Scolpire l’olivo. La tradizione dell’artigianato come pratica di (r)esistenza della comunità cristiana di Beit Sahour.

Beit Sahour is a Palestinian town near Bethlehem, situated in the West Bank, where the local Christian community carries on an artisanal activity of carving olive trees, which is handed down generationally and presented as a Palestinian tradition. Although the marginalization of the Palestinians has had deleterious effects on the labor market, shaping a situation of general economic de-development1, the destruction and uprooting of olive groves has strengthened the link with the olive tree as a symbol of resistance in the Palestinian identity discourse2, allowing the artisans to present their work as part of national cultural heritage. The aim of this research is to examine the meanings conveyed by presenting handicraft as a tradition that simultaneously constitutes a source of livelihood and is symbolically linked to the resistance to Israeli occupation. Data was collected through interviews during fieldwork conducted by the author in 2017 and was then processed with the reflections that arose from the ethnographic approach of participatory observation and an interdisciplinary bibliographic analysis.