Israel tightens rules for issuing passports for repatriates

On May 30, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) approved a bill in the first reading, according to which new repatriates will not be able to receive a passport (darkon) in the first year of residence in the country. It allows visa-free entry to 161 countries of the world. Instead of a darkon, now emigrants will receive a special travel document for crossing the border (lesse pass) – with it you can enter 54 countries without a visa. The bill was initiated by Shas, an ultra-religious political party that is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.

The explanatory note says that the law will prevent the use of Israeli passports by persons “entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return, but who maintain only a formal connection with Israel.” In addition, the application of Israeli citizenship law by persons who do not intend to permanently reside in the country may lead to “downgrading the status of an Israeli passport” and also “harm the national security” of the state, the document says.

If the bill is passed, then the document will thus establish a barrier mainly to immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who, using the law on aliyah (repatriation of people of Jewish origin), came to Israel in order to obtain Israeli citizenship in order to then live in other countries. According to the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, last year people from the post-Soviet space provided more than 80% of the migration inflow to the Middle Eastern state, while about 40% of them subsequently returned to their countries.

The previous version of the law was adopted in 2017, it provided for the issuance of darkon immediately after repatriation. In a new version proposed in March by the Israeli Interior Ministry, the amendments effectively return the Foreign Passport Law to its 1954 position.

This is not the first attempt to tighten the rule for issuing passports in Israel. In December 2020, then Interior Minister Aryeh Deri proposed a complex scheme for issuing darkons. According to his project, access to a full-fledged foreign document was opened to a migrant only after 12 months of permanent residence in the country and only for one year. Moreover, if the repatriates lived in Israel for up to five years, of which at least 75% of the period was spent in the country, then the darkon was planned to be issued for five years. But that bill did not receive support from legislators.

Legislators want to encourage repatriates to stay in Israel on a permanent basis, said Lyudmila Samarskaya, a researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at IMEMO RAS. “So they want to cut off groups of people moving into the country for Israeli passports. In addition, a part of the Israeli society has doubts about the loyalty of the newly arrived compatriots, who are only indirectly related to the state,” the expert said.

The current version of the law on foreign passports, according to Samarskaya, was adopted to stimulate the arrival of new migrants to Israel: “The influx of immigrants has really increased in the country. However, this process has caused discontent among the far-right citizens and Orthodox Jews, since both are scrupulous about the issue of the national and religious identity of migrants and national security. It is no coincidence that the bill just passed was initiated by far-right politicians.” The Shas party, which introduced the bill, holds 11 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. She and other far-right parties, Samarskaya continues, are very ideological. “I do not rule out that after the adoption of the law on foreign passports, they will also initiate a bill prohibiting the grandchildren of Jews from repatriating to Israel, requiring such applicants to confirm that they have undergone an orthodox conversion to Judaism. So they strive to maintain their monopoly in the religious life of the country,” the expert concluded.