Top > Business > 2006 > July > 2006-07-17

Cycles of Middle Eastern Tourism

Lebanon?s tourism industry has suffered as a result of the war that Beirut allowed Hezbollah to start against southern neighbor Israel, but Israel?s tourism season has taken a hit as well. Tourism to the Holy Land has seen a remarkable increase in recent months, after several bad years of fierce fighting and seemingly endless terrorism caused people to cancel travel plans or avoid the region completely. Fearful of the outbreak of a regional war that could metastasize into a World War, the tourists being evacuated by Europe and the United States from Lebanon might not be back an extended time.

Lebanon has spent many years attempting to rebuild from decades of civil war and Syrian occupation, and what was once and presently an Arab vacation spot has once again been turned into a theater of war by factors that were both fully within the power of the Lebanese government and at the same time partly beyond its control. The ?Paris on the Mediterranean? that was Beirut is once again a ?Berlin of the Mediterranean?, an anti-Semitic paradise subject to bombing runs by the air force of the world?s only Jewish-majority country.

Lebanon?s tourism industry may recover more quickly than it has in the past, but if the current hostilities only lead to a situation where all that is built is one day felled again by bombs from a future war that could have been prevented, the next time it may be harder than ever to get people to visit.