Canceling Vacations and Seeking Shelter: How Trump's Zigzags Affect Israel
Conflicting statements from US President Donald Trump regarding a potential deal and threats from Iran are forcing Israelis to adjust their vacation plans. While some are canceling trips, others are choosing to ignore political volatility despite the ongoing stress and uncertainty.
Shortly after putting the whole world on war alert, US President Donald Trump announced at the end of the week that "the outlines of a deal have been agreed upon" - and the next day he said on Air Force One that negotiations with Iran would be officially resumed. However, in the time that passed between the belligerent statement and the conciliatory statement, the dream vacation that Danit and Ofer Amar had planned changed location: from Athens to Hadera.
"All week we checked options for where it was worth flying, and in the end we decided to fly towards the end of the week to Athens," says Danit. "We almost booked, and boom - the tweets of Trump began, who is of course managing us too. Then came the threats of Iran against Israel and we understood that Athens probably would not happen." She describes: "We were afraid that we would not be able to return, and then, instead of a short vacation, it would turn into a long and expensive adventure. The problem is that you also cannot know if Trump is serious or not. I no longer believe him."
Unlike Danit and Ofer, many Israelis estimated that Trump was just talking, and they were right. No less than 95,000 passengers passed through Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, a high number even for the summer season. Foreign airlines, which until recently canceled flights, operated as usual. Yesterday, the first plane of the German airline "Condor" even landed in the country, launching a line of direct flights from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv.
Nitzan and Ofir, parents of two children, were supposed to fly this week for a vacation to Cyprus. "My husband was in the reserves for over 400 days and we are dreaming of this vacation," says Nitzan. "And here, on Saturday there were again headlines about fear of missile fire from Iran because Trump, for the umpteenth time, announced that he intends to go to a big war. This time I told my husband: 'I don't care about anything, we continue with our plans as usual and don't disappoint the children'. We understand that we are being 'led on'. You don't need to cancel plans because of every zigzag of Trump."
Another region negatively affected by Trump's statement is the north, which was experiencing an impressive recovery in July. "If in May and June we were at about 30% of the number of visitors compared to the years before the war, July reached 80% of the amounts we were used to seeing," said Inbar Shlomit Rubin, the training manager at the Agmon Hula of KKL. "The big test is August: will we pass it without a war? It is impossible to continue living in the shadow of uncertainty and manage the schedule according to Trump's tweets."
Danit Bitan, CEO of the "Pastoral" hotel in Kfar Blum, notes: "This cloud of war has very much overshadowed the tourism business. People are afraid to book vacations in advance and the nature of the bookings is 'from now to now'. The Galilee suffers from uncertainty and it will be difficult for it to recover in this situation."
Whoever pays a price at the systemic level for Trump's indecisiveness is the IDF - and the reservists. Shahar Sela, the wife of a deputy company commander in the reserves, spent the night after Trump's threats without sleep. "We don't have a protected space," she says. "I had to prepare a suitcase and travel north to his family in case a war starts. My little one even asked: 'Mom, why is Dad going to the reserves again? There are no sirens'. How do I respond to that?"
