Abraham the settler, jesus the refugee: Contemporary conflict and christianity on the road to bethlehem

By examining tour brochures, practices of landscape display, posters and tour guiding narrations, I seek to understand how Bethlehem and the "separation wall" between Jerusalem and Bethlehem are integrated into the experience of Western Christian pilgrims of a variety of theological orientations. I argue that current practices of display and narration promote particular political views of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and lend them authority by saturating them with particular Christian meanings and associations. The study contributes to our understanding of pilgrimage as a site of contested discourses in which local actors sacralize the landscape while making their understandings of the conflict seem self-evident and divinely justified.