The Show Must Not Go on

Abstract

When considering tourism as a way to build a culture of peace, there is a need to know how to deal with the presentation of the past.

The Middle East is presently engaged in an ongoing political process for peace. Peace would allow the opportunity for people who were injured (physically and/or emotionally) during the past conflicts to visit sites of the former enemies. The question that should be asked is how to present this shared heritage?

At present the use of heritage in tourism is a sensitive and dynamic area of development, and there is a critical need to know how to manage this phenomenon, especially in the context of communities which have moved from war to non-war and were involved in violent conflicts. In order to clarify and discuss the re-use of heritage in this context, there is first a need to understand the nature of heritage and heritage tourism (Poria et al., 2000), and then to clarify its relationship with the fact that the enemy of yesterday may be today's neighbour/tourist.

This paper contributes to this debate by clarifying heritage tourism, and emphasising different characteristics of heritage that are essential for the management (marketing, production, reuse etc) of heritage attractions, especially in the context of tourists visiting common areas of prior conflicts.

The paper presents different definitions and descriptions of the concept of heritage. Following this, issues relevant to the understanding of the nature of heritage and its characteristics are classified. In the second part of the paper, heritage is explored in the context of tourism. Finally, implications are suggested for sites presenting different aspects of a common previously violent heritage.

This paper is based on PhD research dealing with tourists' behaviour in heritage sites.