Tourism and Cross-Border Conflict: An Empirical Analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Case

How does tourism affect conflict, and how is it affected by conflict and violence? Tourism is often proposed as a way to manage and resolve conflicts, especially those between close neighbors. Drawing on theories of economic cooperation and conflict, and using data from the Israeli-Palestinian case, this paper finds no strong evidence that tourism has a pacifying effect on conflict: regions that host more tourists, and that have a stronger tourism potential, are not more peaceful than other regions. Furthermore, hosting more tourists from the other side of the border does not affect violence. Finally, although tourism is sensitive to violence, this sensitivity is short-term and often conditional on other factors. These findings suggest that we should moderate our expectations about the potential effect of tourism on conflict resolution.