UPPER GALILEE — Keren and Nadav Bocobza made the six-hour round trip from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon with their four children to spend a day in the north and “support local businesses.”

They said they hadn’t been in the area since before October 7, 2023, when during the Hamas onslaught, their house was damaged by rocket fire. They were evacuated for six months and then moved back home.

“We call on all people in Israel to come and spend their money here in the north,” Nadav said. “We have a beautiful country.”

The Bocobza family is not alone in its desire to support the north: Every day, people call the staff at Kfar Blum Kayaks to find out if the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah is about to launch another rocket or missile barrage on northern Israel. With its location just under four miles from the Israeli-Lebanese border, their concern is understandable.

“People ask if it’s safe because they’re still scared about coming up to the north,” Eyal Greenwald, 48, the company’s marketing manager, told The Times of Israel on a recent morning. “I tell them, ‘Come to the north.'”

At the visitors’ center, tourists were starting to purchase tickets for rafting trips on the Jordan River. Tens of thousands of visitors flocked to the Upper Galilee each summer before October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 into Gaza.

But after almost three years of war — including a year of near-daily Hezbollah bombardment from Lebanon that emptied much of the northern region before residents began returning in early 2025 — visitors remain reluctant to come back.

Local businesses are struggling to survive with tourism down by as much as 50 percent. Foreign visitors are absent, and Greenwald said, “A sense of uncertainty hangs over us.”

Behind him, the Jordan River flowed with a steady current along a three-mile trail lined with enormous, shady trees.

“There’s plenty of water in the river, but not so many visitors,” Greenwald said. “I understand their concerns, but I don’t have solutions. How can I build shelters along the river?”

Constant threat: the ‘new........

© The Times of Israel