JERUSALEM — Usually, it’s a good thing to get your store on television.
Unless, of course, it’s in the background of the oft-played footage of a tandem of suicide bombings in a crowded Jerusalem pedestrian mall, sending a plume of fire skyward and hundreds of panicked Israelis screaming in every direction.
That, unfortunately, was the case with Rami Ahdout’s store last month. Ahdout has stood behind the counter of his trinket and Judaica shop, Vizon, in the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall for a decade, but he’s never heard the bell on the door tinkling less than it has now.
“Every two or three months it gets worse and worse. And these last two to three months have been the worst,” said the soft-spoken Ahdout with the quiet, tight-lipped frustration of a bettor whose horse has run last all day. “Business is down 70 to 80 percent from 2000 to now.”
As expected, business from tourists has gone the way of the phrase “peace process.” But in the past couple of months even Israelis have been hesitant to visit the pedestrian mall, which continues to be Jerusalem’s target of choice for suicide bombers and gun-toting terrorists. Many are now afraid to set foot in the once-crowded hangout, but even more are suffering from the nation’s first recession in nearly 40 years, an economic downturn that has resulted in an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent.
In desperation, Ahdout recently hung a sign in front of his shop promising big discounts for any Birthright Israel participant — even though he knew full well the tightly monitored trip would never be making a pilgrimage to any public places, let alone one the whole world watched erupt into fiery chaos in recent months.
“We knew, we knew, but we thought maybe some of the kids would run away,” he said. And a few have. But “less than 10 have come by. If they could come, oh it would help. But people don’t come here anymore. In 1999 and 2000 we had hundreds” of Birthright travelers.
Ahdout’s shop is one of the few sites in Jerusalem that Chen Michaeli can’t see from the ninth-story conference room at the aptly named Dan Panorama hotel. But the hotel chain’s vice president of development can sympathize.
Normally at this time of year, his Jerusalem hotel would be bustling at 80 percent capacity. Now it’s at about 25 percent, and just about a ghost town on weekdays. Things have gotten bad enough that the prospect of housing participants in the Birthright Israel trip — hundreds of rambunctious teenagers and young adults brimming with pent-up energy due to not being allowed out of the hotels at night — is seen as a godsend.
“Just a year ago there was an international medical convention,” said Michaeli with a pained grin. “There were 2-, 3-, 4,000 visitors. The whole city was packed with them.”
Things could be worse, however. No less than five Jerusalem hotels have bit the dust since the start of hostilities. One, Michaeli points out, has been converted into a soldiers’ hostel.
Michaeli expects the Dan to break even this year — but, upon further prodding, he admits the hotel isn’t doing so through the most pleasant of methods. He anticipates the Dan will earn around $10 million this year — about half of a respectable total — but has made up the difference by cutting costs. One way it has done so is by letting go more than half its employees, downsizing from 220 to roughly 100 since September.
A bartender, who preferred that his name not be used, has seen a number of his co-workers shown the door since the intifada put the crimp in the hospitality industry. Though he’s worked in the hotel for several years, he managed to survive the cutting of “the new people and the oldest.”
“Some people didn’t care about it, but some were so sad they lost their job,” he said. “But I care very much for my job. This is so hard for us. I am an Arab, but I am still afraid of suicide bombers.”
With the hotel more or less devoid of guests during the week, the bartender often finds himself with “nothing to do.” Instead of mixing gin and tonics or working on the buffet, he frequently spends his days, hammer in hand, “repairing holes.”
“We need peace here,” he said, clenching both fists. “The government must make peace, both sides must make peace. We need to live in peace in Jerusalem.”