Israeli children born abroad are automatically citizens, yet some are locked out

In addition to shouldering the burden of navigating family politics and bureaucracy to meet Israeli entry requirements, Erez feels that the state’s demands are shifting, making it difficult for families who want to comply.

“Since April, there’s not once been any clarity about what actually will make it possible to travel to Israel with the children. The rules and regulations constantly change and contradict,” he said.

Unofficially, Israel has recently encouraged parents to return to treating their children as tourists. But the rise of Omicron – the latest and most heavily mutated variant to date – makes that solution hollow for now, since Israel on Sunday night introduced a ban on all tourists for at least the next two weeks.

Batya Sachs, the lawyer, says that the government itself has implied that families should return to their original method of bringing their children in as tourists.

According to Sachs, “on October 31, we got the notification from the government, and even though it wasn’t said specifically, basically what they’re saying is that Israel has opened up now to tourists. So, for [children] who have been vaccinated, they’re able to come now as tourists. [The government] didn’t say in this word, they used a lot of words, but that’s what we understood.”

Adina F., a Washington, DC-based Israeli with a non-registered American daughter — who similarly preferred not to give her full name — received similar indications from the DC Embassy and already successfully tested this theory.

“At some point, [the embassy representative] said: ‘If your daughter is vaccinated, follow those instructions and you’ll be fine. And she doesn’t need a permit.’” Adina’s daughter entered Israel last week on her foreign passport.

A prior legal challenge to the registration requirement, brought to the Supreme Court in the summer of 2020 by a father who couldn’t bring his American-residing daughter into the country to visit him, did not create a precedent to enable other children to enter Israel.

The Population and Immigration Authority says it has received hundreds of related appeals since the start of the pandemic, but the actual number of families affected is likely well into the thousands. A popular Facebook group for families trying to bring in their non-passported children has almost 6,000 members, and with close to a million Israelis residing overseas, the number of affected families is conceivably higher.