Bethlehem – Ma’an – While the world and the United Nations Tourism Organization celebrate World Tourism Day this year under the slogan “Tourism and Peace”, and many countries have rushed to announce new tourism achievements and figures in terms of the number of tourists, hotel stays and financial revenues, Palestine has been suffering for about a year from a brutal Israeli aggression targeting the Palestinian people, land, capabilities and cultural heritage, which has certainly had a profound negative impact on incoming and local tourism in Palestine.
Minister Hayek stressed that Palestinian tourism has witnessed a recovery, or rather a revival, after international tourism recovered from the Corona pandemic, and the number of incoming tourists and their accommodation in hotels began to increase every day and approach the normal situation. It was expected that the year 2024 would achieve new record numbers due to the increasing global demand for Palestine until Israel began its aggression on Gaza and the West
Bank, which is still ongoing until now, which led to the destruction of a large part of the Palestinian cultural heritage and to a significant halt in tourism, as the tourism sector incurs daily losses estimated at about $2.5 million.
Al-Haik said: Despite all the obstacles surrounding the Palestinian tourism sector, we are determined to rebuild and advance this sector, which is considered Palestine’s oil. Hence, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities’ teams are working to adopt and build an integrated set of global marketing programs and plans that will work to ensure the return of tourism activity in Palestine immediately after the end of the aggression.
The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities stressed the importance of the archaeological, historical and touristic sites that Palestine embraces, as it embraces the third of the two holy sanctuaries, the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and it embraces the Church of the Resurrection, the Church of the Nativity, the Ibrahimi Mosque, and many other unique archaeologic
al and touristic sites in the world.
Despite the huge challenges and lack of financial resources, the Ministry is working side by side with its strategic partner, the private tourism sector, and some international institutions to attract incoming tourism even in these unusual circumstances, as well as to prepare to target new tourism markets, especially Islamic tourism and solidarity tourism, as well as to benefit from this time in preparing promotional tourism content, restoring and rehabilitating some archaeological sites, and training and rehabilitating workers in the tourism sector.
In the practical framework of preserving antiquities in Palestine, Al-Haik confirmed that the Ministry has restored many archaeological sites and transformed them into archaeological tourist sites that can be visited, which will contribute to visiting Palestine’s basket of tourist sites for tourists coming to visit Palestine. In addition, the Ministry has succeeded, in partnership with all relevant parties, in obtaining many
international decisions related to the protection of religious and archaeological sites in Palestine. These decisions culminated in Palestine’s success in registering the archaeological Tell Umm Amer in Gaza (Saint Hilarion) as a Palestinian site on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of tourists arriving in Palestine until October 2023 amounted to about 2.4 million tourists, compared to 3.5 million in 2019, and the number of hotel nights amounted to about 1.9 million overnight stays, compared to 2.8 million nights in 2019.
Source: Maan News Agency