Hundreds of Jews from Europe and Israel have arrived at Ghriba, known as the oldest synagogue of Africa, on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba, for an annual pilgrimage amid tight security measures.
Police and soldiers deployed along the main road to Ghriba, with checkpoints set up to search vehicles.
Around 2,000 people are expected to take part in the three-day event, according to Perez Trabelsi, a leader of the small Jewish community in Djerba.
The Ghriba pilgrimage, which begins on the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’omer, used to attract up to 8,000 pilgrims but attendance slumped after a suicide attack claimed by Al Qaeda killed 21 people in April 2002, most of them German tourists.
Following the attack, and before the 2011 revolution that toppled long-time strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the annual event attracted around 3,000 visitors on average. After his ouster, which ushered the Islamist Enahada party into power, attendance dropped even further, with only 500 Jews talking part in the pilgrimage to Djerba in 2013. The pilgrimage, which was suspended in 2011 due to instability during the post-revolutionary phase, takes place this year amid a controversy surrounding the authorization of Tunisian entry permits to visitors with Israeli passports visitors, which Trabelsi said had had a negative impact.
"People are afraid, and have cancelled their visit, including some people coming from France who have relatives in Israel. They cancelled their plans because they couldn't come together," he said.
Some in Tunisia have argued that granting visas to Israeli citizens would be tantamount to normalizing relations with the State of Israel.
A group of Tunisian politicians has argued that the Deputy Interior Minister for Security, Ridha Sfar, was effectively promoting "normalisation" with Israel by allowing Israelis to visit Tunisia.
Like most other countries in the Arab world, the North African nation does not recognize the Jewish state.
Sfar and Tourism Minister Amel Karboul were the target of unsuccessful censure motions last Friday, which were finally withdrawn shortly before lawmakers in the Islamist-dominated parliament were to vote on them.
Held every year on the 33rd day after Passover, the pilgrimage is the heart of the Jewish community of Djerba which dates back 2,500 years. Jews were such a significant part of life on the island that it was once known as "the island of the kohanim," after the high proportion of members of the Jewish priestly caste, or kohanim, within the Jewish community there.
Tunisia's Jewish community has seen its numbers fall dramatically in recent decades - from an estimated 100,000 at the time of independence in 1956 to only approximately 1,500 today - due to a wave of violent anti-Semitism which forced nearly one million Jews to flee Arab countries throughout the Middle East in the twentieth century.