Israel waiting for tourists after pandemic

Bethlehem Elias Arja is standing in the lobby of his 220-bed hotel simply called Bethlehem, with the Christmas tree twinkling behind him. Through the window he looks at the coach that is parked in front of the hotel. A few dozen tourists are about to flock to his hotel. They’re finally coming back.

After check-in, it gets quieter again in the entrance hall around Arja. Hardly any calls, no buses. This is gradually becoming a problem for the hotelier. “After the Corona restrictions, we wanted to get this season off to a flying start again,” he says. “But there are significantly fewer tourists.”

Few destinations are as popular around Christmas as Bethlehem in the Palestinian Territory. In the fourth century, the Church of the Nativity was built here over the place where Jesus is said to have been born. To this day it is a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide. The 2000 tickets for the midnight mass are usually sold out within a very short time.

After two years in which Israel almost hermetically sealed off its borders to travellers, winter tourism in the Holy Land should start again this year. But the guests stay away.

In the record year of 2019, before the pandemic, 4.5 million people visited Israel. At that time, more than 5.5 billion euros flowed into the Israeli economy. For the year 2022, the Ministry of Tourism expects a good half of visitors.

The number of visitors to Palestine has fallen even more drastically: from 3.3 million tourists in 2019, the number fell to less than one million this year. Especially for Bethlehem, the lack of tourists is tantamount to a catastrophe.

Almost 70 percent of the economy of the small town with around 30,000 inhabitants depends on tourism. After two years of deadlock, the city urgently needs income. But they are missing. Israeli politics makes the problem even worse: the domestic political situation after the elections and the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians also unsettle travelers.

Khalil Juha is concerned. The best view of the Church of the Nativity is from his restaurant on Manger Square. The barriers to regulate the flow of visitors around the church are already in place. After a four-year break, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is scheduled to attend the ceremony again. Juha hopes the square will be overflowing with tourists, at least by December 24th.

Empty restaurants on Manger Square

In mid-December, however, there is still no indication of this. Juha’s restaurant has space for 200 guests, only one table is occupied. Reservations for Christmas have hardly been received. Juha has set the prices extra low: for 50 shekels, the equivalent of less than 14 euros, he serves a Palestinian Christmas meal. Even the discount does not attract tourists.

His son works as an engineer at General Electric in Saudi Arabia, he says. He wouldn’t be able to do it without his financial support. Like all businesses in Bethlehem, the pandemic has also hit Juha’s restaurant. He had to lay off six of his twelve employees because of the lack of guests. The company has now been open again for a year. But he still doesn’t want to make a profit.

Only a handful of restaurants with typical Palestinian dishes used to exist in Bethlehem. For the turn of the millennium, the city expected a tourist boom – new hotels and restaurants were opened for the event. The small town now has around 100 restaurants and a few large hotels. Most this year – empty.

At least the souvenir shop “Nativity Store”, only a few meters away from Juha’s restaurant, is busy on this day. The shop has been right next to the church for almost 100 years. The showcases date back to 1927.

Not a single tourist during Corona

Inside the shop is Rony Tabash, who took over the business from his father along with his brother. “During the pandemic, not a single tourist came. We were still open,” he says. But what do you sell when there are no customers?

“We had to look for new business opportunities during the pandemic,” says Tabash. The opened the online trade. Instead of selling souvenirs in stores, he took orders over the Internet and sent his products. He also sent a small pendant to all his customers: the star over Bethlehem, which showed the three wise men from the East the way to the manger on the night of Jesus’ birth.

There has been almost no government help for retailers like Tabash or restaurant owner Juha during the pandemic. According to Tabash, the pandemic has been worse for families in Palestine than during the second intifada between 2000 and 2005. “During the political unrest, many families received support from abroad,” says Tabash. “During the pandemic, we hardly had any international help.”

One of the larger hotels has still not reopened since the pandemic, says hotel owner Arja. He fears that this could only be the beginning of the economic death in the city. Inflation would mean fewer tourists. In addition, guests from Russia and Ukraine stayed away due to the Russian attack on Ukraine. Before the war, the two countries would have provided around ten percent of the guests.

And then, according to Arja, there’s the checkpoint problem. Bethlehem is under the Palestinian Authority. Tourists coming from Israel have to go through a checkpoint. According to Arja, some tourists don’t know how to do it alone, so they mostly come in tour groups. And they get discounts: while a standard room costs $120 a night, he gets $40 per room from the tour groups.

Political unrest exacerbates situation

Political unrest could exacerbate the conflict between Israel and Palestine in the future. After the November 1st election, Israel will likely have the most right-wing government in its history. With right-wing extremist politician Itamar Ben Gvir as possible Minister for Internal Security and thus head of the police, the situation at the border crossings could get even worse.

Elias Arja now wants to take the problems with the checkpoint into his own hands. The hotel owner is planning his own chauffeur service. His car is supposed to pick up tourists traveling alone from Jerusalem, a few kilometers away, and bring them to Bethlehem.

But Arja also knows how difficult the task will be: “It’s not easy to get permission to go through the checkpoint.” But he will try. Two coaches from Germany are due to arrive in the afternoon. It’s a good day for him. At least his hotel won’t remain empty then.

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