This is awful

58 national parks, nature reserves to be closed
"The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has decided to close Masada, Ein Gedi, Tel Dan, Caesarea, Beit She'an and other sites throughout the country due to a lack of funds ... The majority of funding for the authority comes from income from visitors, particularly tourists, but the various sites the authority maintains around the country have been hard hit by the drop-off in tourists from abroad and from local tourism due to the security situation.
Authority officials warned that the closure of the sites could cause permanent damage to nature spots, antiquities, and other national treasures.

I know government agencies tend to make things out to be worse than they really are, because they know that if they ask for say 80 million they'll probably get 20 million. It's still sad. They talked about it a lot on the radio, today, speaking to experts who pointed out possible damage. They said that the famous sites are the money makers that help them fund all their other activities such as:
Protecting baby turtles that hatch on the beaches and have to get to the sea from poachers and so on; stopping people from stealing sand from the beaches and dunes to be used in construction sites and thus ruining the shore; stopping poaching of the already scarce wild life (common among certain foreign workers from South East Asia); preventing forest fires, to name just afew of their important activities.