Szepesi, Stefan 2012. Walking Palestine: 25 Journeys into the West Bank (with foreword by Raja Shehadeh). Interlink Walking Guides. Northampton, Massachusetts: Interlink Books. ISBN 978 1 56656 860 9. pp. 272. $22.95
Irving, Sarah 2011. Palestine (Bradt Travel Guides). Chalfont St. Peter: Bradt Travel Guides/Guilford, Conn. Globe Pequot Press. ISBN 978 1 84162 367 2. viii + 328 pp. £15.95/$25.99

	One normally expects a guidebook to provide a preview of place, emphasizing its attractions while suggesting means of avoiding problem sites or situations. A guidebook to Palestine has a more complex task. Whether covering solely West Bank Palestine, as Walking Palestine does, or, as the Bradt guide does, encompassing the West Bank and Gaza with forays into ‘Palestinian Communities in Israel’, a guidebook to Palestine must convince its readers that a territory under military occupation, blotched with the spreading chancres of settlements, and known through media coverage of IDF attacks and ‘terrorist’ resistance, is safe to visit and likely to reward the effort. Both of these texts manage that task, but the strategies they follow in doing so, and the different ways they ‘package’ place, suggest very different audiences. 
	Both Stefan Szepesi and Sarah Irving work to counter stereotyped images of the place and its people: Szepesi organizes itineraries challenging “the one-dimensional view of Palestine as merely a jumble of small enclaves dominated by concrete and dusty streets, its inhabitants battered by occupation, internal conflict and poverty” (18) while Irving comments that “most Palestinians don’t want to be seen first and foremost as a ‘political issue’” (viii). Szepesi however challenges that view with “different images: green rolling hills and spectacular gorges; mysterious caves and ruins going back centuries,…charming villages, good restaurants and very hospitable people” (18) while Irving continues “...even if they certainly want the situation they have to live in recognised by the international community, and...want justice and peace for themselves and their children” (viii). The difference is symptomatic.
	Stefan Szepesi is a Dutch economist initially posted to Jerusalem to advise on EU aid to the PNA who then joined the Quartet as an economic advisor to Tony Blair. While his prose style in Walking Palestine is not afflicted by his professional calling, one cannot help but sense that his links with Blair and Blair’s neo-liberal ‘packaging’ of Palestine shapes the vision he relays. Blair writes on the back cover that “Stefan’s book shows what a beautiful place Palestine is and how rewarding it is, for Palestinians and visitors alike, to explore its natural and cultural heritage on foot”. Raja Shehadeh, whose 2008 Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape is evoked by Szepesi’s title, puts Blair’s anodyne statement into context when he writes in the foreword that “much of the landscape in the West Bank is rapidly being destroyed by road works, expansion of existing cities and the... hastily built Jewish settlements that stand out as artificial impositions on the delicate features and contours of this ancient land” (8). In his own book Shehadeh juxtaposes a beautiful, historic and vulnerable landscape with a colonizing project indifferent to place and people, thereby accentuating the tragedy and promoting resistance; Szepesi, packaging the territory for nature tourism, attempts -- while not denying occupation -- to minimize its impact. He notes that violent incidents which might endanger walkers “usually take place at specific flashpoints of conflict: Israeli checkpoints, areas close to the separation barrier or areas where Israeli settlements or outposts are located closely [sic] to Palestinian villages or in some cases in or near to or on Palestinian land…[and points out that t]he trails in this book intentionally avoid these areas and...you are advised to do the same” (25). While he doesn’t ignore the occupation and its impact (something that would be impossible to do anywhere in the Territories) his attempts to provide a ‘balanced’ narrative give rise to some jarring representations. When he maps a route through the Battir region (noting but underplaying its enclavement) he advises walkers not to cross the railway line into ‘Israel’s Jerusalem Forest’ since “if you do, Israel’s security folk will come down the hill for you faster than you can say baitinjaan battiri” (248).
	Sarah Irving’s relationship to Palestine and its politics is radically different; she contributes to Electronic Intifada and has published Gaza Beneath the Bombs (2010, with Sharyn Lock) and Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation (2013). Such a genealogy might lead one to fear that her guide would veer towards the overtly political, ignoring the region’s wealth of natural and cultural treasures. However, like Bradt’s previous guide to Palestine (Henry Stedman, 2000, discontinued in the wake of the al-Aqsa Intifada), Irving’s guide offers an alluring introduction to place and people without downplaying the politics of the situation and the risks -- and moral quandaries -- they present to visitors. Irving covers the whole of what had been Mandate Palestine, placing the Palestinian people and their culture at the heart of the book rather than limiting herself to the limited, and retreating, regions that remain ‘safe’ for tourism. Szepesi’s text, of course, is about landscape walks and has a largely rural focus, peripheralizing the towns and cities which provide Irving with much of her material. Even so when they both visit the same site -- such as Solomon’s Pools outside of Artas -- their descriptions are tellingly different. Szepesi dedicates a full page to the Pools but concludes by condemning “a Palestinian business venture” (224) which built the adjoining Convention Center and proposes to build “a large entertainment area right onto one of Palestine’s most spectacular archaeological sites” (Ibid). Irving describes the Pools and their history, noting their partial renovation and the plans to develop a resort and convention center, but closes by mentioning that the project has “been put back to the tune of nearly US$1 million by damage inflicted by Israeli shelling during the Second Intifada” (161). There are a couple of relatively minor mistakes in Irving’s guide -- St. Jerome is not buried underneath the Church of the Nativity (154) but in Rome’s church of St. Mary Major and while Copts may constitute the largest Christian population in the Arab world they are not “the largest Christian denomination in the world” (99) -- but all in all the book is a rich, detailed and compelling guide giving readers a fulsome view of a fascinating land and people damaged by occupation.
	Both books are rich in resources for the visitor, providing descriptions and contact details not only of restaurants and lodgings but, more importantly, of NGOs, environmental, cultural and political associations, and web sites that can further enrich a visit. Both too attend to problems of getting into, and travelling within, the Territories (although Irving, unlike Szepesi, writes of Israeli customs officials stealing foreign passports to use in secret service assassination plots). Szepesi’s guide is for walkers, and as such provides detailed itineraries, ‘field tested’ by himself and friends. One wonders, however, whether its emphasis on attraction might sometimes endanger those following its instructions. In his description of walking Wadi Qelt Szepesi uses the ‘Adam’ and ‘Almon’ settlements as landmarks but comments of encounters on the route only that “you will likely come across Bedouins” (201) herding goats and sheep. Irving, describing the same walk, emphasizes that “armed guards from the nearby settlements now enforce a sunset curfew….[and] settlers...clamp down on access, claiming that the wadi and surrounding hills are ‘closed’ to hikers at night” (131). Walking Palestine may have a very specific nature loving audience in mind, but that audience too would appreciate knowing of the risks to which the encompassing political context is likely to expose them.

Glenn Bowman
glb@kent.ac.uk