TEL AVIV—Israel is hosting the popular Eurovision song contest just over a week after the deadliest clashes with Gaza in years, presenting a test of the country’s allure as a tourist destination amid a period of volatile relations with Palestinians.
This year’s Eurovision contest, which began Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv, is meant to mark an important step in Israel’s drive to become more than just a destination for pilgrims and Holy Land tourists. Instead, Israeli officials want to emphasize its beaches, nightclubs and trendy bars and restaurants, with Tel Aviv as its cosmopolitan centerpiece.
The event includes performers from 42 countries singing original songs in two live semifinal performances and a grand final on Saturday where Madonna is expected to perform. In all, 200 million people are expected to tune in, and about 10,000 visitors have descended on Tel Aviv to watch or participate in related events.
Looming over the contest is the continuing conflict with militant groups in Gaza, which unleashed a barrage of rockets on Israel last week in what some analysts said was a pressure campaign meant to extract concessions from Israel ahead of Eurovision. Israel responded with hundreds of airstrikes. All told, four Israelis and 25 Palestinians were killed, the worst toll since the 2014 Israel-Gaza war.
Pro-Palestinian activists have urged companies, performers and governments to boycott this year’s Eurovision, saying the Mediterranean party mood for Eurovision whitewashes Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza.
Eurovision also kicked off on the first anniversary of the U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem and also close to what Palestinians call Nakba Day, or Day of Catastrophe, referring to Israel’s founding in 1948, when many left or were forced to leave. On last year’s Nakba Day, coinciding with the embassy opening, clashes between demonstrators and Israeli forces left 59 Palestinians dead. Israel said live fire was necessary to protect against efforts to breach the fence that separates Israel from Gaza. This year’s falls Nakba falls on Wednesday, and Hamas on Tuesday evening issued calls for protests at the border on Wednesday.
Israel has pressed on regardless. Hundreds of police officers, special patrol units and private security guards are deployed across Tel Aviv beaches and the Eurovision site. A cease-fire arrangement with Gaza militants has held for over a week, and Israeli officials are working to ensure it holds during Eurovision.
Billboards welcoming Eurovision tourists dot Tel Aviv, while thousands of Israelis and foreign visitors flock to a beachside, 15-acre Eurovision Village with an 85-stall food festival and jumbo screens. The city is running special shuttles from Friday evening and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath when Israeli public transportation doesn’t run.
“It’s a big opportunity, and I hope that it will support our efforts,” Amir Halevi, director general of Israel’s Tourism Ministry, said of Eurovision and its role in a $160 million-a-year marketing campaign to attract European and American travelers seeking sun, sand, history and culture. Mr. Halevi attributed an increase in tourists since 2016 to Israel’s efforts to market to a broader swath of tourists. In 2018 Israel saw a record of 4.2 million visitors.
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry launched a Google ads campaign earlier this month targeting audiences that search for topics related to boycotting Israel. The ads have directed up to 40,000 web users to a site boycotteurovision.net, which describes Israel as “beautiful, diverse, sensational,” borrowing from the BDS acronym of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement against Israel.
Israel says BDS campaigns are anti-Semitic, arguing they single out the world’s only Jewish state while giving a pass to human-rights abuses elsewhere.
“We set up the website to show Israel as it really is,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs.
Israel won the right to hold the event after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won the contest in Lisbon last year. While Israel isn’t geographically in Europe, its broadcaster is part of the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the event. In 1973, Israel became the first non-European country allowed to participate in the contest.
Though Israeli officials had initially pushed to hold the event in Jerusalem, organizers settled on Tel Aviv—branded the Nonstop City by Israeli officials—as having the best setup for the event, which has become the world’s biggest music show. Jerusalem has hosted the contest twice in the past, in 1979 and 1999.
Still, hosting this year’s Eurovision has illustrated the difficulty that Israel faces in drawing nonreligious tourists and has highlighted its lack of infrastructure for big events.
City officials said they expected twice as many visitors to come for Eurovision than have shown up. Portugal, last year’s host city, said it drew about 90,000 visitors—nine times as many as Israel.
Budget-conscious Eurovision travelers have found Tel Aviv’s limited hotel offerings expensive. Others were priced out simply by having to travel all the way to Israel, said Oded Grofman, head of the Tel Aviv Hotels Association.
Tickets have also been more expensive than for past Eurovision concerts, in part because Israel is holding it in a venue that accommodates about 7,000 people—about half as many as recent competitions held elsewhere. Security and other costs have also made tickets more expensive, ranging from about $100 for a rehearsal show to more than $500 for VIP final tickets. Tourism industry officials said it is hard to compare Tel Aviv to a European city, where Eurovision fans can travel more easily. “Tel Aviv isn’t located in Europe, you can’t take a bus or a train here. Many of the tourists won’t be able to buy a flight, have four, five days in a hotel and buy a ticket,” Mr. Grofman said.
In a controversial move, KAN, the Israeli public broadcaster and producer of the event, released an edgy satirical music video to welcome tourists that some Israelis criticized as promoting stereotypes. It included lines about Jews being greedy and saying that Israel is more than a land of war and occupation.
Still, several tourists walking Tel Aviv’s beaches this week said they found the host city to be a hospitable and friendly place, politics and security aside.
“Everybody around the world says Israeli security is the best,” said Vitaly Litvak, a 32-year-old tourist from Kazakhstan. “That’s why we’re not worried.”
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
