After
the Intifada
Amidst the new tense calm, Israelis who rely on tourism are still
reeling from the bloody fighting of the past five years.
By Debra Kamin
Deep in the hills of Safed, Israel, down a winding cobblestone street
lined with jewelry shops and artists’ galleries, Yair Mor can be
found at his loom. In soft Hebrew, he guides an apprentice through the
techniques of the warp and the weave. Today, they have a new challenge:
Mor, whose handwoven tallit and chupot often reflect the colors of the
Galilee region he so loves, has become fascinated with the fabrics of
Africa. Now he and his girl protégé are attempting to make
cloth out of Madagascaran raffia.
The stringy beige paper keeps tearing, but Mor isn’t fazed. He’s
happy just to be at work, knowing that his labor of love will probably
yield a sale or two. A few months back, he wasn’t so sure.
“If the summer of 2000 is our starting point,” Mor says in
barely accented English, “and we are at 100 percent [sales] then,
within ten days of the intifada, we were down to five percent.”
Mor and his wife Orna opened their shop, Canaan Gallery, in 1992. Together,
they weave tapestries, scarves, wedding canopies and challah covers, all
made from hand with painstaking detail. Although Safed is a town of less
than 30,000 residents, it is famous for its history of mysticism and magical
beauty.
The Mors had no trouble carving out a living for themselves and their
children, selling their creations to the hundreds of tourists who daily
filled Safed’s narrow walkways and alleys.
Then 2000 came, and with it, the bloodiest Palestinian uprising in history.
As daily suicide bombings took the headlines, tourism to Israel all but
ceased. Tour guides took jobs as cab drivers. Hotels closed entire floors.
And Mor, like the tens of thousands of Israelis depending on foreign customers
for their livelihood, began seeing days and weeks pass without a single
customer.
When asked how he made it through those five years, he is blunt. “We
didn’t cope,” he says.
“We had piles and piles of stuff and nothing to do with them…in
the beginning we hoped it would end soon. But we had to lay off everybody.”
In the 1990’s, Canaan Gallery had been a three-story building in
another part of the city. Mor had to give it up – he now works out
of two rooms, one a small shop and the other a cramped studio. But even
after downsizing, ends still weren’t being met.
“What I decided to do,” he says with a wry smile,
“was blow all my savings. I took my kids and my wife and we went,
six months traveling through Central America.”
It wasn’t an arbitrary decision. Mor had traveled to Central America
before, at the conclusion of his Israeli army service. It was there, watching
the local women fashion dazzling blankets from piles of colored string,
that he first fell in love with weaving.
After half a year, Mor brought his family back to Israel, in hopes that
the situation would improve. It didn’t.
Not long after returning, Mor was invited by one of his
American customers to sell his products at a Boston Jewish convention.
Although he was hesitant to travel again so soon, money was getting tight.
Within hours of setting up shop in the United States, it was clear he
had found his market. In order to survive without Americans in Israel,
Mor realized he would have to bring Israel to the Americans.
Through a series of local connections, Mor was brought to San Diego in
2001, where he helped create the first of several annual “Israeli
Artist Marketplace” events.
As part of the UJF and San Diego Center for Jewish Culture’s celebration
of Yom Ha’atzmaut, the works of over 25 Israeli artists were displayed
and sold at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center.
“Nobody was traveling to Israel at the time,” says Jodie Kaplan,
who in 2001 was serving as United Jewish Federation’s Israel and
Overseas Committee co-chair. “People wanted to buy—they really
spent a lot of money.”
Over the next few years, Mor would spend a great deal of time in the U.S.,
often bringing his wife over to join him at local craft fairs and artisan
galleries. The Americans he met were only too eager to support him.
“Over the years a lot of us who traveled to Israel had a lot of
friends in the industry, whether they’re guides or shopkeepers or
artists,” Kaplan says. “We tried to help as best we could.”
After five horrific years, a tense calm now holds on Israeli streets.
“Business is starting to pick up,” Mor says. “I’d
say we’re at about sixty percent.”
It’s true that tourists have been returning since Ariel Sharon and
Mahmoud Abbas signed a ceasefire agreement last February, but levels are
not what Mor or other Israelis would hope. It may not be safety fears
that are keeping the foreigners away, though. Many would-be-tourists are
just itching to visit Israel, but they simply can’t afford the plane
ticket.
Arie Sommer, Israel’s commissioner for tourism in
North and South America, wants desperately for this to change. Sommer
is a squat man with an easy smile and the dry humor typical of so many
Sabras.
For him, the recent tourism upsurge is more than just good news. It is
the end of a nightmare.
“2000 was supposed to be the best year ever for the
State of Israel, because it was the millennium,” he says. “A
lot of Christians were supposed to come to Israel from all over the world,
and in October, we started with the problems.”
He explains that in 2001 the situation worsened. A country that had previously
been enjoying about 2.7 million visitors a year suddenly saw its numbers
drop to nearly 800,000. The airlines acted accordingly, and cut flights.
Now, with demand way up (Sommer hopes to hit that 2.7 million mark again
by the end of 2006), flights are sold out – and fares are skyrocketing.
“We don’t have enough seats, not from Europe
and not from the United States and not from Canada,” Sommer says,
“to accommodate all the tourists.”
In Israel, where even the construction workers have their own ministry,
a bureaucratic squabble is taking place. In what has been called the “open
skies war,” the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Foreign Transportation,
and El Al Israel Airlines have been feuding over the number of flights
allowed to operate between Tel Aviv and North American and European cities.
North Americans looking to travel to Israel this year seemingly had several
options. There was the standard of El Al, which flies from New York to
Tel Aviv. There was also Continental, which flies twice a day from Newark,
and Air Canada, with several flights a week from Toronto. If, like many
tourists, they were hoping to include a stop in Europe to break up the
long trip, there were a handful of European carriers making flights from
New York to the Holy Land, with a layover in their country’s capital
city.
The problem, however, was finding an empty seat.
Until recently, El Al was enjoying what is called “designated carrier”
status between New York and Tel Aviv. Flights into Israel on airlines
other than El Al are severely limited, thanks to legislation by Israel’s
Ministry of Foreign Transportation.
“The reason is to protect Israeli carriers, which is a legitimate
reason,” says Sommer. “But they also claim that there is not
a demand for more seats, and we know this is not true.”
Things have been shaken up, though. No doubt influenced by the resurgence
of tourism, the Israeli government recently decided to grant Israir airlines
“second designated carrier” status.
Most would-be Israeli tourists have never heard of Israir, an airline
featuring denim and polo-shirt clad flight attendants and tongue-in-cheek
security announcements. They are something like the Southwest of Israeli
carriers, originally founded to fly the domestic route between Tel Aviv
and Eilat and only recently picking up a few New York to Tel Aviv flights,
usually during the packed summer season. While they may not offer the
sophistication or luxury of El Al’s jumbo jets, they offer something
that should be far more enticing to many consumers: fares dipping as much
as $500 below El Al’s.
“The result of this has been the beginning of a price war, in which
El Al has advertised lower fares to match Israir’s,” says
Ari Marom, a Canadian who made aliyah thirty years ago and now serves
as the Ministry of Tourism’s director of North American operations.
“This will undoubtedly affect the other carriers operating on this
route, as well.”
Those who wish to fly on U.S. airlines can also look forward to lower
prices: Delta recently announced they will begin flying non-stop from
Atlanta to Tel Aviv, as of March 28.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s unheard of,” Sommer says
of the current price of an airline ticket to Israel. Even as a commissioner
for tourism, he had to shell out $1300 to fly home from New York on Continental
recently.
“Because there’s such pressure from New York, for seats, the
airlines can put any price they want, and people will buy it,” he
says. “But we don’t want it. The Ministry of Tourism would
really like…to increase the competition and bring down the airfare.”
Israel is more than ready to see the floodgates of tourism reopen. Su
Newman, a public relations official for Dan Hotels Corporation, Israel’s
largest luxury hotel chain, reports that the number of tourists staying
at Dan Hotels increased 39% over the last calendar year. She credits the
Dan’s success to its continued marketing and renovation programs,
even during the hard years of 2001-2004.
“Our figures are higher than other hotels throughout the country,”
she says, “and this is the result of the investment that we continued
to make during the difficult period.”
Even with revenue way down, Newman says that the Dan saw
an opportunity for improvement. With floors full of empty rooms, renovation
could go forward without inconveniencing guests.
The Dan’s attitude paid off: not only do the 12 Dan hotels offer
seaside views and top-of-the-line service, they also feature such up-to-date
amenities as full business lounges and wireless internet in every room.
The King David Hotel (the Dan’s flagship property) was just named
one of the top 700 hotels in the world by Conde Nast Traveler.
It’s not just sleeping arrangements that have recently improved,
either. Many tourist sites, finding themselves terribly quiet in the midst
of all the chaos, took the downfall in visitors as an opportunity for
progress.
At Caesarea Harbor, alongside ancient race tracks and the stone ruins
of Herodian palaces, a modern national park has been carved out on the
beach. A sparking new restaurant, an interactive video room showing the
area’s rich history, and several historical walking trails are only
a few of the attractions. An underwater park, where tourists can snorkel
or scuba dive to the sunken ruins of Herod’s harbor, opens this
month.
“This no such thing like this in the world,” says Yael Zehori,
the harbor’s manager. “It’s the first time it’s
been done.”
In the Golan, the Spa Village of Hamat Gader, known to Israelis for its
popular hot springs, is promoting its new “lovers’ retreat,”
where couples wearing white robes and slippers enjoy private mineral baths,
secluded bungalows, and European-style spa treatments.
In Jerusalem, a light rail system, powered entirely by electricity and
crossing the city from Pisgat Ze’ev to Mt. Herzl, is expected to
be up and running by the end of this year.
Like they always do, the people of Israel have managed to keep creating
in the midst of so much destruction. Even Yair Mor, who had to travel
the world in order to feed his family, is proud.
“This is my home, my country,” he says, fingering a tapestry
woven with cotton from the Hula valley. “To [leave] would have been
to raise a white flag and surrender.”
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