By Lorene Zidani

JERUSALEM, February 20, 2018 (WAFA) – Alfred Raad, a souvenir shop-owner inside New Gate, one of the gates to the walled Old City of Jerusalem, stood outside his shop watching tourists go by without anyone bothering to enter his shop. Clearly he was lamenting the times when the souvenir business was the most thriving and lucrative business in one of the world’s most important tourist destination places – Jerusalem’s Old City.

Raad inherited the business from his father who opened the shop in 1960. His grandfather was also one of the first tour guides in the city since 1910. He has been selling oriental handicrafts and souvenirs to tourists ever since he can remember.

Raad’s shop is one of 450 souvenir shops inside the walled Old City that sell handicraft goods such as traditional Palestinian garments, olive wood carvings and figurines, ceramics and mother of pearl that reflect the history and heritage of the city to tourists.

He and his fellow souvenir shops are these days suffering tremendously from a declining business, not due to lack of tourists and tourism, but mainly as a result of Israeli policies, foremost of which are the unreasonable taxes imposed on them by the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem.

“There is an Israeli economic scheme that targets the Arab businesses in Jerusalem, especially in the Old City,” said Raad. “This affects 90% of the merchants of the Old City, especially since we are small traders and our economic situation is deteriorating. I am afraid most of us might shut down our businesses in the next two years if this situation continues.”

Raad said the Israeli tourist companies, tour guides and buses direct the tourists they work with to the large souvenir shops in return for a hefty commission, which keeps the tourists as far away from the small retailers. “This is not to mention the high taxes that exhaust the modest income we make.”

In the past, Alfred said, “We would make a daily income of between $500 and $1000, but now it is only $50 at best.”

Al-Zahra Hotel, one of the remaining hotels close to Herod’s Gate, another of the Old City’s gates, was built as a house in the early 1920s and then turned into a private school. It was later turned into a hotel.

“Our occupancy rate in 2017 dropped by half to 15 percent, which does not cover the ordinary expenses, especially with the high taxes imposed on us,” says James Shammas, owner and manager of Al Zahra Hotel. “We have 22 employees and we are not able to pay their salaries.”

The tourist market sales has fallen by 90% since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 and has continued to decline in recent years due to the policies of the Israeli occupation, according to Jawad Abu Omar, head of the Oriental Artifacts Association in Jerusalem. About 80 shops in Jerusalem’s Old City have shut down since.

The setback in the Jerusalem tourism business was also exacerbated by the construction of the Israeli Apartheid Wall, which was completed in 2006, and Jerusalem was deprived of its surrounding markets. The city was also deprived of its visitors from Ramallah, Bethlehem and other cities, thus losing its status as the commercial center of the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to a 2013 report by UNCTAD, “It is not only the number of active hotels that has been fluctuating during the decade that followed the second intifada, but also the number of guests, which plunged by a staggering 86 per cent, down from 217,041 guests in 1999, to a low of 29,497 in 2002. However, the last four years witnessed a noticeable recovery with the number of guests reaching a 10-year high in 2009 (219,494 guests).”

Yet, small souvenir shopkeepers still feel the negative impact of the Israeli occupation policies and practices on their business, which they say aim at forcing them to leave the city and move elsewhere, which would create an indisputable Jewish majority in the holy city Israel has occupied in June 1967.

Many of the obstacles to the city’s tourism development are specific to the status of East Jerusalem as an occupied territory unilaterally annexed to Israel. Palestinian Jerusalemites are considered “permanent residents” under Israeli law, and only as long as they maintain their physical presence.

The differential legal status of Palestinian Jerusalemites compared to Palestinians under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction and compared to Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem implies further impediments, especially with regard to housing, employment, taxation and representation.

M.N./M.K.