Cultural Affiliation and Identity Constructs Under the British Mandate for Palestine

In her conclusion, van Kessel reflects on the nature of cultural diplomacy, its success and failures in Palestine. She considers the different actors’ approaches to cultural diplomacy and the impact of those approaches on processes of identity formation. She also considers the shifting frameworks on cultural diplomacy arguing that both scholars and practitioners have blurred the lines between more orthodox readings that cultural relations were produced by private initiatives, while cultural diplomacy was the domain of government initiatives. She then compares the cases presented in this volume within a broader range of Mediterranean geography to consider the ways in which some of the actors behaved in other contexts. She concludes that the nature of cultural diplomacy in Palestine created overlaps, and sometimes conflicts, between confessional allegiances and nationalism for Christian Palestinians.