AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The Israeli-controlled port city of Haifa, once a major business and tourism center for the regime, has been turned into a ghost town amid repeated missile and drone attacks by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah.
Reports published in the Israeli media on Tuesday suggested that Haifa was no longer a bustling city and a tourist hotspot in the north of the Israeli-occupied territories but rather “a city of missiles and drones”.
Local officials described the situation in Haifa as disappointing as they pointed to a sharp rise in hotel closures in the Mediterranean port which has prompted owners of businesses to start migrating out of Israel.
For weeks, the Israeli military has been calling on people in Haifa to remain indoors and not venture out unnecessarily.
It comes amid a growing number of attacks by Hezbollah on Haifa. The group fired some 100 rockets from southern Lebanon at Haifa Bay, an area that hosts major industrial units and businesses.
The Israeli government has repeatedly claimed that it has been protecting Haifa from Hezbollah’s missile and drone attacks through the use of its modern air defense systems.
However, tourist arrivals in Haifa have completely stopped while only a limited number of foreign ships continue to dock at the port to load and unload cargo.
Israel’s Aaron Institute for Economic Policy has estimated that the damage inflicted on the tourism industries based in northern occupied territories amounts to $3.5 billion.
The figure also includes damage seen in Galilee, a region that used to receive some 1.5 million tourists each year before the cross-border confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah began in October last year.
Hezbollah’s mass-scale attacks on Haifa began in late September this year after Israel escalated its aggression on Lebanon and launched a ground invasion into areas in the south of the Arab country.
Hezbollah has vowed to continue to fight Israel until the regime fully stops its aggression against Lebanon and ends its more than a-year-long massacre of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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