“We were getting ready for the Christmas season. The hotels were 70% full for
illuminations of December 3. In a few hours, we lost all the foreign tourists ”, sighs Anton Salman, mayor of Bethlehem, in the West Bank. This city of 31,000 inhabitants, where half of the population lives from tourism, believed to come back to life after more than twenty months of isolation. But the Omicron variant dashed his hopes. Israel, which controls access points to the West Bank, again closed all of its borders to foreigners on November 28 – at least until December 13 – and imposed new restrictions on Israelis.
In early November, the Israeli health authorities had simulated the appearance of a variant of SARS-CoV-2 called Omega. The lessons learned from the exercise have been applied to the letter: locking up the country while determining the virulence of the new variant, multiplication of PCR tests, tracing of contacts, at the cost of the controversial use of certain surveillance techniques, recommendation of a third dose and vaccination of the youngest.
In recent days, only seven confirmed cases of the new variant have been detected, and the government is already celebrating the success of its policy. On Tuesday, November 30, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the launch of a new English Twitter account to share “The knowledge acquired during the pandemic”. His first
post details the action taken against Omicron. Mr. Bennett’s calculation is not just health: his government is based on a fragile coalition and wants at all costs to avoid a re-containment that would bring the economy to its knees and would do the opposition’s business.
Systemic risk
This firmness has no doubt helped reassure investors, but tourism has been sacrificed. “Morale is at its lowest”, said Oded Grosman, director of the Tel Aviv Hotel Association. “We were very optimistic after the reopening of the borders on 1er November, but here we are back to square one. “
In 2019, a record year, more than 4.5 million tourists came to the Holy Land – the equivalent of about a third of the Israeli and Palestinian population. In Israel, this booming sector represents nearly 6 billion euros in revenue and more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs. “We must trust the health authorities. On condition that we are compensated, and immediately, not in a year ”, Grosman believes. The tourism ministry has already pledged subsidies, but Grosman says the risk is also systemic: “Repeated closures could discourage tourists in the long run. “
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