Haptic tourism: Touch and fear at the Separation Wall and its checkpoints in the Palestinian West Bank

Is tourism out of touch with touch? Have tourism researchers forgotten ‘touch’? Drawing on socio-spatial theories of haptics, I argue that through the sense of touch we critically understand co-constructions of affective tourist subjectivities. Specifically, touch and fear are part of a sensuous hapticality, intimately connected and happening within and around places and bodies – of tourists, local guides and soldiers – in areas of ongoing socio-political conflict. Interviews were undertaken with local tourism stakeholders and international tourists during fieldworks in the Palestinian West Bank in 2010, and 2017–2018. The Separation Wall and its checkpoints have become tourist attractions, pervasive and ever present in the landscape, enticing most tourists in the area to engage haptically in such places.