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Tel Aviv [Israel], January 8 (ANI/TPS): Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reported that 3.2 million foreign visitors entered the country in 2023. This was more than the 2.9 million in 2022, but still a great deal less than the 4.6 million in 2019, the last year before the COVID crisis lockdowns.
The low number was obviously caused by the war in Gaza that began with the Hamas massacre on October 7. Statistics showed that the numbers of foreign visitors almost reached the 2019 levels as of October 6 and plummeted after that. To date, the vast majority of foreign airlines have not restarted flights to Israel that they cancelled after the war in Gaza began. Israel saw virtually no foreign tourism over the Christmas holiday, which is usually a big time for tourism. In the month of December, a low number of visitor arrivals to Israel was recorded totalling just 53,300 (35.3 per cent of which were visitors from the United States), of which 52,800 were tourist arrivals and 500 were single-day visitors (no arrivals of cruise passengers were recorded in this month). There were a total of 228,800 single-day visits during 2023, as opposed to 176,300 in 2022 and 353,000 in 2019. (ANI/TPS)
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