Monday, January 29, 2007

Happy New Year Israel!

I was going to write about the New Years Reception, which I attended at the cityhall of Jerusalem, but a different story has come up.

As you might have read already there was an explosion in Eilat, in which 4 people were killed.

It is to early to comment and analyze about the future that this will have on the Israeli politics in Gaza or the Westbank, but rather I want to tell a little about, what I have experienced, when I read this.

First let me say, that I have been in Eilat one month ago. I know the street of the bombing. It is not in center of town and it is not in the tourist area, where all the hotels are located.

What came to my attention, when I visited Eilat, is that there is a total lack of security. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv people are checked, whenever they want to enter a restaurant or the bus station, not so in Eilat. I was suprised to find myself unchecked and walking around with a large backpack in the middle of a shopping mall.

And actually I enjoyed this in a way. Eilat had not been the target of terroristic attacks before, so it felt natural that everything was so relaxed.

Eilat was considered save. Surely the Lebanon War this summer had brought down the number of tourists, but they were slowly increasing again.

This morning the anual Eilat Promotion Travel Agents Conference was held in Eilat. The result of the Conference was a very optimistical statement that the numbers of tourist in the 2007/08 season will increase by 50% again. I think we can revise these numbers.

If Eilat gets the same numbers of tourist next year as this year, then they should be happy about it.

Many groups will cancel their trip to Eilat and many will no longer consider it as a destination of travel.

The real cost of the bombing may be a decrease in revenue through tourism in Eilat, how many tens of Millions that will be, nobody can tell.

I had made plans to visit Eilat in the next few weeks. When I heared the news I thought about cancelling my trip too. But then again... I am not going to cancel.

Not because I think Eilat will be safe again in a couple of weeks, I just don't think Eilat has ever been a safe place. And because I have learned to live with this fear, that wherever I will go, chances are, that some Gazan militant, who is incapable of actually hitting something big, is blowing himself up.

Lets pray (i usually don't pray, but I invite you to), that my next post will be about a more possitiv experience.

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