“For eighteen months, we have not seen a single tourist”

In 2019, Jerusalem and Bethlehem experienced record crowds. Two years later, this is only a distant memory. For the second year in a row, Christian holy sites in Israel and Palestine will celebrate Christmas without pilgrims and foreign tourists. However, at the most touristic entrance to the old town, Jaffa Gate, Santa Claus is still there, perched on his camel, but this year facing him, the journalists outnumber the onlookers.

In his café-restaurant, Mahmoud heats his percolator without conviction. “Jaffa Gate normally, it’s full of people, he saddens. Everyone is happy for the Christmas holidays, normally there are a lot of parties here. And now ? You can see the empty streets, there is no one there. Just two months ago, we had reopened, little by little, four or five hours a day, so we hope that it will come back …“

That morning, it was the distribution of trees donated by the Jerusalem City Hall. This livens up a little the district where the stockbrokers have lowered their iron curtain and where the souvenir merchants are living on. Raouni sells tickets for the walk on the ramparts. For more than eighteen months, he has not seen a single tourist. “Usually here we sell more than 700 tickets a day “, he explains. During Jewish or Christian holidays, it can go up to 2,000. But now, it’s five to ten tickets a day.. ”

In fact, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem in charge of tourism Fleur Nahum is angry with the government decisions.

“We went from 5 million tourists before the Covid to 200,000 tourists. Even during the Intifada, even during the conflicts, people always came. If we are there, it is because we have closed the country. . “

Fleur Nahum, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem for Tourism

to franceinfo

She calls on the government to let tourists come back with all the necessary precautions: “Reopen the country otherwise the tourism industry will not survive!“In Israel, tourism represents 2% of the gross domestic product. It is 15% in the West Bank thanks in particular to the influx to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus according to the Bible, which will still be deserted this evening.