Americans of all faiths were urged today to visit Israel by Israel Ambassador Abba Eban. “Now that travel to Israel from the United States is possible without limitation we hope to greet thousands of Americans of all faiths during the coming week,” Mr. Eban said in a statement.
“In particular we hope that the Passover and Easter seasons will bring a great wave of visits and pilgrimage and that those who had intended to come to Israel and had made other plans will now find it possible to revert to their previous intentions. I am confident that Americans of all faiths will use to the full this opportunity to manifest their affection and interest in Israel,” Mr. Eban concluded.
Gottlieb Hammer, president of the American-Israel Shipping Company, Inc., expressed satisfaction today with the lifting by the State Department of its ban on travel to Israel and said that the move augurs well for the 1957 tourist season now getting underway in Israel and Western Europe. The American-Israeli Shipping Company are the U.S. representatives and passenger agents of the Zim Israel Navigation Company, Israel’s largest shipping firm.
Mr. Hammer pointed out that during the period of the travel ban which was imposed last October, the Zim Lines continued to maintain their regular Israel-flag passenger and cargo services from New York to Gibraltar, Naples and Haifa. The twin luxury lines, SS Israel and SS Zion kept to their schedule of sailing every three weeks without interruption, he said, and the company’s modern passenger-carrying freighters maintained their monthly service from U.S. Gulf and South Atlantic ports.
“There will be a fast come-back of American tourists to Israel now that the five-month travel ban has been lifted,” Joseph Ilan, director of the Israel Government Tourist Office in New York, stated today. “There has been increasing pressure from among the traveling public and the travel trade to visit Israel this spring and later this year,” he said. “The number of inquiries about travel facilities received by the Tourist Office has been rapidly mounting in the past few months and has been greater than during any comparable previous period.”
During the past three years American tourists visiting Israel numbered 55,000, constituting 42 percent of the total number of visitors in Israel. Expectations are that proportionatly large numbers of Americans will visit Israel before the end of this year. El Al Israel Airlines will introduce next July its new turbo-prop service with a fleet of new 133-seater Bristol-Britannias, cutting travel time by almost 50 percent.
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