Jerusalem unrest has tour operators praying for calm
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — In good years, Vittorio Di Cesare's tours of occupied Jerusalem's holy sites for November and December are booked up well in advance. This year, he doesn't have a single booking.
A wave of gun, knife and car-ramming attacks in Jerusalem and other cities, as well as clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters, have sparked fears of a full-scale Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation.
More than 55 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed while carrying out attacks or in violent clashes with police, while eight Israelis have died in attacks.
Amid such tensions, usually bustling markets have had only a fraction of their shoppers and the tourism industry, worth an estimated $5 billion (4.5 billion euros) a year and employing some six percent of the Israeli workforce, is under threat.
With Christmas on the horizon and the potential for its usual flood of visitors to the Old City in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, tour operators are praying calm can be restored soon.
Tourist numbers were finally starting to rebound after last summer's Gaza war before the latest violence broke out in early October, usually the country's busiest month for visits.
"We... had almost one year of very few incoming (tourists)... but we started to work well in the last months," Cesare said.
"Because of the new situation, things are going very badly," added the 58-year-old Italian tour guide, who has lived in Israel for 30 years.
Business at the central Mahane Yehuda market in West Jerusalem, a popular destination for tourists, has been around five times lower than normal, shopkeepers there say.
In East Jerusalem's Old City, where tourists wander mazes of souvenir stalls and hummus joints, policemen and security guards have been posted in the narrow alleyways.
John Jessor, a 50-year-old Palestinian who runs a small shop at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, said trade had fallen since the beginning of the month. "The situation keeps getting worse and worse," he said. — AFP
