Israeli passport
| Israeli passport | |
 The front cover of a contemporary Israeli passport
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 Israeli passport personal-information page
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| Issued by |  Israel |
| Type of document | Passport |
| Purpose | Identification |
| Eligibility requirements | Israeli citizenship |
| Expiration | 10 years after issuance |
The Israeli passport (Hebrew: דַּרְכּוֹן darkon) is issued to citizens of the State of Israel for the purpose of international travel[1] and entitles the bearer to the protection of Israel's consular officials overseas.
Israeli law allows Israeli citizens to hold foreign passports as well, but requires that the Israeli passport be used when entering and leaving Israel. This regulation was introduced officially into law in 2002, after having been legally contested on several occasions.
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[edit] History
The first Israeli passport was issued to Golda Meir.[2][3]
The first Israeli passports bore the inscription: "Valid to any country except Germany" (in Hebrew and French). An Israeli citizen who wished to visit Germany had to ask that the words "except Germany" be deleted from his passport. This was done manually by drawing a line on these words.[4] The inscription was changed into "Valid to all countries" shortly after the signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany (1952).
Until 1980, Israeli passports used Hebrew and French. New regulations issued by the Israeli Minister of the Interior on March 30, 1980, ordered the use of Hebrew and English in Israeli passports. Subsequently the French texts were substituted with English texts.
According to Israeli law, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Iran are considered "Enemy countries" and an Israeli citizen may not visit them without a special permit issued by the Israeli minister of the interior. Therefore, an Israeli who visits these countries, be it with a foreign passport or an Israeli one, may be prosecuted when coming back to Israel. This list was set in 1954, and was updated only once on 25 July 2007 to include Iran[5]
On 1 April 2008, the Israeli government proposed a new revised law which includes a list of 9 countries and territories to be defined as "enemy countries": Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Gaza Strip.
Since 2006 a valid Israeli passport is one of the documents accepted for identification in the general elections. Until then, only an internal identity card was accepted for this purpose. Voting outside Israel is impossible, unless the voter is a member of an Israeli diplomatic delegation, so in practice the new regulation merely enables the use of the passport as a backup on election day in case the internal ID is lost or defaced.
Denial of an Israeli passport is one of the sanctions an Israeli rabbinical court may use in order to enforce divorce upon a husband who chains his wife into marriage against her will (see: agunah).
Biometric passports are being introduced in compliance with United States and European Union regulations. To obtain a biometric passport, "an applicant will have to appear in an Interior Ministry office to be photographed by the special camera which records information such as facial bone structure, distance between one's eyes, ears to eyes and ratio of facial features one from another. One will also be fingerprinted and all this information will be contained in the new high-tech electronic passport." The passports are valid for ten years.[6]
[edit] Description
Israeli passports are navy blue, with the Israeli coat of arms emblazoned in the center of the front cover, below the script "State of Israel" in both Hebrew and English. The word "PASSPORT" is inscribed below the coat of arms, also in Hebrew and English. The inner pages are decorated with the Israeli emblem of olive branches and the seven-branched menorah. The regular passport contains 32 pages. The business passport contains 64 pages.
Israeli passports are valid for up to 10 years for persons over the age of 18. They are bilingual, using Hebrew and English. Since Hebrew is written from right to left, the passports are opened from their right end and their pages are arranged from right to left. Arabic is not used in Israeli passports, even though it is used in internal identity cards.
[edit] Identity information page
Israeli Passport Information appears on page 2, and includes the data as shown in the following order:
- Photo of Passport Holder on the left
- Type (P)
- Code of State (ISR)
- Passport No.
- Surname
- Given Name
- Nationality
- Date of Birth
- Sex
- Place of Birth
- Date of Issue
- Date of Expiry
- Authority (- I.C. Passport at)
All information appears both in Hebrew and English. The information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone. Signature of Bearer is to follow on page 3.
[edit] Passport note
The statement in an Israeli passport declares in Hebrew (read from right to left) and English:
שר הפנים של מדינת ישראל מבקש בזה את כל הנוגעים בדבר להרשות לנושא דרכון זה לעבור ללא עכוב והפרעה ולהושיט לו במקרה הצורך את ההגנה והעזרה הדרושה
The Minister of the Interior of the State of Israel hereby requests all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer of this passport to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him such assistance and protection as may be necessary.
[edit] Countries that do not accept Israeli passports
Algeria[7]
Bangladesh[8]
Brunei[9]
Djibouti[10]
Iran[11][12]
Kuwait[13][14]
Lebanon[citation needed]
Libya[15]
Malaysia (Clearance permit needed from the Ministry of Internal Security.)[16]
Oman[17]
Pakistan[18]
Qatar (Clearance permit needed from the Ministry of Internal Security.)[citation needed]
Saudi Arabia[19][20]
Somalia[citation needed]
Sudan[21]
Syria[22]
United Arab Emirates (Clearance permit needed from the Ministry of Internal Security.)[23]
Yemen[24][25]
[edit] Travel document in lieu of national passport
People who make aliyah (immigrate) to Israel are generally not eligible for an Israeli passport until they have resided in Israel for at least one year. Until the residence requirement is met such new citizens are issued a "travel document in lieu of national passport" (Laissez-passer). Holders of this document may not enjoy the same visa-free access to certain other countries enjoyed by holders of a standard Israeli passport. This also applies to most Arab residents in East-Jerusalem and the Golan Heights who are not in possession of Israeli citizenship.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Embassy of Israel in the US. Consular Section
- ^ Golda (Emery/Weiner School)
- ^ Golda Meir’s life was devoted to building Zionism by Dan Pine (Jewish SF, July 15, 2005)
- ^ Amnon Dankner and David Tartakover, Where we were and what we did - an Israeli lexicon of the Fifties and the Sixties, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, p. 84 (in Hebrew).
- ^ Israeli Book of Laws, volume 2109, page 463 [1] (in Hebrew)
- ^ The Yeshiva World » Israel Moving to Biometric Passport » Frum Jewish News
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ [6]
- ^ SpecData=1&VISA=&page=visa&NA=IL&DE=IR&PASSTYPES=PASS&user=DL&subuser=DELTAB2C
- ^ [7]
- ^ [8]
- ^ [9]
- ^ [10]
- ^ [11]
- ^ [12]
- ^ [13]
- ^ [14]
- ^ [15]
- ^ [16]
- ^ [17]
- ^ Jews of Yemen
- ^ [18]
