EL AL is thriving, Jerusalem’s tourism merchants are struggling, and Israelis continue their daily lives while a devastating conflict unfolds only kilometers away
JERUSALEM:Walk through parts of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv today and, at first glance, life can appear remarkably normal. Restaurants serve dinner. Cafés are busy. Families go shopping. Israelis head to work, complain about traffic, make vacation plans and meet friends. On the Mediterranean beaches, people swim and sunbathe.
Aircraft operated by EL AL Israel Airlines continue connecting Israel with the world. It is an extraordinary demonstration of resilience.It can also be deeply unsettling.
Only a relatively short distance away, the consequences of years of war are anything but normal. The images reaching television screens and smartphones around the world have fundamentally changed international perceptions of Israel.
For some Israelis, these two realities have somehow learned to coexist. One internationally known tourism leader who moved to Israel two decades ago told eTurboNews:
“I feel betrayed by the country I moved to 20 years ago. What is happening now is terrifying — and we keep going day after day.” That sentence may capture something tourism statistics cannot.
People adapt. They go to work. Children go to school. Businesses open. Dinner reservations are made. Flights depart.
Sometimes people simply have to continue living. Sometimes they may also become strangely detached from events happening only kilometers away.
Jerusalem’s Old City is paying the price
In Jerusalem’s Old City, however, there is little possibility of pretending that tourism is normal.
Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian merchants interviewed this week describe a tourism economy that remains severely damaged.
The reasons they give are strikingly consistent: too few international flights, expensive airline tickets and persistent fears among potential travelers that Israel is unsafe.
One Jewish Quarter shopkeeper described day-to-day tourism as “horrible,” while a Christian Quarter souvenir merchant said business was “very weak.” An Armenian ceramics merchant who has worked in the Old City for four decades described the period since October 2023 as the worst he has experienced.
These are merchants who have survived wars, intifadas, terrorism and COVID-19. Tourism’s present crisis is testing them again. The suffering also crosses the Old City’s religious boundaries. That matters.
Tourism is one of the rare economic ecosystems in Jerusalem where the livelihoods of Jews, Muslims, Christians and Armenians can depend on precisely the same visitor.
A pilgrim buying a Christian icon might later purchase lunch from a Muslim restaurant owner, ceramics from an Armenian family, and Judaica from a Jewish merchant. When the visitor disappears, everyone loses.
The numbers tell the story
Israel welcomed a record 4.5 million tourists in 2019. In 2025, the country received only about 1.3 million. The first half of 2026 remained difficult. Roughly 440,000 foreign visitors entered Israel from January through June, with the United States accounting for approximately 36% of arrivals.
Official statistics illustrate just how volatile tourism has become.
May 2026 recorded only 64,400 tourist arrivals, compared with 124,000 in May 2025. June improved to 81,900 tourists, versus 55,300 a year earlier. Israeli hotels recorded 5.1 million overnight stays from January through April, but Israelis themselves accounted for 84% of them.
In other words, Israel’s domestic tourism economy is helping keep hotels functioning while the international tourism engine remains severely impaired.
The Tourism Ministry’s answer: Sell the people, not only the destination
The Israel Ministry of Tourism faces an almost impossible marketing challenge. How do you sell vacations while television news is dominated by war? Its answer has been surprisingly direct.
Instead of pretending geopolitics does not exist, the ministry is trying to sell Israelis themselves.
Its new “I AM ISRAEL”campaign, launched in North America with an investment reported at NIS 20 million, emphasizes people, food, music, streets, culture and everyday Israeli life rather than relying solely on conventional images of beaches, archaeological sites and religious landmarks.
Tourism Ministry Director-General Michael Izhakov explained the thinking in a July interview: potential visitors are shown Israelis dancing, eating in restaurants, enjoying beaches and living ordinary lives. The ministry is concentrating particularly on North Americans, Jewish travelers and Christian travelers already inclined to visit Israel rather than attempting to convert audiences fundamentally hostile to the country.
It is understandable marketing. But it also produces a difficult question. The normal life being promoted to tourists is real. So is the abnormal reality surrounding it. Both can be true.
Israel desperately needs airplanes
On one issue, almost everybody in Israeli tourism agrees. Israel needs international airlines back. “When there are no flights, there is no tourism,” Izhakov told The Jerusalem Post.
The ministry has been speaking with airlines and Israel’s Transportation Ministry while supporting domestic tourism and encouraging additional hotel capacity. It has also increasingly targeted Jewish travelers overseas while attempting to compensate for missing foreign visitors with Israeli domestic travelers.
This month, tourism leaders joined U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee in the Israel Tourism Recovery Forum, bringing together government, airlines, hotels, tour operators, academics and other tourism stakeholders. Expanding direct U.S.-Israel air service, rebuilding visitor confidence and creating programs capable of bringing Americans back are among the priorities. The ministry is also continuing to invest beyond advertising.
A NIS 25 million renovation of the Qasr al-Yahud baptism site, an important Christian pilgrimage destination on the Jordan River, was recently inaugurated through cooperation involving the Tourism Ministry and other Israeli authorities.
The government has additionally been examining artificial intelligence as part of its longer-term tourism strategy, including digital visitor experiences and the “100 Stories” augmented-reality project at historical tourism sites. The message appears to be: survive today, but build for the visitors Israel hopes will return tomorrow.
And then there is EL AL
If Jerusalem’s empty souvenir shops represent one side of Israel’s tourism crisis, EL AL represents the extraordinary other side. The Israeli flag carrier has emerged from regional aviation chaos stronger financially.
While international airlines repeatedly suspended Tel Aviv operations, EL AL kept Israel connected. The result has been an unusual combination of national necessity, operational resilience and reduced competition.
In the second quarter of 2026, EL AL reported a $132 million net profit, double the $66 million recorded a year earlier.
Revenue jumped from $777 million to $986 million, despite the airline estimating a $55 million impact from the conflict with Iran. Its load factor remained around 90%, and advance bookings represented an order backlog of approximately $1.4 billion. The airline plans further capacity growth and has added Boeing 737 aircraft while returning older Boeing 777s to service.
EL AL has also signed an agreement to introduce Starlink high-speed internet across its fleet beginning in 2027.
It is difficult to imagine a clearer illustration of Israel’s paradoxical tourism economy. The national airline prospers partly because so many foreign airlines have stayed away. Meanwhile, merchants on the ground desperately need those foreign airlines to return. What is good for EL AL’s market share is not necessarily good for Israel’s tourism economy.
- Competition means seats.
- Seats mean lower fares.
- Lower fares mean visitors.
- And visitors mean someone eventually walks into a nearly empty shop in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Resilience has another side
Israelis are exceptionally good at continuing. After terrorist attacks, restaurants reopen. After missile warnings, cafés fill again. After nights interrupted by sirens, people return to work.
That resilience has helped Israel survive circumstances that many societies have never experienced. Tourism depends on it, too. Visitors need restaurants to remain open, guides to keep guiding, hotels to remain staffed and airlines to keep flying.
But resilience can have a darker companion: normalization. Human beings cannot psychologically experience every day as an emergency. Eventually the extraordinary becomes routine.
A war can therefore exist on television while somebody drinks cappuccino in Tel Aviv. A merchant can sit without customers near one of Christianity’s holiest places while families elsewhere plan their weekend.
And suffering only kilometers away can become something people know about without truly absorbing. This contradiction is not uniquely Israeli. It is profoundly human. But in Israel today, geography compresses the contradiction into an extraordinarily small space.
Can tourism return before trust does?
Israel’s tourism officials believe recovery can happen quickly once aviation capacity returns.
There is evidence supporting that optimism. Israel has an extraordinary tourism product: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, Galilee, the Negev, archaeology, Mediterranean beaches and sacred places central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Those attractions did not disappear. Neither did the hospitality industry. Nor did Israel’s ability to fascinate visitors. But today’s tourism crisis is bigger than airline capacity.
Israel also faces a global perception problem tied not simply to whether tourists believe they will personally be safe, but to how millions of prospective travelers now perceive the country itself.
A destination can recover from fear. Recovering from alienation can be considerably harder. That may ultimately be the challenge the Ministry of Tourism cannot solve with advertising alone.
Waiting behind the counter
Back in Jerusalem’s Old City, geopolitical arguments eventually become something much simpler. Will somebody walk through the door today? Will a pilgrim buy a cross? Will a visitor buy Armenian ceramics? Will someone stop for coffee? Will a Jewish family from New York finally take the trip they postponed?
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