Tourists trickle back to Jericho

Most Jericho residents, ringed by Israeli army checkpoints and adversely affected by fighting in the rest of the West Bank, have had little or no work for two years.

But now there is a possible sign of hope: Tourists are once again being lured to the Mount of Temptation.

"This is more symbolic than anything else, to show we are open," says Kamel Sinokrot, vice president of Jericho's tourist center, which runs a cable car service that was recently restarted. "We are saying we are still alive."

The camera-bearing Palestinians from Jerusalem riding the car up the parched hilltop above Jericho's citrus groves represent but a tiny fraction of the thousands of mostly foreign tourists who used to come daily before the outbreak of the intifada shut down the tourism industry.

Yet these tourists - and the cash they inject - are at the heart of what the Israeli army says is "the Jericho model," billed as an experiment in easing daily living conditions by loosening strictures on movement.

"There is a clear and direct connection between the degree of security stability and the degree of activity by the Palestinian forces in Jericho and Israel taking steps [to ease strictures]," says Lt. Col Alon Evyatar, liaison with the Palestinian security forces.

The curbs on movement were imposed after the intifada started for what Israel says are security reasons, to prevent attacks on soldiers, Jewish settlers, and visitors. Palestinians say the strict curbs, which they describe as a siege, were, and are, intended to devastate economic life and wear out the civilian population.

The limited, tentative change in Jericho comes as the Israeli army makes its voice heard in the discussion of the "road map" toward a two-state peace solution drafted by the US, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.

A committee of generals and security- establishment officials this week met with William Burns, the US Middle East envoy who is preparing for a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the 1993 Oslo agreement, Jericho, focused on tourism and agriculture rather than politics, was chosen as the experimental launching pad for autonomy in the West Bank.

Unlike other cities, where armed factions have carried out local attacks on troops and suicide bombings against Israeli cities, Jericho has been completely quiet for over a year, according to the Israeli army, and since the start of the intifada, according to Palestinians.

The main step in the current easing has been allowing the East Jerusalem residents and some busloads of Palestinians from other cities into the town, for two years completely off-limits to Palestinians from outside. Jericho residents stress, however, that despite what Israel acknowledges to be complete quiet for over a year, they are still hemmed in by checkpoints, earthen barriers and a huge ditch dug by the army on all sides of the town.

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