Tourism to Israel declines by 10 percent

A recent Israeli report revealed that 14,200 Arab tourists visited Israel in the first five months of 2014, Quds Press reported on Monday.

Israel’s Central Statistics Bureau said in a statement that an estimated 7,500 tourists came from Jordan, 5,200 from Egypt and 1,500 from Morocco. This is out of an estimated total of 1.259m tourists, including 756.5m from Europe.

The largest number of tourists who visited Israel came from the United States, followed by Russia, then France.

Compared with the number of tourists who visited Israel in the same period of the previous year, the rate of tourism has declined by 9.7 percent.

According the report, Israeli tourism is still suffering from the repercussions of the latest Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.

The high number of tourists coming from Jordan is most likely due to the large number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan who have relatives living in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In Morocco, thousands of Jews with Moroccan origins make regular trips to Israel.