It is a RELATION (of domination); ambivalence is inevitable: Britt Alexandra Baillie, ‘Settler and Sūmūd interpretation: the reimagining of the boundaries of Jerusalem/al-Quds’, in UNESCO, Thematic Research on Heritage Interpretation and Presentation, 2025, pp. 86-106 | settler colonial studies blog

It is a RELATION (of domination); ambivalence is inevitable: Britt Alexandra Baillie, ‘Settler and Sūmūd interpretation: the reimagining of the boundaries of Jerusalem/al-Quds’, in UNESCO, Thematic Research on Heritage Interpretation and Presentation, 2025, pp. 86-106

13Dec25

Abstract: As a cultural landscape inhabited by different agricultural cultures over time, the World Heritage listing of Battir recognises its potential to be simultaneously interpreted as both as a biblical landscape, and an historic Palestinian village (without negating other actors and periods). The interpretation of the site’s environmental and aesthetic values have already succeeded in bringing Israeli and Palestinian activists together to call for its preservation. International experts working for UNESCO were crucial in bringing the landscape to the world’s attention. UNESCO’s designation of the site shepherded both Israeli and Palestinian experts to recognise the site’s value. In short, Battir has many of the elements which serve as prerequisites for localised conflict transformation, and potentially ‘reconciliation’ to take place. However, the withdrawal of Israel and the USA from UNESCO has once more put such aims at risk. Regular demolitions of structures continue to take place in and around the village under the auspices of the Israeli authorities, incursions by potential settlers are on the rise, and the difficulties of the legal quagmires of the ‘area systems’ of the Oslo Accords make Battir’s continued efforts a barometer of the impact that heritage interpretation is having in the area.

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