Community Based Tourism in the Arab Society of Israel: The Case of Social

Entrepreneur

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of tourism development as social

entrepreneurism (referred to hereafter as social tourism) in an underserved Arab community
in Israel. It outline how social tourism can be used as a development strategy in underserved
community characterized by deep and systemic cross-cultural conflict. From this point of
departure, the paper present new data and offer a critical analysis of the potential for these
social tourism development efforts to achieve community benefits within the challenging
context of cross-cultural conflict in the Middle East. The methodology utilizes qualitative
research methods and an exploratory, comparative case study design. The study site is a
recently opened guesthouse in Israel’s poorest village, the Arab community of Jisr az-Zarqa.
At this site, we focus on “Juha’s guesthouse”, which is an Arab-Jewish partnership.

Keywords: Community based Tourism; Tourism Social Entrepreneur; Cross Culture

Conflict; Tourism and Peace; Israel.

Introduction

This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of tourism development as social

entrepreneurism (referred to hereafter as social tourism) in an underserved Arab community
in Israel. It will outline how social tourism can be used as a development strategy in
underserved community characterized by deep and systemic cross-cultural conflict. From this
point of departure, the paper will present new data and offer a critical analysis of the potential
for these social tourism development efforts to achieve community benefits within the
challenging context of cross-cultural conflict in the Middle East. We conclude by discussing
the implications of this more broadly. In this way, our paper advances new insights about the
role of social tourism in communities characterized by deep cross-cultural conflict. The paper
draws from severl theoretical perspectives in order to understand how social entrepreneurship
in tourism can convey stream societal benefits in underserved an Arab community in Israel.
Our first theoretical lens is rooted in concepts of social sustainability (Ateljevic, 2009; Mak,
2004; Mowforth and Tribe, 2007).
This study utilizes qualitative research methods and an exploratory, comparative case
study design. The study site is a recently opened guesthouse in Israel’s poorest village, the
Arab community of Jisr az-Zarqa. At this site, we focus on “Juha’s guesthouse”, which is an
Arab-Jewish partnership. Data were collected during field visits in July 2013 and March 2014,
which included semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and extensive document
review. Data were then coded and analyzed for explanatory themes. The study methodology
applies semi-structured interviews as data collection instrument, using pre-decided questions
as guideline but still having a significant flexibility for additional questions and discussions
during every individual dialogue. Using interviews and direct observations as evidence
enables the researcher to learn about the participants’ personal meaning on the issue of
empowerment, as well as about the links to social entrepreneurship. Advantages provided
when conducting personal interviews with the sample, is the possibility of collecting in-depth
knowledge, understanding historical perspectives and flexibly adapting every interview to the
respondent, or more suitably called; informant. The characteristics of interviews used in case

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study research, is that they appears to be more of a friendly, guided conversation rather than
structured queries (Yin, 2003, p. 89).

Social Tourism Entrepreneurship

Haessly (2010) and Kelly (2012) stresses that by focusing on the role tourism can play
in promoting reconciliation between hostile groups (within or across nation borders), first
steps on establishing policies for cooperation and/or connections between former or present
enemies may be encouraged.
Kassis (2006) adds that justice tourism is furthermore highly place-specific, aiming to
address a specific issue or problem of the destination by travelling there and forming touristic
activities around the need and interest of the local people. The issue does not necessarily have
to be linked to tourism, rather, the tourist himself will be linked to the current cause of the
destination and the possible injustice exposed there. Four attributes of justice tourism has
been presented by Scheyvens (2002), stressing that the traveler can be a part of the process
towards an empowered and just community.
The concept of entrepreneurship is defined as “the capacity and willingness to develop,
organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit”.
The most obvious example of entrepreneurship is the starting of new businesses (Business
Dictionary, 2014). The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of
new ideas and business processes” (Investopedia, 2014). Veeraraghvan (2009) presents the
main characteristics of entrepreneurs to include an “ability to take risks and indulge in
creative destruction (when new inventions destroy old structures) and innovation” (p. 14).
Success depends highly upon the entrepreneurs ability to spot opportunities, create a team of
talented co-workers who compensate one other’s skills, access to various types of capital
(technical and human), and being able to operate in an environment that supports innovative
undertakings. Innovation equals a new way of doing something, however; the innovator is
providing an idea while the entrepreneur is implementing the idea into a commercial
intention.
Social entrepreneurship connected to tourism has generally been given little attention
among researchers until the recent years. Scholars like van der Weppen and Cochrane (2012)
have noted that social enterprises have a considerable impact on local economic development
as those businesses tend to act in a socially responsible manner, directing their income into a
societal benefitting purpose, local employment and supporting external projects for the
society’s well-being and development while being financially self-sustaining. They identified
those social entrepreneurs to have typical entrepreneurial mind-set, but showed additional
characteristics of passion and confidence in people’s capacity to contribute to individual and
societal development. Hence, those entrepreneurs share characteristics of using business as a
way to operationalize their beliefs in practical and innovative ways.

The case study of Juha's Guesthouse in the Village of Jisr az-Zarqa

Jisr az-Zarqa is a suitable example of how poverty is not only taking form in a lack of
financial means, but also in apathy towards one’s own existence, resulting in low self-esteem
about one’s ability to fully live in accordance with one’s capacity (Hanien & Juha, personal
communication, March 20, 2014). To cite El-Ali (2013, as cited in Miller, 2013), “Jisr exists
under impossible conditions. The people know what cards they are holding, but they don’t
have the education or the initial capital to start a business, nor the ability to raise the capital
needed, or the knowledge of how they skip over the bureaucratic hurdles”. A physical evident
to the village’s situation is the up to five meter high earth embankment between Jisr az-Zarqa

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and the neighboring town of Caesarea that was erected in 2002. The purpose, according to the
initiators in Caesarea, was to create an acoustic barrier to prevent the noise and theft from Jisr
az-Zarqa to reach the residents of Caesarea. From a critical standpoint, the embankment was
regarded as another racial separation wall, marking the border between one of Israel’s
wealthiest Jewish settlements and poorest Arab community (Miller, 2013; Herzliya Museum,
2009).
In 2011, the village undertook an initiative to promote ecotourism and tourism de-
velopment, initiated by the local municipality and the NGO named Sikkuy (Picow, 2011). Jisr
az-Zarqa is underprivileged compared to neighboring Israeli communities and many of the
negative aspects of the town are due to a perceived sense of isolation and neglect, which
harms the ability to improve the community’s and residents’ situation (Picow, 2011).
However, the most evident step towards the tourism sector was when Neta Hanien (a non-
local Jewish) and Ahmad Juha (a local Muslim) opened Juha’s Guesthouse in the center of the
village, in January 2014. The two entrepreneurs wish to erase old stereotypes of Jisr az-Zarqa
and help the village and the villagers reach their potential via engagement in the tourism
industry (Miller, 2013).
The particular site in Jisr az-Zarqa that this paper sheds light on is Juha’s Guesthouse; a
hostel situated in the heart of the village. This is the first tourist accommodation site in Jisr az-
Zarqa and was inaugurated in January 2014, preceded by the fundraising and restoration of
the venue during summer and autumn 2013. The idea of creating a guesthouse in the village
originated from Neta Hanien, who in 2008 had visited the village for the first time and found
great potential of its tourist attraction. She looked for a business partner for half a year, until
she was introduced to the local multi-entrepreneur Ahmad Juha, who was already engaging in
tourism as he was running Ramadan tours for visitors interested in learning more about the
Islamic holy month. Together they chose a locale owned by Juha to serve as the site for the
prospective hostel, where Juha’s coffee shop was already situated, having an empty office
space on the second floor of the building.

Figure 1: Juha’s Guesthouse in Jisr az-Zarqa, March 2014. Photo by Alexandra Stenvall

The entrepreneurs started a crowd-funding campaign in late summer 2013 at an Israeli

website, pledging NIS 60,000 for initial renovations, but were successful and man-aged to
raise over NIS 90,000 (N. Hanien & A. Juha, personal communication, March 20, 2014) (see
figure 1). The business idea for the guesthouse in Jisr az-Zarqa was much inspired by the

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Fauzi Azar Inn hostel in Old Nazareth (Gelbman & Laven, 2015), receiving guidance from its
owner Maoz Inon (N. Hanien, personal communication, July 10, 2013). Just like Muhammad
Yunus’ (2007; 2013) concept of social business, the profit from Juha’s guesthouse is intended
to be reinvested, when the economic situation allows, into societal entrepreneurship and
development initiatives in Jisr az-Zarqa. The mission of the guesthouse is “to welcome all
travelers and hikers and create a social business that enriches society” (Juha’s Guesthouse,
2014), by consulting and cooperating with local residents to stimulate local economy, as well
as to initiate volunteering projects in the village’s benefit.
The hostel Juha’s Guesthouse offers, at the time of writing; 12 beds, a shared common
place and kitchen, two showers and two toilets. A simple breakfast is served every morning,
and a rich itinerary of suggested activities and sites in the village is presented. With the
initiative of the guesthouse, a map and website has been created for the whole village’s
benefit. The fisherman village and the beach are promoted as the key attractions, along with
interacting with the local residents in their daily life when moving outside the hostel.  

Social tourism entrepreneurship as a post conflict community development strategy

Data collected at our study site suggest that social entrepreneurship in community-based
tourism (what we term social tourism in this chapter) can create significant empowerment
opportunities for marginalized Arab communities in Israel. Moreover, our data point to the
direct ways that these tourism development efforts can help stakeholders overcome some of
the underlying, negative experiences resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
following paragraphs will present information that was generated during the data collection of
this study. The data collection happened at two stages; July 2013 and March 2014, when field
visits were conducted at the case study site in Jisr az-Zarqa.
Sustainability, development, and empowerment: The first main theme detected in the
interviews, was the issue of sustainability, development, and empowerment of minorities,
communities, and individuals. The focus was very much on the Arab minority of Israel, as the
study cases is situated within communities having an Arab majority. The interviews reveal
interesting dynamics between the sub-categories and the geopolitical conflict, both shedding
light on historical as well as present events. The interviews reveal that sustainability is viewed
from a social and economic aspect, rather than the traditionally environmental point of view.
Development is mainly perceived as community-focused, highlighting touristic potential and
entrepreneurial activities. Empowerment is desired on an individual level, addressing needs of
oppressed segments of the greater Israeli population, as well as among marginalized residents
of the case study communities.
The interviews from Jisr az-Zarqa reveal that one of the main constraints that the
informants have experienced is the negative perception of self among residents, which has
resulted in low self-esteem. What describes is that fear towards entering the communities has
been a common reason for Jewish-Israeli people hesitating to visit the communities. Several
events, such the Second Intifada in 2000, have contributed to this fear. It is apparent that the
geopolitical conflict serves as an underlying emotional cargo for approaching each other,
indicating that the general negative view of Arab communities in Israel serves as a hindrance
for encounters. Furthermore, the interviews confirm that oppression towards Arab
communities within Israel exists.

Conclusions and Implications

While prior research on the relationship between tourism and peace-building is mixed,
our study suggests social tourism can serve as a cultural bridge between Israel’s different

4
cultural groups. This “bridging” function appears to be an important element for reframing the
relationships between these different groups into “healthy interdependencies”, which is a
dynamic that has been generally absent in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Interestingly, similar
approaches are underway in other settings characterized by deep cross-cultural conflict (e.g.,
the Balkans). Consequently, understanding these approaches, and how to design policies to
support their wide spread implementation, represents an important next step in this line of
inquiry.
At the same time, tourism remains one of the most important economic drivers in Israel
and recent scholarship suggests that tourism development has the potential to serve as an
“important bridge” between Israel’s many different cultural groups (Cohen-Hattab and
Shoval, 2007; Gelbman & Laven, 2015). This raises an important and obvious question: Can
tourism development, when practiced as social entrepreneurship, or what we term ‘social
tourism’ in this paprer, serve as this cultural bridge? If so, what might these efforts actually
look like, and how might they work? Our paper seeks to shed light on these important and
timely issues.

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