Israelis and Palestinians hope for the return of foreign visitors in wake of ceasefire

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Late one recent afternoon, Noor Awad sat inside a shop in Bethlehem playing cards. A short walk away, the Church of the Nativity loomed over the horizon. He knows it well – the chest-height stone entryway, designed centuries ago to keep out pack animals; the disparate Christian denominations that oversee its different chapels; the location, in a cave down a steep set of stairs, of the manger on which the infant Christ is said to have been laid.

Mr. Awad is a tour guide in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city, but two years of war between Israel and Hamas have left few tourists to guide. In Bethlehem, where foreigners can only travel from Israel, a good day once brought more than 220 busloads.

Today, “maximum five,” Mr. Awad said. “There is no tourism, actually.”

Once a multibillion-dollar industry, tourism in the Holy Land has been brought to the brink of collapse.

Now that a ceasefire has mostly quieted the guns and jets of war, Israeli and Palestinian tour operators have begun to wonder whether they can allow itself to believe better times are coming – or whether the war has so badly tainted the area’s image that large numbers of people will never return.

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Last year, tourist numbers fell to just 20 per cent of 2019 figures – and one-third of those were people visiting families.

Now that a ceasefire has mostly quieted the guns and jets of war, Israel’s tourism industry has begun to wonder whether it can allow itself to believe better times are coming – or whether the country’s image has been so badly tainted by the war that large numbers of people will never return.

“I am starting to feel some hope,” said Ziad Bandak, a Bethlehem tour guide who also runs a shop there, the Prince of Peace Bazaar. Outside, a group from Romania took in the sights.

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In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, phones have begun to ring again at tour offices. In the past few days, two new groups signed up for trips with Ortra, a Tel Aviv-based travel agency whose chief executive officer, Lior Gelfand, is chairman of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association.

“It’s not big. It’s not huge. It’s not what we’re used to. But it’s a good sign,” he said. “I do hope that this is a turning point for our poor industry.”

Israel’s Ministry of Tourism says it expects a 40-per-cent year-over-year increase in visitors in 2025. Airlines are resuming flights, Air Canada among them. “And we anticipate the removal of travel warnings that will make it easier for visitors to obtain travel insurance,” the ministry told The Globe and Mail in a statement.

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It is preparing a new, $4.25-million North American marketing campaign, to launch soon, aimed at Jewish and evangelical communities. The goal is “to bring Israel back into awareness as an attractive, welcoming, and safe destination,” the ministry said.

Across the industry, though, operators are also wondering whether they will ever regain the business they once had. It’s not a question of finding the right marketing strategy or convincing foreign travellers that the country is safe. In fact, not a single tourist was harmed over the course of the war, the Tourism Ministry said.

It is, instead, a matter of Israel finding a place for itself after a war in which it has been accused of committing genocide, its Prime Minister threatened with arrest and accused of using starvation as a tool of warfare – a war crime. Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have thoroughly denied those charges.

Mr. Gelfand worries about the people “you won’t be able to convince” to return to Israel from the countries in Western Europe and North America – the U.S., in particular – that have traditionally been the most lucrative sources of travellers.

“Some of them are punishing us by not coming here. They understand that it’s relatively quiet. But they don’t want to put their money in here. Some of them say, ‘I wouldn’t spend a dollar in Israel.’ ”

So “we have to find alternative clientele.”

Word of mouth, he said, may prove effective, as some begin to once again step foot in Israel.

But he thinks it may also be time for Israel to look for people from places that have traditionally avoided the sole Jewish country in a Muslim region. The Abraham Accords normalized relations with the UAE and Bahrain. Hopes are high that Saudi Arabia is next.

“The whole Middle East has changed. It’s not the same map any more,” Mr. Gelfand said.

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If Jerusalem can position itself as a stop for Muslim travellers, “this can be a big game-changer. And to be very honest, we are working on it. We are speaking to agents in countries that we’ve never spoken with before.”

Yet in a region where religious and political sensitivities are never far away, even that is unlikely to prove simple. For Muslim visitors, one of the chief attractions is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, among the holiest sites in Islam. Located in Jerusalem’s Old City, the site is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords, Omar Atallah, a Palestinian-American who runs Jerusalem Tours and Travel, began chatting with business and diplomatic leaders from the UAE about the possibility of bringing tours to the mosque.

The idea made him nervous. Numerous Islamic groups maintain a presence inside the mosque, and some are unlikely to welcome other Muslims.

“If they see a group of Arab nationals from another country that made peace with Israel, they’ll start giving them problems,” Mr. Atallah said. “They could throw stones or shoes at them.”

Meanwhile, Israel itself has contributed to its bloodied global image, he said. The Israeli government has flown in people from around the world to see areas of the country struck by the atrocities of the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, part of an effort to bolster support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

But it means “they’re spending their money bringing people in and showing them all the destruction in places where tourists never go,” Mr. Atallah said. “Instead of the Ministry of Tourism taking people to show them Tel Aviv and all the nice places that were not affected at all.”

He once hoped that Israel could expand its appeal. He organized one tour for a sorority that saw little outside the Dead Sea and Tel Aviv nightclubs.

Now, he said, the best hope for tour operators is to bring back those whose image of the country is drawn from religious texts – groups for whom a trip to Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem constitutes a pilgrimage.

“The pilgrims will come,” he said. “It’s like, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ But it’s built. It’s here. So they have no choice.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article included a headline that referred only to tourism in Israel. It also incorrectly stated that Al-Aqsa Mosque is in Israel. This version has been updated. (Oct. 28, 2025) The article was further updated to add additional references to the war's effect on tourism. Both Israeli and Palestinian tour operators have been affected. The article was also updated to provide the Al-Aqsa Mosque's precise location.