Spike in Tourism to Jericho

Maybe it’s the relatively quiet security situation, or perhaps it’s the unusual February heat wave that has lingered over the region since last week, but for whatever reason the number of tourists flocking to Jericho spiked over the past week, reaching 24,000. No one in the tourism industry could say exactly how much of an increase this constitutes, but there is a general agreement that Jericho is the Palestinian tourism hotspot. According to the Palestinian tourism and antiquities police, almost a third of the visitors to Jericho over the past week were foreign tourists, around 12,000 were Palestinians from the West Bank and 4,500 were Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. The spike in tourism is good news for Jericho’s municipality, which is planning a huge celebration in October 2010 to mark 10,000 years of the West Bank city. Channeling the tourists’ holiday money is one of the main challenges to the Israeli and Palestinian tourism sectors, both of whom are vying for the same pockets. Palestinians often complain that the Israelis organize trips for foreign tourists and make sure the money flows into their hotels, guides, restaurants and tourist attractions, in effect depriving their Palestinian peers of tourism profits.
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