The number of tourists visiting Israel rose in 2023 compared with 2022, although it plunged in October after war broke out between Israel and Hamas and remained low for the rest of the year, the Israeli tourism ministry said on Thursday.
Overall in 2023, 3 million tourists entered Israel © Mena Today
The number of tourists visiting Israel rose in 2023 compared with 2022, although it plunged in October after war broke out between Israel and Hamas and remained low for the rest of the year, the Israeli tourism ministry said on Thursday.
Up until October, the tourism industry was recovering from the collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel the number of foreign visitors dropped suddenly.
Overall in 2023, 3 million tourists entered Israel, up from 2.7 million in 2022. December was the worst month of the year with just 52,800 tourists, while the number was above 300,000 per month for several months earlier in the year.
Hamas gunmen killed 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7 and took 240 hostage, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded with a bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 22,000 people, according to health officials there.
Reporting by Emily Rose; Editing by Bill Berkrot
Israel has proposed a 45-day truce in Gaza to allow hostage releases and potentially begin indirect talks to end the war, while Hamas, which has already rejected one of its conditions - that it lay down its arms, says it is studying the plan.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that Lebanon is prepared to return to the 1949 Armistice Agreement with Israel, a striking statement that could mark a turning point in decades of hostility between the two countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party accused the head of the domestic intelligence organization on Tuesday of turning parts of the service into "a private militia of the Deep State" and called for him to go, amid a deepening political crisis around the agency.
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