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June 28, 2002
Financial future not bright
Resolve keeps Israelis going but support needed from tourists.
BAILA LAZARUS EDITOR
Israel
Sarah Altman sits on a bench in the shade of a tree near Tel-Aviv's
Carmel Market. She is not unaware that this locale has been a favorite
target for suicide bombers in the past year and a half due to the
abundance of shoppers and pedestrians. But she is far enough away
from the crowds that she feels safe. Besides, she already did her
shopping – in the morning, when crowds were fewer.
Altman, who has lived in Tel-Aviv for 42 years, has changed her
shopping habits but relatively little else. Her life still continues
as it has every morning, despite a sadness she feels about the tenuous
situation.
"Because soldiers and children are killed, there is low morale,"
she lamented. "But life here is good."
The only real difference she sees in her immediate surroundings
is that deals are to be had everywhere.
"People are giving away things, so cheap, because no one is
buying," she said. Indeed, shops on nearby Nahalat Binyamin,
normally swarming with lunchtime shoppers, garner little attention.
This scenario repeats itself in the shuk – the Arab
market – in the Old City of Jerusalem. While hawkers have always
badgered tourists to look at their dishes, rugs, jewellery and other
gifts, the pestering has turned into pleas.
"I will have to close my shop soon," said one vendor.
"Offer any price, any price," said another.
Their statements are not hyperbole. Wool carpets, for example, that
would have fetched hundreds of dollars in "normal" years,
can be had for under $100.
And while some tourists can still be seen making their way through
the narrow streets, they are few and far between and nowhere near
the numbers one would expect to see in the high season.
The irony is that the Old City may be one of the safest places to
be. Because of high security and fewer crowds, possibly, there has
not been a major incident there since the rock-throwing which took
place on the Temple Mount more than a year and a half ago.
Just a kilometre or so away, in the Giv'at Oren district of Jerusalem,
student Jay Wohlgelernter lives in an apartment with a few friends.
He made aliyah to Israel two years ago and has not regretted his
decision. After setting up a table for Saturday night dinner on
a rooftop patio, Wohlgelernter pointed out the cities of Bethlehem
and Gilo in the distance. He could hear the gunfire that took place
in these areas in the last few months, but said he did not feel
unsafe because of it.
Though his home is located just a few blocks from the Moment Café,
where a suicide bomber killed 11 Israelis in March, the impact of
the violence on him has been less than one might think.
"Right after a bomb goes off, people don't go out," he
shrugged. "But after a while, you don't think about it."
Wohlgelernter's words were borne out by scenes of restaurant-goers
at Sbarro's Pizza. The eatery was the target of a suicide bomber
last August but was rebuilt a month later.
The management of the restaurant said about the reconstruction,
"The Jerusalem Sbarro branch has a symbolic significance that
goes beyond the commercial aspect, and we will do everything to
rebuild the branch." Renovations cost an estimated $470,000
US.
Although a certain level of complacency does take hold of many residents
in Jerusalem, there is no doubt that their patterns of behavior
have changed. Wohlgelernter and his friends said that people are
attending more parties at private homes, rather than going out to
clubs; Ben Yehuda Street is no longer a hang-out for them, at least
not on a Saturday night, as it used to be; and they do keep a watchful
eye out for people on the street around them.
A plea for tourists
Though residents of Jeru-salem and Tel-Aviv have adjusted their
lives to account for the possibility of a terrorist attack, the
fact that they have been able to do so has not impacted on tourists
enough to make them feel comfortable about coming to the region.
The images many people have of Jerusalem, for example, are those
that they see in the media of events actually taking place in areas
that are hours away. As pictures of tanks rolling into Bethlehem
or Jenin or Tukarm make the news, the entire state of Israel is
perceived as a war-torn country.
But this is not Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Incidents that do take
place, such as a bombing at a restaurant, leave their mark on the
victims and their families, but Israelis refuse to react as if their
whole world is being destroyed; and refuse to allow Palestinian
terrorists to determine how they will live their lives. Within 24
or 48 hours of an attack, the streets are back to normal and virtually
no evidence of any violence can seen.
"People must come and see for themselves that people are living
their lives," said Ofir Gendelman a spokesperson for the Israeli
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "This is why tourism is important
– on the morale side, as well as on an economic side."
Tsion Ben-David, director of North American Operations for the Israel
Ministry of Tourism, emphasized how coming to Israel can make an
even bigger difference than making another donation.
"We will not need your donations if we have, as in normal years,
another million Jews visiting Israel because more than 120,000 families
are making their living from tourism," said Ben-David. "Every
12 tourists is a salary for a newcomer from Russia or Ethiopia."
Back in the Old City of Jerusalem, Rabbi Ya'akov Moshe Schlass of
the Lechaim Institute is pensive about the meaning of Israel in
the lives of Jews worldwide.
"Israel is not the past, not the future, it's the perfect present
tense," he said. "It's the place to come to recharge spiritual
batteries.
"Every Jew who comes here, comes to rectify the bad-mouthing
of the spies," he said, referring to chapter 13 in Numbers
where scouts sent to explore Israel come back with poor reports.
Schlass warned that if Jews are not willing to show solidarity with
Israelis by visiting the state, the same threat that endangers Israel
may, some time in the future, come back to haunt them.
"If [tourists] don't come here, it'll come to them," the
rabbi said.
Baila Lazarus has just recently returned from a press trip sponsored
by the Israel Government Tourist Office.
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