Israel is slowly coming more alive with more people filling up the coffee shops and restaurants. Thursday and Friday sees the Carmel Market more crowded. Being a tour guide myself, I notice more groups visiting different sites in Israel. The beaches of Tel Aviv are also getting more crowded and the restaurants along the beach are starting to get more business. Different city centers of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are now bustling with more people, like Dizengoff Square and the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv, and Mehane Yehuda and Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.

Ben Gurion Airport is becoming much busier with all the airlines resuming flights to and from it. With Hezbollah practically defeated, a sustainable ceasefire with Iran, a possible ceasefire with Hamas who is also on the verge of collapse, and President Assad ousted from Syria, Israel is coming very close now to winning the war completely which will inspire more people to come back to Israel and to support Israeli businesses.

The stock market has even shown that many people are placing their bets on Israeli businesses with the Shekel being much stronger than it was from even before October 7^th. Usually, the Dollar to the Shekel is $1 to 3.6 Shekels average. Now the Dollar to the Shekel is $1 to 3.34 Shekels and getting stronger. As someone who has been giving tours in Israel for almost 10 years, I predict that tourism will at least double if not triple from what it was before October 7^th because many pro-Israel people will want to visit and support Israel after the war. Also, the Gaza Envelope has become a major tourist attraction and one of the most popular tours to take since the start of the war. People want to learn exactly what happened on that tragic day and pay their respects to the fallen heroes.

Usually about 4 million tourists come to Israel as of 2022, now I predict at least 7-9 million starting in mid-2026. People don’t realize this but the tourism industry in Israel has been growing each year since its creation. Since 2009, tourism in Israel was about 2 million a year which increased to eventually 4 million in 2015. If not for the war with Hamas in 2015 and October 7^th, the tourism industry in Israel would have been much higher by now.

Several major airlines have already resumed flights to Israel. US carrier United Airlines announced that it would resume flight services from New York to Tel Aviv starting on July 21^st, 10 days earlier than it previously planned. The Lufthansa group which includes Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings has resumed flights already on August 1^st.

A few other airlines have also resumed flights to Israel. These include French carrier Air France which resumed nonstop flights between Ben Gurion and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport since July 7^th. Greece’s Aegean Airlines and Spanish airline Air Europa brought forward a resumption of flights on July 14^th.

The sustained ceasefire between Israel and Iran also prompted other smaller airlines to resume flights to Israel. These include Ethiopian Airlines, Azerbaijan Airlines, Etihad Airways, Flydubai, Bluebird, TUS Airways, and Hainan Airlines. Some other European and US airlines have yet to announce or have postponed their resumption dates to and from Israel. US carrier Delta and Air India delayed their resumption dates to August 31^st. British Airlines and low-cost carrier Ryanair will only resume flights on October 25^th.

Dutch Carrier KLM suspended flights to and from Israel until further notice. Meanwhile Hungary’s low-cost airline Wizz Air is expected to resume flights to and from Ben Gurion on August 8^th.

Written by Jonathan Jacobson