Travel in Palestine: a West Bank trip through crossings others control

How visitors reach the West Bank

The State of Palestine sets no visa conditions of its own for foreign visitors; the only conditions are those of Israel's visa policy, and Israel controls access to Jerusalem and the West Bank. Entry to the occupied territories needs a valid passport. The Tourism in Palestine article records that some travellers, among them United States citizens suspected of being Arab or Muslim or of supporting organisations critical of Israeli policy, have been questioned at length, delayed or refused entry.

There is no working airport in the territories. The airport at Atarot near Ramallah has been closed since 2001, and Yasser Arafat International Airport in Gaza was closed by Israeli order in October 2000 and has been unusable since bombing in 2002. Travellers fly into Israel, or into Queen Alia International Airport in Amman and cross the Jordan by the Allenby Bridge, also called the King Hussein Bridge. For West Bank Palestinians the bridge is the only designated crossing for travel abroad.

Inside the West Bank the map is a patchwork. Areas A and B, under Palestinian administration, are divided into 227 separate pieces, 199 of them smaller than 2 square kilometres, and Israeli-controlled Area C lies between them and holds almost all of the Jordan Valley and the Judaean Desert. Britannica records that from 8 October 2023 the Israeli army blocked the entrances to many cities and villages, and the World Bank's update of May 2026 describes tighter movement controls within and between governorates.

What draws pilgrims to Bethlehem

Bethlehem lies 10 km south of Jerusalem, and its draw is the Church of the Nativity, built over the cave that tradition since at least the 2nd century marks as the birthplace of Jesus. UNESCO inscribed the church and the Pilgrimage Route to it on the World Heritage List in 2012. The route runs from the old entrance of the town near King David's Wells along Star Street, through the old gate called Qos al-Zarara, to Manger Square, and the patriarchs of the three churches that share the Church of the Nativity, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Custody of the Holy Land and the Armenian Church, walk it at their separate Christmases each year.

Around the town the Tourism in Palestine article lists Shepherd's Field outside Beit Sahour, Solomon's Pools at al-Khader and the Salesian monastery and winery at Cremisan in Beit Jala. About 700,000 international tourists visited Bethlehem in the first eight months of 2012, and 60,000 Christian pilgrims came to the church at Christmas 2007. The same article puts the share of tours to the territories made by Christian pilgrims, mostly from North America and Europe, at about 67%.

The town has changed around its visitors. Christians were 85% of Bethlehem's population in 1947 and about 40% by 2005, by the Tourism in Palestine article's figures, and tourism is its main industry.

Which towns repay a longer stay

The State of Palestine has six properties on the World Heritage List, all cultural, and five are in the West Bank. They give an itinerary of their own.

Hebron's old town is a Mamluk town of local limestone, built between 1250 and 1517 around the Ibrahimi Mosque and Tomb of the Patriarchs, a compound of the 1st century over the cave held to contain the tombs of Abraham and his family, and a place of pilgrimage for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jericho, in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea, has its own Palestinian visitors; UNESCO describes its mound as a permanent settlement by the 9th to 8th millennium BCE, beside the spring of Ain es-Sultan. At Battir the listing covers valleys of stone terraces, irrigated by channels from springs, planted with vegetables, vines and olives.

Nablus has an old city and a reputation as the commercial centre of the West Bank, and is the home of knafeh and of Nabulsi soap. Ramallah is the administrative centre, and Jenin, at the northern edge of the West Bank, is described in the Tourism in Palestine article as 4,000 years old. Hisham's Palace at Khirbet al-Mafjar, the caves and monastery of Qumran and the Monasteries of the Jerusalem Wilderness are on Palestine's tentative list for UNESCO.

East Jerusalem's Old City, divided into Armenian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish quarters, holds the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Haram al-Sharif with the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall. Israel administers it, and Israeli rules govern access to it.

Which monasteries lie in the Judaean wilderness

East of Bethlehem and Jerusalem the hills drop into the Judaean Desert, and the desert holds the monasteries. In the Byzantine period over 140 Christian monasteries were built in Palestine and the Judaean wilderness became a centre of hermit life. The History of Palestine article names three that survive: Mar Saba, still in use, Saint George's Monastery in Wadi Qelt and the Monastery of the Temptation near Jericho. The Monasteries of the Jerusalem Wilderness, El-Bariyah, are on Palestine's tentative list for UNESCO, as is the site of the caves and monastery of Qumran by the Dead Sea.

Wadi Qelt is also the old way down. Britannica describes the Judaean plateau falling abruptly to the Jordan Valley, reached with difficulty along wadis such as the Qelt, and the valley floor dry and hot apart from irrigated land and oases such as Jericho.

What the Dead Sea shore offers Palestinians

The north-western quarter of the Dead Sea lies inside the West Bank. Measured on the 1967 line, the Palestinian shore is about 40 km long, and the West Bank article cites a World Bank estimate that about 6 km of it could carry tourist facilities of the kind Jordan and Israel have built on their shores, adding some 2,900 jobs and about $126 million a year in value added if Israel allowed it.

It is also the only seaside open to people from the West Bank, and access is not assured. In 2008 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel complained to Israel's Supreme Court that Palestinians were often turned away from the beaches at their one access point, the Beit Ha'arava checkpoint on Route 90, and argued that the restriction served the settlers who run the beach concessions.

When the seasons suit a visit

The rain falls between October and April, mostly in the hills, and the summer is dry. The West Bank hills are cooler than the coast and the rift; the Jordan Valley around Jericho and the Dead Sea shore are dry and hot. Gaza's August temperature averages about 26 °C, by the Tourism in Palestine article's figure.

The calendar matters as much as the weather. Christmas is kept three times in Bethlehem, once by each of the churches that share the Church of the Nativity, and each time a patriarch walks the Pilgrimage Route. Some church tours add a service component in autumn, helping with the olive harvest. Ramadan brings its own street food, qatayef sold by vendors in the larger towns.

How visitors move between towns

Roads are the only option inside the territories. The West Bank and Gaza Strip together had 4,686 km of roads in 2010. Between 1994 and 1997 the Israeli army built 290 km of bypass roads for settlers' traffic, and the road system, checkpoints and obstacles shape how far a visitor can go in a day. The West Bank article cites an estimate that 92 to 94 cents of every dollar spent on tourism to the area goes to Israel, and a former Palestinian tourism minister put Israel's share of pilgrim revenue at 90%.

Walking has its own following. In 2012 a Dutch diplomat published a guide to 25 walking routes in the West Bank, and the walking group he founded had grown to more than 200 people, out nearly every weekend. Israeli settlers in the West Bank run their own guest cabins, known as zimmers, for a separate clientele. Palestinian guides and transport companies have not been able to enter Israel since 2000.

What became of tourism in Gaza

Gaza was a resort before 1967, with hotels and casinos and visitors from Egypt. Few came after that war, and a recession in Israel in the mid-1980s reduced tourism there almost to nothing. Gaza City's attractions then were the bazaar at Palestine Square and the beach, with its hotels, restaurants and fish market. Israeli Arabs and Jews came to the beaches, and the town had nightclubs. Before the second intifada visitors could take a taxi through the Erez crossing or fly into Gaza's airport; after it neither route remained. A few hotels opened, Al Deira in 2000 and the Blue Beach Resort in 2015, but the Tourism in Palestine article records essentially no tourist flow to Gaza since 2005, and Egypt closed the Rafah crossing indefinitely in August 2013. In 2001 the Palestinian Authority had marked four stretches of the coast, from Jabalya and Beit Lahya to Rafah and Khan Yunis, for beach tourism.

The war since October 2023 put the strip beyond travel altogether. UNESCO inscribed the Saint Hilarion Monastery at Tell Umm Amer, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, on the World Heritage List in July 2024 and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The World Bank estimated in May 2026 that 92% of Gaza's establishments in industry, services, trade, tourism and hospitality had been destroyed or damaged.

How the numbers have risen and fallen

Tourism in the territories has tracked the conflict. It collapsed after 1967, recovered in the 1990s after the Oslo Accords and fell by 90% during the second intifada, from 2000 to 2006. In 2007 Palestinian hotels recorded over 300,000 guests, half of them in East Jerusalem. Jericho's tourism rose by 42.3% in the first three quarters of 2008, when crossings between Palestinian areas and Israel became less restricted. In 2010, 4.6 million people visited the territories, 2.2 million of them from abroad, against 2.6 million in 2009, and in the last quarter of 2012 over 150,000 guests stayed in West Bank hotels, 40% of them European.

The two tourism ministries have tried to work together through a joint committee, with little result by the Tourism in Palestine article's account. Israel controls the movement of tourists into the West Bank, and in 2009 its Ministry of Tourism removed the West Bank and other Palestinian areas from its promotional materials. In 2013 the Palestinian tourism minister of the day named the occupation as the main obstacle to tourism becoming a large source of Palestinian income.

The World Bank's update of May 2026 describes tourism as a small share of output but a seasonal source of income for thousands of households, and names Bethlehem and Jericho as towns whose hotels, restaurants, transport and small shops depend on pilgrim and leisure travel, which regional conflict can reduce.