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Visitor numbers at Israel’s national parks and nature reserves almost halved this year, thanks to the coronavirus, the Nature and Parks Authority reports in its annual summation.
Total visits dipped 49 percent, from 10.6 million between January and October last year to 5.4 million over the same period this year. Visits by foreign tourists were down by 77% and those by Israelis decreased by 37%, with nationwide lockdowns during the peak visitor periods of Passover and the Fall High Holy Days and limits on visitor numbers outside of lockdowns compounding the hit taken by the tourism industry.
But while humans stayed away, wildlife thrived, with 220 vultures counted this year, compared with 180 last year, and 48 vulture nests counted in 2020, up slightly from 45 in 2019. The year also saw an all-time record number of turtle nests identified along the Mediterranean coast 380, compared with 230 last year.
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Liaison offices between Israel and Morocco will reopen within the next few weeks in Rabat and Tel Aviv, respectively, after being closed roughly 20 years ago, officials from the countries say.
Senior Adviser to US President Donald Trump Jared Kushner praises the efforts of Morocco and Israel to normalize ties, saying “huge strides” were made with a number of bilateral and trilateral agreements that will be signed in the coming days. Six of them will be signed today.
Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, the son of Morocco-born parents, says first in Arabic and then in Hebrew that normalized ties with Rabat have more than just diplomatic value to the hundreds of thousands of Israelis of Moroccan descent.
Earlier today a plan with 219 new immigrants from Ethiopia to Israel landed at Ben Gurion Airport.
The flight was the third to bring new Jewish olim from the African country as part of Operation Tzur Israel.
The operation is set to bring some 2,000 members of the community to Israel.
The immigrants were welcomed by Absorption and Immigration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata and officials from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Jewish Agency, which took part in the effort.
A child on a flight of immigrants from Ethiopia is seen after landing in Israel, December 22, 2020 (Avishag Shaar Yeshuv)
“Operation Tzur Israel is in full swing,” said Tamano-Shata. “Through the end of January, and in accordance with the government decision I approved last October, a plane carrying hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants will land in Israel almost every week, until the 2,000 people who have waited many years to arrive in Israel are reunited with their families.”