Israel’s Tourism Minister Haim Katz and his ministry’s director general, Danny Shahar, addressed separate American audiences this week, urging Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel to resume their visits to the country even as the war in the Gaza Strip rages into a fifth month and rocket fire from Hezbollah in the north continues.

Katz arrived in the U.S. on Monday to address more than 4,000 Christian communicators at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Nashville, Tenn., while Shahar spoke to Jewish American leaders in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations’ annual meet-up in Jerusalem.  

“What we are telling people is that if you want to support Israel then don’t just donate, come,” Peleg Lewi, the minister’s foreign affairs advisor, told Jewish Insider by phone on Tuesday. “Israel is now safe for tourists and visiting is the best way to support us.”

At the Conference of Presidents, Shahar’s message was similar, calling on American Jewish leaders to “come with your communities to visit Israel.”

“Your support for Israel takes on new validity and meaning in these difficult times,” Shahar said. “The tourism industry relies on the visits of our Jewish brothers and sisters from around the world, who are visiting Israel right now.”

Israel’s tourism sector was hit hard following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, with most international airlines immediately grounding their flights to Tel Aviv and the majority of the country’s 52,723 hotel rooms suddenly filled by evacuees from the Gaza periphery and the communities along the northern border.

Four months later, while Israel’s internal tourism is showing signs of rebounding, with nearly half the 88,000 evacuees placed in hotels returning home or moving to longer-term accommodations, foreign tourists are still refraining from visiting, largely due to the slow resumption of services by international airlines and the high prices charged by Israeli carriers.

Most international visitors come as part of solidarity missions, or for what has been dubbed “war tourism”; others arrive on religious pilgrimages to see holy sites in Jerusalem, Nazareth and the Galilee, which are beyond the danger zones.

Lewi, who accompanied Katz to Nashville, told JI that the idea that foreign tourism to Israel is totally dead “is completely wrong.” While it is true that the number of visitors dwindled from 15,000 tourists on Oct. 5 to only 26 on Oct. 8, the number of outside visitors has slowly been rising, reaching on average between 2,500 and 3,000 tourists per day.

“We expect these numbers to remain at these levels for the next few weeks or months until the fighting finishes,” he said, adding that the ministry is already doing outreach to convince tourists from Latin America and North America – traditionally the largest source of incoming tourism per year, accounting for almost a third of the total number of tourists – to return to Israel.

Despite the ministry’s goal of rebuilding the battered sector, the reluctance of low-cost airlines and, in particular major U.S. airlines, to resume flights to Israel combined with the exorbitant prices put in place by Israeli carrier El Al, remain a serious barrier.

On Wednesday, United Airlines confirmed it would resume daily nonstop flights from Newark, N.J., to Tel Aviv on March 6, phasing the route back into service beginning March 2. It said it aimed to add a second Newark flight as soon as May, and will reassess resuming routes from Washington, San Francisco and Chicago to Tel Aviv in the fall.

United CEO Scott Kirby wrote on a LinkedIn post on Wednesday that “Last year I indicated we’d be the first U.S. airline to resume flying to Israel and that time has come.”

The airline “conducted a detailed safety analysis in making this decision, including close work with security experts and government officials in the United States and Israel,” United said in a statement. “We also worked closely with the Air Line Pilots Association and the Association of Flight Attendants to develop the protocols to ensure they are safe and well-informed.”

In response to a request for comment from JI, Delta said its flights would likely begin again at the end of April. American Airlines and Air Canada, both popular options for U.S. visitors, have still given no indication of when they will return. Turkish Airlines, which prior to Oct. 7 offered more than 10 daily flights from Istanbul to Tel Aviv and was also popular with U.S. travelers, has also not said if it will resume its service to Israel even after the war.

Lewi told JI that the grounding of U.S. carriers flying to Israel was one of the ministry’s biggest challenges. He explained that the internal decision-making process for the large airline companies was both hierarchical and slow, which was why it has taken so long to resume flights. In addition, the airlines face challenges dealing with the flight attendants’ union in the U.S., which is rigid when it comes to crew working hours and matters of insurance.

“Most European airlines found a solution with their unions and with the insurance,” Lewi said, pointing out how British Airways and Dutch carrier KLM, which is reportedly set to return to Israel in the next month, devised a plan to switch flight crews in nearby Cyprus so their staff would not exceed acceptable working hours.  

“We have not been putting pressure on them to resume flying here,” said Lewi. “We believe that will be counter-effective, but they are losing money.”

Prior to Oct. 7, Israel’s foreign tourism was on track to reach some 3.9 million visitors in 2023, with figures before the war showing that 3.01 million tourists had entered the country, an increase of 12.5% over 2022, when 2.67 million visitors arrived. With the onset of fighting, however, the number of visitors plunged, with just 180,000 arriving in the last quarter of 2023. In January 2024, only 58,000 people entered the country, compared to 257,400 in January 2023.

“If there is one sector of the economy that is always hurt during these kind of confrontations, it is foreign tourism industry,” Michel Strawczynski, an economist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told JI.

“While internal tourism is now doing quite well now, with Israelis coming back to activities and vacations and normal life, foreign tourism has still not returned,” he noted.

Strawczynski, who previously served as the director of the research department at the Bank of Israel, said that the main barrier was the refusal of the major American airlines to return their planes to Israel and the low-cost carriers, which are said to be resuming operations to Israel in the near future.

“Some of the airlines have come back but they are not operating at full capacity because this is one of the industries that is fully dependent on the duration of the war,” he said.

The monthslong pause in U.S.-based airlines flying to Israel has received little public attention in Washington, a marked difference from a previous round of conflict in 2014, when rockets struck near Ben Gurion Airport. 

During that war, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a temporary ban on U.S. airlines flying to and from Tel Aviv. Airlines also independently paused their flights to Ben Gurion. 

Some lawmakers publicly advocated at the time for the ban to be lifted. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused the then-Obama administration of imposing an “economic boycott” of Israel, seeking political concessions from Israel. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), now the Senate majority leader, also said that the FAA had overreacted.

During the current conflict, the FAA has urged U.S. airlines and pilots to “use caution” in Israeli airspace, issuing public guidance to that effect, but has not imposed any binding restrictions.

Israeli carrier El Al is one of the only lines that has flown continuously since the Oct. 7 terror attacks and during the first days of the war, the airline was one of the only options for Israelis returning home from abroad.

Previously owned by the Israeli government, El Al has worked to maintain its service and even made some concessions aimed at helping out during wartime – offering a special price for returning reserve soldiers – but without any direct competition, especially to the U.S., its ticket prices appear to have more than doubled the standard prices of the current winter season.

“El Al has made every effort to maintain their [schedules] and they’ve even added flights, but at the end of the day they are a commercial company,” said Lewi, adding that with the resumption of services to Europe, American travelers now have some alternative options that might bring down the cost of travel to Israel.

A spokesperson for El Al told JI that due to the challenges of the ongoing war, the airline had been forced to adapt “to dynamic situations in both the operational and commercial realms” and that “the shift in consumer behavior since the war’s onset has prompted us to implement a stringent pricing strategy, all while maintaining a comprehensive flight schedule.”

The spokesperson added that travelers looking for “more favorable prices for future flights,” should book tickets further in advance. The company is slated to expand its operations, adding more than 50 weekly flights in response to increased demand, particularly for routes to and from the U.S., said the spokesperson.

Jewish Insider’s Capitol Hill reporter Marc Rod contributed reporting.