Middle East & Africa | Together in the Sinai desert

Arab tourism to Israel is still thwarted by politics and Palestine

Enduring hostility makes Arabs loth to visit the Holy Land

This picture taken on September 27, 2021 shows an aerial view of residential lots and luxury hotels in the Hadaba district of the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images) — At the water’s edgeImage: Getty Images

Apr 20th 2023|SINAI

The indigo festival near the seaside southern foot of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula sounded jolly enough. Its organisers promised five days of “psychedelic music, sun and sea” in a mood of peace and love. Yet the fiesta has proved controversial, largely because the show was being run by Israelis. The Egyptian branch of a global campaign to boycott and divest from Israel denounced the organisers as “racist Zionist occupiers”. After Israeli police recently clashed with young Palestinians near Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, the festival was axed. Israeli-Arab tourism is still blighted by politics and tensions over Palestine.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Wanderers in the desert”