The Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, is one of the natural wonders of the world. Rich in minerals and salt, the lake has attracted visitors for millennia, and the economic value of its mineral riches has been important to both the local Palestinian population and to every colonial power that has ruled the area. Today, Israel exercises total control over the Dead Sea, the northern basin of which lies in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli settlements and international businesses, aided by state-funded initiatives, have established a profitable tourism sector and extractive industries based on the Dead Sea's natural resources, while Palestinians remain effectively excluded from pursuing such opportunities. Qumran National Park, private beach resorts, and the cosmetics company AHAVA, among others, reap enormous profits from settlements in the Dead Sea area, benefiting from Israel's occupation and unlawful policies and helping to drive a self-serving narrative of the area's history.

The carving up of the Ottoman Levant into British and French Mandates after World War I introduced new realities for the inhabitants of the region. This article uses Lebanese tourism and the promotion of Lebanon as a tourist destination to Palestinians of all religious backgrounds as a case study to investigate the challenges and potentials of the new Mandate structures. Using Palestinian government archives and newspapers, it examines how Lebanon was marketed to Palestinian vacationers. It concludes by suggesting that tourism, with its mixture of private and government sector interests, serves as a key node for observing the messy process of relational identities when two sets of neighbors worked to reframe themselves in national terms.