Kfar Adumin colony, Palestine: The Airbnb host said that once his guests see the view, “nobody wants to talk politics.” Igal Canaan, a Jewish colonist, threw open the doors of his designer apartment to reveal a jaw-dropping panorama of blue sky and wilderness.
“In the morning, you can see shepherds with their flocks,” said Canaan, pointing out the place associated with the birth of the prophet Jeremiah, maybe, there just over the hill. “The view is totally biblical.”
All this, plus swimming pool, kitchenette, fast WiFi and maybe a welcome bottle of wine, just 20 minutes from occupied Jerusalem, for about $80 (Dh294) per night.
The guest reviews call it awesome - but according to the Palestinians, it is also very wrong.
The Palestinian National Authority says offering vacation rental properties in Jewish colonies in the occupied West Bank, through US-based sites such as Airbnb, Booking.com and TripAdvisor, violates international law.
These cozy cottages and vineyard villas are not in Israeli “neighbourhoods,” as some listings suggest, but in Jewish colonies that most of the world considers illegal and the US government calls “ illegitimate” and “unhelpful” to the peace process, not exactly what one wants to contend with on vacation.
Israel’s government opposes this terminology and says the land in the West Bank is “disputed.” Some Israeli government ministers argue it is not even “occupied.”
It seems the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will now take place on TripAdvisor as well as at the UN Security Council.
A few weeks ago, Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, sent a terse letter to Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky in San Francisco, warning that his company was “effectively promoting the illegal Israeli colonisation of occupied land”.
Airbnb said in a statement that it “follows law and regulations where it can do business”.
So what did some Jewish colonists with an extra bedroom do?
“Ever since the Palestinians starting complaining, our people took this as a challenge and have been rushing to Airbnb to list their properties,” said Miri Maoz-Ovadia, a spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council.
Maoz-Ovadia represents the municipal body for 42 Jewish colonies and outposts in the hills of the West Bank north of occupied Jerusalem - communities that the PLO says violate the Geneva Conventions.
There are about 400,000 Jewish colonists today in the West Bank and more than 200 Israeli bed and breakfast operations registered in what Israel calls “Judea and Samaria.”
The Jewish colonies had 500,000 tourists last year, Maoz-Ovadia said. About 80 per cent were Israelis, the rest were international visitors, many evangelical pilgrims and biblical tourists, she said.
“You can’t boycott 4,000 years of Judeo-Christian history,” she said, although the current wave of unrest sweeping the occupied territories and lethal live-fire measures resorted to by Israeli armed forces has had an impact.
Tourism in Jewish colonies in the West Bank is down.
Erekat charged that Airbnb was propping up the “Israeli [colony]-industrial complex.”
The Palestinians also say the Airbnb advertisements can be misleading, failing to warn potential guests the properties are not inside Israel but in the occupied West Bank.
The listings are accompanied by a Google map, but critics wonder if foreign visitors realise that those dashes on the map are the Green Line, marking the pre-1967 borders and the land the Palestinians want for a future state.
“The majority don’t ask,” said Canaan, the host with the view, who offers his visitors dates and almonds. “They either know, or they say, ‘Ah, so these are the [colonies]!’”
In the reviews left by Airbnb guests, only a few grouse about the properties being in colonies - although some raise an eyebrow.
At a place near the Dead Sea rented by a person called Gila, famous for her cute little dog and fruit salad, the guest Maria wrote, “I was a little taken aback at having to go through a security checkpoint to get here, but I shouldn’t have worried.”
Canaan believes the whole thing is the work of the global campaign known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), a movement to isolate Israel to pressure it to end the occupation, among other things.
“I don’t think the Palestinians really care. It’s a campaign by ultra-leftists from abroad fighting for the Palestinians,” he said. “They don’t have a case.”
Canaan conceded business has been a bit slow, but he blamed winter weather and the recent stabbings.
“But not here,” he was quick to add. “There’s no Palestinians here.” Palestinians are generally not allowed by the Israelis to build in Area C of the West Bank, where Canaan lives.
Scrolling through Airbnb listings in the Jewish colonies of the West Bank, a potential guest can choose among stunning vacation villas set in the wine country and hardscrabble caravans perched on muddy Palestinian hilltops.
Up north in the colony of Esh Kodesh, reached by Vineyard View Road (off-limits to Palestinians), Inbal Zeev was tidying up her family’s rental cottage overlooking a valley of grape vines slumbering in the winter chill.
“We’ve had just one foreign visitor, a gentleman from South Africa, about a month ago. Before, we rented through word of mouth. We never thought of advertising,” she said. “But when someone told me that BDS was pressuring Airbnb, we decided to register.”
Their cabin is all warm wood and plasma-screen TVs, with a Jacuzzi for mom and dad and a second bedroom with bunks and cribs, enough to sleep eight kids at least.
Her Airbnb listing describes its location as “Shilo, Jerusalem District, Israel,” which is a bit of a stretch.
But not to Zeev. “I don’t see this as Palestinian land. It’s Israel,” she said.
Esh Kodesh sits right next to the Palestinian village of Kusra, where farmers, shopkeepers and construction workers have instituted civilian night patrols, with clubs and flashlights, to defend themselves against colonists. In nearby Duma, Israeli terrorists killed three family members in a nighttime arson attack.
“We throw stones. They throw stones. Then the [Israeli] army comes out and fires flares and tells us to go home,” said Mohammad Hassan, a young Palestinian farmer.
