Jerusalem – It has been a long time since the Israel tourism industry has bloomed the way it has been flourishing since the beginning of this calendar year. The number of tourists arriving in Israel is growing, and it is already clear that if there are no negative development, mainly in the security realm, 2008 will become a record-breaking year in tourist arrivals.

A total of 297,000 tourists arrived in Israel during May – a record month in tourist arrivals in Israel.

This is a 60 percent increase in comparison with last May, and a 5 percent rise compared to the previous record set in May 2000 – the year when the pope visited Israel, which was the best tourism year so far.

About 1.2 million tourists arrived in Israel in the months January through May – a 47 percent jump in comparison with the equivalent period in 2007, and is even higher than the number of tourist arrivals in Israel in these months during the year of the pope’s visit, when tens of thousands of young priests came to Israel from all over the world to accompany him in his visit.

The country from which the most tourists arrived in the first four months of the year was the United States – 189,000 tourists. This is a 23 percent increase compared to the equivalent period last year. In second place is tourism from Russia: 97,665 tourists – an increase of 139 percent.

After Russia, most of the tourists come from France and Britain.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Previous articleWhy my Torah is Crying
Next articleIsrael Gov’t Called A Banana Republic
David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR