shots could be heard in

the distance, which made us both shiver. ‘Yours or ours?’ I asked?106

106 Shehadeh, R. 2007. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape: 196. 55 Chapter 3

Nineteenth Century American Travels to the Holy Land: The Confluence of Individual and Collective Heritage

Figure 4. Position 7 of Hurlbut's Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope Position seven of Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope shows the skyline of Jerusalem peeking out from the background. In the foreground, a woman sits atop a donkey in the midst of a rocky, barren field. The author, Jesse Hurlbut, noted the juxtaposition saying, “that smiling woman, sitting astride her donkey, has seen Jerusalem so many times that she is familiar with the scene and prefers to look at us strangers…ready for our first near-by view of the city.”107 Hurlbut, an already established figure in the religious education scene, guided readers through nearly two-hundred stereoscopic images of the Holy Land. He armed readers with a lengthy but lively text, chock full of reference maps that triangulated each scene. Hurlbut strived

107 Hurlbut, J. L. and C. F. Kent. 1914. Palestine through the stereoscope. New York: Underwood and Underwood: 30. 56 to make his book alive rather than static, seen in how he argued that the stereoscope “[serves] as two-windows through which we look, and beyond we see.”108 Historian Lester Vogel argues that, like the American west, Americans were urged to see “a dimension” in the Holy Land “that merged certain visual and conceptual perceptions, simultaneously objective and subjective: one of the present, the other of the past; one of the senses, one of the heart.”109 Hurlbut called upon his readers, saying that “our constant endeavor then, must be to place ourselves back from the ignoble present of this land to its mighty past.”110 Readers were to see beyond the woman and her donkey as they, while present and real, had not changed in over a thousand years. They were merely stage props for what was when Jesus had walked the earth.

Hurlbut represents a tidal wave of 19th century Americans who held the Holy Land in a romantic light and sought to ‘re-discover’ it. Frederic Church and other members of the Hudson

River school mythicized the land with their canvases before the likes of photography and stereoscopes. Mark Twain, in Innocents Abroad, detailed what he saw and thought about his journey, and his book was ravenously read by his loyal readership in the States. Abraham

Lincoln planned to journey to the Holy Land before he was assassinated and Grant later successfully visited after leaving office. Missionary groups across America formed the American

Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to go to the Holy Land and convert non-Christian souls. Scientifically minded Americans mounted and joined missions to map out and explore the contours of the land. Whether an individual was a scientist, scholar, entrepreneur, thinker, critic, or devout church-goer, the Holy Land existed prominently in his or

108 Hurlbut, J. L. and C. F. Kent. 1914. Palestine through the stereoscope: 11. 109 Vogel, L.1993. To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park:11 110 Hurlbut, J. L. and C. F. Kent. 1914. Palestine through the stereoscope: 22 57 her mind. 19th century Americans knew the Holy Land from the Bible and would attempt to make that textual and imagined place a reality through travel and the generation of a variety of manifestations that ranged in size and scope. Hurlbut’s stereoscope, Church’s paintings, Twain’s letters, and mission trips all exemplify different methods by which 19th century Americans engaged in the process of heritage. In their actions, they used their understanding of the biblical past and morphed it into a useable product for their specific needs. The past here, just as in the previous chapters, is something that is not dead but rather alive and active in the present moment.

This chapter focuses on how individual Americans brought to bear their biblical 19th century heritage, considering their divergent backgrounds and personal experiences. The lives of three 19th century American travelers to the Holy Land—Edward Robinson, Anna Spafford, and

Charles T Walker—serve as case studies. On the surface, the only thing that connects them is their religious belief, but even that is tentative at best, as each would have likely given a radically different explanation of their own Christian faith. They all, however, share an upbringing in the ethos of the America in the 19th century. Each engaged in the process of heritage making as they explicitly and implicitly materialized their notion of the Holy Land, integrating what they found while traveling with their preconceptions of the place.

Perhaps because my definition of the term heritage as a process is not contemporary with how my 19th century subjects described their experiences in the Levant, I can use it to develop a fresh perspective on their relationship to the place they called the Holy Land. The chapter will develop the lives of the travelers side by side so the similarities and differences between their individual processes of heritage are seen. To do so, the chapter will present biographies of the travelers, delving into their early lives, travels and time in the Holy Land, and later use of their experience. At each stage, the chapter illustrates the travelers’ personal and shared perspectives 58 on the past, tracking when and how they are involved in the process of heritage. Robinson,

Spafford, and Walker hold differing sets of beliefs and perspectives, but are still all Americans from the 19th century. As such, they hold, at times, common perspectives on their religious past and modern present that bring their disparate backgrounds together in unique ways. This chapter seeks to investigate the intersection between the individual and culturally wide conceptions of heritage.

Early Lives

Edward Robinson was born in Southington, Connecticut on April 10th, 1794 to a religious, rural family. Robinson grew up in a time of revolution, rapidly changing technological gain, and an ever-evolving philosophical world—yet, the Puritan homestead lifestyle remained a constant in the quiet New England territories. From a young age, Robinson demonstrated piety and intelligence which led him to enroll at the newly founded Hamilton College where he “easily stood at the head of a large class in every department of study.”111 Robinson remained true to his puritan roots by continuing in his studies and later working at Andover Seminary School in 1821 as opposed to attending more secular institution like Harvard. Religious and scholarly oriented

Americans saw Andover as the preeminent university as its students were tasked with a rigorous curriculum based upon a dogmatic protestant orthodoxy centered around a textual understanding.

Faculty emphasized the experiential element of the education as their doctrine focused on deeply personal and active interactions with faith, often materializing in momentous personal

111 Hitchcock, R., & H. Smith. 1863. The Life, Writings and Character of Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D. Anson D. F. Randolph: New York: 3. 59 experiences. Many of the American missionary force sent to the Middle East in the early part

19th century attended Andover concurrently with Robinson, including fellow student Eli Smith who would go on to lead missionary efforts in Beirut and work with Robinson during his studies in Palestine.112

While at Andover, Robinson worked under famed biblical scholar Moses Stuart and began to seriously develop his career. He translated various Greek and Hebrew biblical sources into English and later learned German in order to read and take part in the cutting-edge German biblical studies. Stuart advised Robinson in 1826 to travel to Europe and study in Halle,

Germany for several years under the leading biblical scholars.113 While doing so, Robinson absorbed not only the biblical scholarship, but also the emerging modernist philosophical and scientific perspectives of the world. He developed a scientific eye for studying the Bible while still retaining the metaphysically ‘simple’ doctrine of Andover which took the Bible and its events as absolute fact. Robinson thus took with him a mixture of modern forward thinking, scientific thought, and traditional biblical perspectives with him as he began to plan his trip to study in Palestine.

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Anna Larsen was born in 1842 in Stavanger, Norway. Her family immigrated to America when she was four, and, upon arrival, moved to Chicago—a growing hub for Scandinavian immigrants. Horatio Spafford, born to an affluent family of Troy, New York, moved to Chicago

112 See (Makdisi, U. 2007. Artillery of Heaven) for more information on American Missionaries during the period. 113 Bliss, F. 1906. Lecture V: Edward Robinson. From TheDevelopment of Palestine Exploration, The Ely Lectures for 1903. Hodder and Stoughton: London. 60 soon after in 1856 at the age of twenty-eight.114 Chicago was in the middle of an intense process of industrialization that required a constantly increasing source of cheap, immigrant labor. City dwellers in Chicago, immigrants in particular, lived in deplorable conditions that birthed widespread social concern and, in the view of long-term residents, decay. Anna experienced abject poverty during her younger years until she was adopted by a more affluent family. Horatio quickly found success in real-estate law and developed a fruitful career. He was horrified by the ever-increasing problems that he saw in Chicago and sought to use faith to alleviate societal problems. He joined the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and began to teach

Sunday school sessions; he met a young Anna in one of his classes. Four years later, on

September 5th, 1880, they were married. Anna was nineteen and Horatio was thirty-five.

Together the Spaffords quickly became a model couple within the Chicago grass roots religious community. They moved moving out to the well-to-do Lake View neighborhood where they began to hear the ideas of various influential and tremendously popular preachers, such as

Dwight Moody and William Blackstone. The exact beliefs preached by such individuals were disparate and ever changing, but constant throughout were strands of millennialism that reflected the dispensationalism movement that was spreading across America.115 The Spaffords themselves did not wade into doctrinal debates, rather they accepted the diversity of Christian beliefs and sought to make their home a center for the religious community. There the Spaffords held meetings and get-togethers where they discussed religion and how the community could tackle the multiplicity of issues within Chicago. Life was comfortable until until a series of

114 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem. Doubleday: New York:13-28. 115 Ariel, Y. and R. Kark. 1996. Messianism, Holiness, Charisma, and Community: The American-Swedish Colony in Jerusalem, 1881-1933. Church History (65) 4: 641-657. 61 disasters hit. In 1871 the Chicago Fire tore through the city, leveling 3.3 square miles and leaving 100,000 homeless. The Spafford house was spared, but Horatio’s real estate investments were not and he he found himself under a mountain of debt. Adding to economic pressures, in

1873 Anna took her four children for a much-needed vacation to Europe on the S.S Ville Du

Harve. On the seventh day at sea, another ship accidentally rammed into the Du Harve and quickly sank it into the frigid waters.116 Upon landfall in Europe, Anna telegraphed Horatio with the message: “Saved alone.”117

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At age seven, Charles Thomas Walker became a freedman. Born into slavery in Richmond

County, Georgia in 1858, his family was known for their Christian devotion and several of his uncles were popular ministers. Walker, with his newfound freedom, followed in their footsteps and in 1875 attended the recently founded Augusta Institute, “which was specially designed for colored preachers.”118 After two years, Walker graduated and became a licensed Baptist minister at the age of eighteen. Walker bounced around from various congregations within Georgia for several years until he landed in Augusta. He honed his skills as an orator and began to make a name for himself throughout the Baptist community. In 1885, Walker became the pastor for the

Tabernacle Baptist Church where he developed the congregation substantially, making it one of the largest black church communities in the city. The Church, for Walker, was more than just a

116 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem: 34-41, 53-58. 117 Telegram from Anna Spafford to Horatio Gates Spafford. 1873 (December 2). Part I, Box 1, Folder 6: American Colony in Jerusalem. American Colony in Jerusalem Collection: Library of Congress. 118 Floyd, S. X. 1902. Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D., ("The Black Spurgeon.") Pastor Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City. National Baptist Publishing Board: Nashville: 29. 62 spiritual home, he viewed it as a central hub for the black community at large. Upon becoming the minister, Walker worked tirelessly to develop economic and social opportunities for his community. He became a business partner and contributor to the Augusta Sentinel—a weekly black newspaper, created schools for black youth, and organized an 1893 exposition of the talents and capabilities that black Augustans held.119 Meanwhile, the promises of the

Reconstruction Era quickly lost their meaning as improvements for black citizens were muted or taken off the table completely. In their place, emerged various forms of de jure and de facto forms of segregation and racial discrimination that violently threatened the likes of Walker and his congregation. Walker described the unjust racial systems he lived under, remarking that simply being a “colored man in America is a problem.”120

Analysis of Early Lives

Robinson, Spafford, and Walker had dramatically different upbringings. Each hailed from a different region of the United States, lived in different periods of the 19th century, and came from dramatically different socio-economic backgrounds. Walker was enslaved until he was seven and continued to face systemic and direct racism for the rest of his life. Robinson came from a clean-cut Connecticut, Puritan background that was closer in time to the Revolutionary

War than the 20th century. Spafford immigrated into the rapidly urbanizing landscape of the late

19th century. Each brought with them their own individual life history and notions of what they ought to do with their lives that distinctly distinguished them. Religion appears to be a constant for each individual, but the ways in which they expressed and acted on their faith are quite different even in their early lives. Robinson pursued an ardent Protestant education at Andover

119 ibid: 47-49. 120 Walker, C. T. 1892. A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe. John M. Weigile & Co.: Augusta. 63 where textual knowledge of the Bible was tantamount. Spafford moved in the opposite direction as her religious beliefs leaned towards an admixture of various popular religious beliefs that would have had Robinson turning in his grave. Walker’s Baptist perspective and experience as a black man, directly tied his religion to his community where he saw an opportunity to use God’s word to empower. At this stage, there is little that brings the subjects together. Each had strong individual notions of their life histories, thoughts, and actions that in turn form the basis of their personal conceptions of heritage. Each of these individuals had a developed notion of their past and their connection to America that guided them on their individual paths as they move forward.

In the Holy Land

Robinson left his studies in Europe with the idea that the Bible was something that could be investigated and that the setting where biblical stories took place were real physical locations that could be found. He joined a growing body of scholars who studied the geography of the Holy

Land. These scholar-adventurers embarked on long missions to map and essentially ‘re-discover’ the land for themselves despite its continuous habitation.121 Inspired by these ideas and with support from his mentor Moses Stuart, Robinson left Germany in 1838 to conduct an in-depth survey of Palestine and fact check the popular, Catholic understandings of the Bible. Eli Smith, already stationed in Beirut for missionary work, accompanied Robinson alongside several guides who provided security and knowledge of the land. Smith was fluent in Arabic and cemented his

121 Yehoshua, B.A. 1979. The Rediscovery of the Holy land in the Nineteenth Century. Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 64 importance within the group by connecting the modern Arabic place names to their potential biblical antecedents. Robinson helmed the project with a scientific mindset, taking, “only the ordinary surveyor’s [sic] and two pocket-compasses, a thermometer, telescope, and measuring tapes,” a Bible, and only a few other travel guides written by previous travelers.122 With this small kit, Robinson and Smith traveled extensively throughout the region, often on backroads to places less known. They stopped only to identify and inspect places that might have had a biblical connection, but otherwise moved at a quick, methodical pace. In a telling example of the work conducted, Robinson describes his discovery of the remnants of an arch that had belonged to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem:

One of the stones is 20.5 feet long; another 24.5 feet; and the rest in like proportion. The

part of the curve or arc, which remains, is of course but a fragment; but of this fragment

the chord measures twelve feet six inches; the sine eleven feet ten inches; and the versed

sine three feet ten inches. —The distance from this point across the valley to the

precipitous natural rock of Zion, we measured as exactly as the intervening field of

prickly pear would permit; and found it to be 350 feet or about 116 yards. This gives the

proximate length of the ancient bridge.123

Robinson measured the extant portions and calculated the size the arch would have been if it had not been destroyed. He rigorously approached the physical evidence that he uncovered and worked tirelessly to situate it in the context of the Bible and other scholarship. From his perspective, Robinson was ‘re-discovering’ a notion of the Holy Land that had been lost to

122 Bliss. 1906. Lecture V: Edward Robinson: 195. 123 Robinson. 1841. Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petræa: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838 (Vol 1): 288. 65 tradition and it was his job to assess the validity of different elements of Christian, particularly

Catholic, doctrine.

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Between the debt and the loss of their children, the Spafford’s condition quickly deteriorated and they turned to their faith for help. Horatio penned the lyrics “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say: ‘It is well, it is well with my soul’,” during the course of his grieving which went onto be a popular hymn that remains in use to this day. In these lyrics, Horatio revealed a belief that went against the doctrines of Moody and other preachers, as he rejected the idea of predetermined judgement—a belief that did not well with the grief stricken Spaffords.124 In addition, the Spaffords began to more fervently subscribe to millenarian views and constructed their own prediction that held that Christ would be soon be resurrected and only true believers in

Jerusalem would be saved. They joined a crowded company of other sects that similarly framed salvation in terms of colonization of the Levant, mixing notions of American exceptionalism with the illusionary idea of reclaiming the Holy Land—bringing it back from biblical times.125

Anna blended these convictions with her self-reported ability to receive messages from God to develop an electrifying canon that attracted an ardent base of supporters.

Established religious groups in Chicago, however, saw the Spaffords and their beliefs as dangerous and renounced them from their community. In response, the Spaffords and sixteen of their devout followers named themselves the “Overcomers” and left Chicago for Jerusalem in

August of 1881. Upon arrival, they bought a house within the Old City close to the Damascus

124 Ariel, Y. and R. Kark. 1996. Messianism, Holiness, Charisma, and Community: The American-Swedish Colony in Jerusalem, 1881-1933: 644. 125 Vogel, L.1993. To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century. 66 Gate and began to wait for millenarian signs. The colony struggled at first, as they lacked income and were judged harshly by their fellow Americans—in particular the US Consul in Jerusalem

Selah Merrill—due to their heretical beliefs and cultish practices.126 While Horatio was the official leader of the colony, Anna slowly strengthened her grip over the group. She split up families and established that she alone would determine who could marry. She sourced these specific actions and tenets from messages that she received from God and, for the most part, the group followed. Despite these eccentric and potentially heretical beliefs, the colony was tolerated by local Jerusalemites who appreciated the colony’s charitable efforts and their indifference towards converting them. The colony struggled under Horatio’s leadership and he drove his family and the colony into debt. In 1888, he contracted malaria and died—Anna was now at the helm.

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Walker ascended to a position of fame within the southern Baptist sphere through his successful efforts at building the black community and congregation in Augusta. In response, the

Tabernacle congregation sent Walker on a fully funded, three-month trip to Europe and the

Middle East beginning on April 15th, 1891.127 The congregation’s sponsorship reflected the swelling popularity of travel to Europe and the Middle East following the Civil War. Americans, who were beginning to be more economically stable, looked to take advantage of technological advancements and travel abroad in order to heal the traumatic wounds left by the Civil War.

Walker, however, differed from other travelers as he was one of few black Americans who had

126 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem: 89-101. 127 Floyd, S. X. 1902. Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D., ("The Black Spurgeon.") Pastor Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City: 59. 67 the opportunity to travel overseas, which further exalted himself as an exemplar for his church and the black community at large. A black Baptist congregation in New York reportedly committed to sending one of their own preachers abroad upon hearing about Walker’s journey.128

Walker traveled first to Europe and then ventured down to the Middle East through Italy. He then made his way towards the Holy Land where he visited Jaffa, Jerusalem, and the Dead Sea.

In his accounts, Walker continually draws connections between his a priori textual experience of the place and what he saw with his eyes. He, like other American tourists, saw the people who lived in the Holy Land as individuals who were stuck in the distant past. In a telling example,

Walker, after giving a description of the biblical story of the angel appearing to the shepherds, describes how he looked “towards Bethlehem” over an empty valley and saw “in my imagination the shepherds’ faces lighted with the inexpressible joy and expectation, running toward the manger.”129 Walker linked what he saw with what he knew from the Bible, blurring the line between the distant past and present moment.

Walker consistently notes how, through seeing the lands of the biblical stories with his own eyes, he was collecting tangible evidence that God had truthfully fulfilled his prophecies.

While in Rome, Walker referenced the professed biblical destruction of the city saying, “I have seen the ruins, and had ocular demonstration of the fulfillment of that prophecy.”130 Like other tourists, Walker took various mementos from places, such as a vial of water from the Dead Sea and a stone from where David slew Goliath. Through such experiences, he developed a certain level of authority. He had seen ‘the truth’ and developed an understanding of the Bible that was

128 Walker, C. T. 1892. A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe: 33. 129 ibid: 87 130 ibid: 57. 68 more advanced than others. Even though he encountered elements that were not what he expected, namely the actual people living there, he was able to match up his biblical knowledge to what he saw. Walker came home more certain than ever that God was right and just.

Analysis of In the Holy Land

Historian John Davis argues that 19th century Americans shared a biblical upbringing that, despite major internal differences, connected Americans across their divides.131 The Bible gave them a way of understanding themselves and the country at large in terms that all could understand. Yet, at the same time, the 19th century brought increasingly modern notions of thought with it. As seen above, each of the travelers reflected colonialist views of American exceptionalism, which based notions of progress and differences between races upon ‘scientific’ study. Americans existed in an equilibrium somewhere in the middle between the more modern and religious notions of the world that marked American views, both home and abroad, in the

19th century.132 This amalgamation formed a solid ground that permeated how individuals perceived the world and thought of the past.

The travelogue genre that developed during this period highlights the impact of this

American perspective. In his travel account, Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s offhandedly belittles the local population, observing that “they never invent anything, never learn anything.”133 His characterizations of those who lived in Palestine fall in line with much of what other Americans thought. The 19th century American was not to see those who lived there as having real thoughts or agency, but rather as mere props for what had been. Robinson, Spafford,

131 Davis, J. 1996. The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 132 Shamir, M. 2003. “Our Jerusalem”: Americans in the Holy Land and Protestant Narratives of National Entitlement. American Quarterly (55)1: 29-60. 133 Twain, M. 1869. The Innocents Abroad. Penguin Books: New York: 330. 69 and Walker each reflected this backdrop in their own travels. Robinson rigorously surveyed the land to find past truths, effectively “re-discovering” a land that had been lost, ignoring the regions continual habitation. Spafford argued for the necessity of a colony in Jerusalem due in part to the fact that those who lived there were lesser and lacked the ability to welcome the

Messiah. Walker described day to day life in Palestine, saying, “men work for years to pay for their wives; lead their flocks as David did; dwell in tents; plow oxen as did Elijah; …all as in the days of yore.”134

Robinson, Spafford, and Walker each were steeped in common notions of a shared biblical past and American exceptionalism, which allowed them to see the Holy Land as a clean slate for their taking. Despite their differences that were apparent in the previous chapter, the

19th century thought in America brought them to the Holy Land and made them view it in the same light. This core, deeply 19th century American, understanding of the biblical past and their current moment resulted in similar experiences. They shared a cultural heritage that existed in addition to their individual heritage perspectives, and this pull brings together what would have been otherwise incomparable individuals. The next section moves forward and covers what each traveler then did with their parallel experiences, showing the materialization of their individual and shared heritages.

134 Floyd, S. X. 1902. Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D., ("The Black Spurgeon.") Pastor Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City: 73. 70 Materialization of the Dream

Robinson meticulously noted what he saw, did, and thought while in the Holy Land. He complied the results of his study into a several thousand paged, multi-volume work titled

Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petræa. In the introduction, Robinson clearly states his goal: “this work serves to show the state of topographical tradition as it then existed; and often stands in direct contradiction to the specifics of later ages.”135 He sought to ground truth the various traditions of Christianity, only accepting beliefs if he found evidence for them on the ground. Famously, Robinson questioned the validity of the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher, concluding that, after taking into consideration all the evidence, “I am led irresistibly to the conclusion that the Golgotha and the tomb now shown in the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher, are not upon the real places of the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.”136

Robinson, from his perspective, aspired to change the erroneous beliefs and traditions sourced in later innovations and share that knowledge with other religious scholars.

Despite its length and dense scholastic prose, 19th century Americans interested in the region eagerly read or at least knew of Biblical Researches due to the degree of detail that

Robinson put into it.137 Maps played a major role in the book’s success, as Robinson included several groundbreaking maps at the behest of Moses Stuart.138 Readers who had not visited the

Holy Land were able to spatially conceptualize the contours of the Bible through such maps,

135 Robinson, E. 1841. Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petræa: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838 (Vol II): 23. 136 ibid: 80. 137 Goren, H. 2017. Edward Robinson, Eli Smith and the Cartography of Berghaus and Kiepert. In Mapping the Holy Land: The Foundation of a Scientific Cartography of Palestine. Edited by H. Goren, J. Faehndrich, B. Schelhaas and P. Weigel. I.B. Tauris & Co.: London. 138 Williams, J. 1999. The Times and Life of Edward Robinson: Connecticut Yankee in King Solomon’s Court. Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta. 71 turning what was imagined into a reality.139 As the 19th century progressed, a growing number of scholars, explorers, and travelers ventured forward in the footsteps of Robinson. Robinson had ushered in a new generation of Americans who were dedicated to seeing the biblical truth themselves. Organized groups such as the British Palestinian Exploration Fund (1865) and the offshoot American Palestine Exploration Fund (1871) formed as popular spiritual successors to

Robinson and his work, as they too sought to scientifically explore the region and its past.140

Robinson, often cited as the ‘father’ of biblical archaeology, effectively developed a scientific and modern understanding of the region in later travelers who visited the region with at least some notion of the mindset that Robinson created. Nearly forty years later Charles Walker visited Jerusalem and, in giving a brief discussion of what he saw in the city, mentioned

Robinson’s arch as a major site to see.141

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After her husband’s death, Anna took full control of the colony’s inner-workings. She held elaborate morning meetings where the group’s members would meet and hear the messages sent to her from God. Coinciding with her leadership, the colony slowly gained legitimacy through the development of its social and financial standings.142 More dutiful colonists arrived from Nås,

Sweden, Chicago, and other parts of America which added much needed numbers to the

139 A result of this can still be seen at Palestine Park in Chautauqua, NY. The park is a to scale recreation of the biblical land and was built in 1874. 140 Davis, J. 1996. The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture: 36. 141 Walker, C. T. 1892. A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe: 97. 142 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem: 178-190. 72 group.143 However, not everything went smoothly at the colony. Members often felt an extreme pressure to conform to the demands that Spafford placed upon them which often stripped them of their freedoms, forcing some members to leave. US Consul Selah Merrill openly despised the group and frequently reported back to the US government about the, at times erroneously perceived, misdeeds of the group.144 Through these challenges, Spafford led the colony into the turn of the century as they overcame the internal and external opposition.

The colony moved outside the walls of Jerusalem and developed itself into a prosperous set of businesses that included a bakery, small farm, seamstress and tailor shop, antique store, and a photography department.145 The photography unit, in particular, generated a large income as their images of the Holy Land were tremendously popular back home where Americans clamored to see photographic evidence of the biblical land.146 The improved economic status led to an increased social presence within the city as various European and American travelers, often of high status, increasingly stayed at the colony while visiting Jerusalem. Spafford, through her leadership, insured the financial stability and popularity of the colony, taking it from a despised cult to an important institution in the fabric of Jerusalem. Representative of this shift, the colony during WWI aided the sick and wounded residents of the city and famously photographed the

143 Ariel, Y. and R. Kark. 1996. Messianism, Holiness, Charisma, and Community: The American-Swedish Colony in Jerusalem, 1881-1933: 646. The Swedish immigrants from Nås were also the subject of Selma Lagerlöf’s 1909 novel Jerusalem. 144 Vogel, Chapter Colonies of the FaithfVogel, L.1993. To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century: 156-159. 145 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem: 275-297. 146 Hallote, R. 2007. Photography and the American Contribution to Early “Biblical” Archaeology, 1870-1920. Near Eastern Archaeology 70 (1): 32. The full collection can be seen online through the Library of Congress’s Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection. 73 first British soldiers to enter the city.147 Spafford had managed to move away from the grief and debt that had mired her time in Chicago. Although the millenarian event that had prompted them to come to the Holy Land never occurred, the community she and Horatio founded endured for over forty years. Photos of the colony show a large American flag symbolically waving above the colony’s compound; Spafford had successfully translocated America to the Holy Land, her heritage has been materialized.

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Upon returning to home, Walker quickly developed name recognition within the larger Baptist preaching community. He compiled his travel accounts, which had been published in the

Augusta Chronicle while abroad, into a book titled A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe and then went on an extensive speaking tour about his travels. Silas Xavier Floyd, his biographer, described the tour:

Everywhere the lecture and the lecturer were well received and highly spoken of—in

New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Indianapolis, in Charleston, S. C., in St. Louis,

in Dallas and Galveston, Tex., in Kansas City, and in other places. Dr. Walker's success

on the lecture platform was immediate.148

At these lectures, Walker deftly recounted what he saw and how it affected him, declaring that he

“felt more than ever that God’s word was true.” The crowd reportedly was left “spellbound for

147 Geniesse, J. 2008. American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem: 148 Floyd, S. X. 1902. Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D., ("The Black Spurgeon.") Pastor Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City: 68. 74 about an hour.”149 Walker, with his newfound authority that he developed while abroad, added to his already strong preaching capabilities. A white reporter from the Augusta Chronicle, covering a lecture he gave, described Walker as “one of the most clear headed and conservative representative from his race.”150 Walker used the authority vested in him to illustrate himself as a respectable and influential voice of the black community.

In the midst of travel in Italy, Walker took time to write a relatively short note to readers titled “What will be done with the colored people?” He discussed the condition of black

Americans and posited potential solutions that he and his people could take. The section is representative of Walker’s consistent inclusion of race and his thoughts on the discrimination he felt while abroad. Moving about in a less racially stratified world forced Walker to confront his second-class status at home. However, at the same time, travel made Walker confident. He was seeing that God’s prophecies had been fulfilled, thus he answered his question with the conclusion that the moderate thinking of members from both white and black communities would be able to find common middle ground and help one another as equals.151

Upon his return, Walker worked to combat the systemic forms of racism that were calcifying in the post-Reconstruction Era. In New York on May 27th, 1900, he preached to a packed crowd and used the story of how Paul successfully saved the Jewish people from Caesar by teaching him about the merits of Jewish people as an allegory for black Americans. Walker

149 Floyd, S. X. 1902. Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D., ("The Black Spurgeon.") Pastor Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City: 62-63. Excerpt quoted by Floyd, original from Augusta Evening News from July 6th, 1891. 150 Walker, C. T. 1892. A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe: 14. Quote from Augusta Chronicle from July 5th, 1891. The first portion of Walker’s book includes several newspaper articles written about the lectures he gave. 151 Walker, C. T. 1892. A Colored Man Abroad: What he saw and heard in the Holy Land and Europe: 60. 75 developed himself in parallel to Paul, describing how he and his work were educating the white

American populace on the merits of black Americans. He highlighted historic examples of black faith and numerous successful black individuals as evidence for their right for equality— grounding his argument in religious ideals, citing how “God made us men long before men made us citizens.”152 Walker mixed the logic of W.E.B Dubois’s notion of the Talented Tenth and religious argumentation to illustrate that the racial inequality that he and his people faced was unjust. With his travels, Walker gained strength behind his convictions and was able to establish a base that would listen to him. The New York Sun reported on his sermon and described the audience’s response:

Carnegie Hall was crowded literally to the roof last night. It really seemed as if the

whole colored population of the town was there; and they did more than listen…At every

telling point the pastor made in his heavy voice they applauded, and at the end they

cheered and shouted approval for several minutes.153

Walker traveled to the Holy Land and saw the truth with his own eyes, when he returned he made sure that those around him heard that same truth.

Analysis of Materialization of Dream

For Robinson, Spafford, and Walker, the Holy Land was theirs for the taking, and they took it.

Robinson developed a clinically detailed understanding of the region’s geography and used that

152 Walker, C. T. 1900. An Appeal to Caesar: Sermon on the Race Question by C.T. Walker; Delivered at Carnegie Hall, Sunday evening, May 27th, 1900. Press of Pussey and Troxell: New York. See also his sermon from earlier in 1900 titled Truth From Another Angle on the Negro Question where he develops similar themes. 153 Walker, C. T. 1900. An Appeal to Caesar: Sermon on the Race Question by C.T. Walker; Delivered at Carnegie Hall, Sunday evening, May 27th, 1900: 30. The excerpt is from the end of a written copy of Walker’s speech which has included the reports from various newspapers, this was from the New York Sun. 76 to become a definitive voice in the scholarly field of determining the ‘true’ biblical history.

Spafford built her own community and Jerusalem and did not leave, solving many of the problems that had plagued her and her family in Chicago and spiritually prepared for the perceived imminent millenarian event. Walker gained valuable spiritual and practical knowledge that pushed him to the forefront of his community and gave him the platform to combat the injustices his community increasingly faced. Each obtained a key sense of authority through their travels that they put to use in their daily lives. That they had been to, or in Spafford’s case remained, in the Holy Land conferred them with a level of trust from those around them. With their conceptions of the past developed and internalized, they each set about putting it to use in their lives.

What is interesting about this final segment of the chapter is that here, again, the travelers differentiate themselves from one another. Unlike the previous section, which illustrated a coming together of the travelers in reflection of their common religious and American exceptionalism views, the paths each take differ. It is as if in the first section they started apart, then coalesced together during their journeys abroad, and then, afterwards, retreated back to their individual conceptions of the past. The wide array of heritage products seen within the section— be it a publication, a colony, or a series of lectures—illustrates the complexity within the process of heritage.

Parting Thoughts

The three case studies for this chapter serve as remarkable evidence for the process of heritage.

The travelers were dramatically different from one another, yet strong parallels existed between 77 their individual actions and outlooks towards the Holy Land. They were born in different sections of the 19th century, they come from different backgrounds, faced different problems, and developed different solutions, but by the final section, each used their newfound authority gained through their travels to produce a certain end goal. That product depended greatly on their individual notion of heritage. Yet, the complex combination of modernist notions of the world and a common religious background that existed within the American 19th century mind brought them together. This shared lens shaped their understanding of themselves and the outside world, leading to major similarities while in the Holy Land. Once leaving their experience, they combined their individual and shared understandings of the past and produced different heritages that suited their individual wants and needs. While a book, a colony, and a preaching career are vastly different, they represent the common end result of two distinct frames of heritage—one personal, one culturally broader. The variability between the sources illustrates the muddy nature of interaction of these perspectives, as it is never clear which one is active and the degree to which they are shared. It is certain however, that the heritage frames held mixed into unique perspectives that each traveler here used as they developed their notion of the past to serve their individual needs.

78 Conclusion

The goal of this thesis was to examine the process in which heritage is produced and used through examining three different case studies. To build a helpful metaphor, each chapter exits upon the ‘stage’ of heritage. The setting, cast, and plot differ from chapter to chapter, but the core process they feature remains the same. The different frames and foci, through which the chapters are analyzed, showcase that, no matter what the plot or set of characters, there is common ground in the way that humans view and use the past.

The first chapter of this thesis sheds light onto an ongoing heritage management situation in Akko, Israel to see the heritage in definite action. Residents, conservators, and developers showcase the socioeconomic and political conflict inherent when different groups attempt to use the same past for different goals. The ‘wicked’ nature of the problems at Akko messy a process that on paper can look clean and defined. Real world constraints shape how stakeholders at Akko both view their past and attempt to use that history to generate tangible changes for their city.

Between the ‘battleground’ planning meetings or café discussions about the city’s future, the stakeholders at Akko work dynamically with and against one another to produce heritage. For stakeholders at Akko, the past is a resource to be used, otherwise buildings are subject to decay and links to the past could be potentially lost.

The second chapter similarly analyzes heritage in terms of conflict. Oz and Shehadeh look out at the same landscape but see different histories in the contours of the land’s past. The chapter’s focus on the individual provides a layer of understanding to how personal history and experience can inform a process of heritage making. The individual experiences of Oz and

Shehadeh define how each man constructs himself in relation to his past and the conflict between 79 their peoples. The chapter treats books and political ideas, rather than buildings, as equally important products of heritage to illustrate the breadth of possible material and immaterial manifestations of one’s past. These lines of analysis help to understand how two authors who take similar peace-focused ideologies can fail to see eye-to-eye on important diplomatic ventures between their respective countries, such as the Oslo II Accords. In effect, the chapter zooms in on a conflict of heritage, analyzing two heritage makers to show us unique and vibrant ways in which they develop and use their conceptions of the past.

Chapter three serves as much as a departure as an amalgamation of the different aspects from the previous chapters. Similar to chapter two, this chapter explored the individual conceptions of the past held by three distinct 19th century American travelers. It shows how the perspectives that Spafford, Robinson, and Walker held motivated him or her to create dramatically different manifestations of their heritage—a colony, a book, a preaching career.

Unlike the past two chapters, the American travelers I chose were not in conflict, but rather shared perceptions of a common biblical past and concurrent cultural views of the outside world.

The mix of nineteenth century modernist ideals and a strong Cristian backbone gave a congruent lens through which each traveler saw and acted while there. Thus, this chapter combines the individually and culturally derived notions of the past, creating a nuanced and deeply complex appraisal of what both tied and separated these American travelers.

By themselves, these chapters are striking in the nuance that they draw from each of their specific instances. The conflict between stakeholders in Akko, the dueling perspectives on peace between Oz and Shehadeh, and the common goals yet, different uses of the biblical land by

Americans in the 19th century, each tell an engaging and complex story of how humans use the past. In each, the past is not static, but rather ever moving and being constantly redefined and 80 repurposed depending on the given situation. When looked at together, these examples show how people engage in the process of heritage. The different focal points of each chapter provide multiple perspectives on this process that illustrate the commonality across time, region, and place in which heritage is evoked. This thesis illustrates a wide array of situations, understandings, and ways in which heritage can be used as an analytical term when looking at historical examples. But, perhaps in a deeper and broader sense, the flexibility of the term points to the process of heritage being an innate way of looking at and experiencing the world that has always, and will always occur.

81

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ACADEMIC VITA

John Michael Gurklis

Education

Bachelor of Arts, History; Bachelor of Science, Anthropology (Archaeological Sciences) University Park, PA The Pennsylvania State University | Anticipated Graduation: May 2020 Schreyer Honors College, Paterno Fellows Program ● Minors: Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Spanish

Work Experience

Erickson Discovery Grant, Akko, Israel February 2019 – August 2019 Grant Recipient ● Penn State student-initiated research grant for $3,500 to research in Akko, Israel under the direction of Dr. Ann E. Killebrew ● Interviewed local stakeholders and conducted archival-based research to comprehend heritage management practices in Akko ● Synthesized past and current development and conservation trends to identify and potentially address contested space issues ● Wrote policy report and developed poster to be presented at Penn State Undergraduate Exhibition (March 2020)

Nevins Fellowship with City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May 2017 – August 2017 Fellow ● Received $5,000 fellowship to work at Mayor’s Office at the City of Pittsburgh to expand city resident deliberative forums ● Tasked with developing map of citizen engagement throughout city to better understand weak points of engagement ● Facilitated city’s deliberative forums and interviewed local citizen organizations to map engagement patterns ● Co-presented a talk to the forum planning committee on improvements to the city’s deliberative forum initiative AURORA: Penn State Outdoor Orientation, Pennsylvania State University May 2017 – Present Backpacking Instructor ● Lead week-long backpacking trips for incoming Penn State students in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire ● Developed critical thinking capacity to ensure safety of participants; Wilderness-First-Responder and CPR certified ● Honed communication and judgment skills through facilitation of groups in the backcountry Study Abroad Experience

Tel Akko Archaeology Field School, Akko, Israel June 2018 – August 2018 Student ● Archaeological field school in Akko, Israel where archaeological techniques, theory, and practice were taught ● Worked in the UNESCO World Heritage Old City of Akko to learn common practice and theory of heritage management ● Analyzed the British Mandate archival materials relating to Department of Antiquities to understand past conservation work

Leadership and Involvement

Anthropology of Alcohol (ANTH 140), Teaching Assistant (Fall 2019) Penn State Club Ultimate Frisbee, Team Member (Fall 2016 – Present) Penn State Outing Club, Member (August 2016 – Present) Liberal Arts 1968 Ambassador, Assistant (August 2017 – May 2018)

Scholarships

Recipient of: Barry Directorship Scholarhsip, Schreyer Ambassador Grant, Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project Scholarship, Shibley Memorial Scholarship, Karako Global Ambassadors Scholarship, and BASONOVA Scholarship.