Israel has long sought to join the United States’s Visa Waiver Program (VWP), allowing Israeli nationals to enter the United States without obtaining a visa. Next month Israel will begin a pilot program that it claims will allow Palestinian-Americans to more freely travel to the country, a move which would fulfill a U.S. requirement that countries that join the program practice reciprocity in visa practices, but critics are wary that the new procedures will lead to any discernible change.
Israel has spent two decades lobbying the U.S. government to become part of its VWP, enabling citizens of certain countries to remain in the United States for up to 90 days without obtaining a visa.
Admission into the VWP could potentially help boost Israel’s economy as tourism and business travel would become easier.
In September 2021, President Biden assured Israeli leadership that he would work towards bringing the country into the program, and a joint declaration put out by Biden and former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid declared that “the United States and Israel affirm their commitment to continue their shared and accelerated efforts to enable Israeli passport holders to be included in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.” But up until recently, Israel’s inclusion seemed like a long shot. Even the vehemently pro-Israel Trump administration expressed skepticism over Israel being admitted. “Specifically, the administration in Washington continues to be concerned about the unequal treatments given to US Muslims at entry points and checkpoints,” a State Department spokesperson told reporters in 2017. “We regularly raise the issue of equal treatment of all US citizens at entry points to Israel with the authorities in Israel.”
Israel has made some strides toward achieving the waiver. Countries admitted into the program usually have a low visa rejection rate, and while Israel has historically rejected a high number of applicants, it recently cleared the hurdle of bringing that number down to 3%.
However, countries that prohibit U.S. citizens from entering are also prohibited from joining the program, and Israel has maintained strident travel rules for Palestinian and Arabs, regardless of whether or not they are U.S. citizens. For example, Israel does not allow Palestinian Americans to travel to the West Bank through Ben-Gurion Airport located near Tel Aviv, and instead forces them to fly into Amman, Jordan, and then travel overland to the West Bank. In addition, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) stepped up its draconian regulations for West Bank travelers in 2022, generating widespread criticism from legal experts. One stipulation requires any foreign national to report the start of a romantic relationship with any Palestinian ID holder within 30 days.
“This is Apartheid in action,” Ahmed Abofoul, an attorney with the human rights organization Al-Haq, told Mondoweiss at the time. “Say, for example, an American Palestinian and American Jew come [to the West Bank] together. The Palestinian would be treated differently from the Jew. It’s all part of the apartheid system. What we are seeing is representative of how Israel applies its apartheid laws to Palestinians everywhere, both in the occupied territory and abroad. Israel targets Palestinians simply for being Palestinians.”
Israel revised the new rules in response to the backlash, but the modifications were mainly cosmetic. For instance, the relationship rule was technically removed, but not the overall constraint. According to the revised rules, visitors still have to report such information to Israeli officials, who ultimately determine the fate of their application.
“Since February, the U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs and I have aggressively engaged with the Israeli government on these draft rules—and we’ll continue to do so in the 45-day lead up to implementation and during the two-year pilot period,” tweeted U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides last year. “I continue to have concerns with the published protocols, particularly regarding COGAT’s role in determining whether individuals invited by Palestinian academic institutions are qualified to enter the West Bank, and the potential negative impact on family unity.” Earlier this year Nides said the country would only be allowed into the program if it adopted reciprocal travel rights for Palestinians, Arabs, and U.S. citizens, but indicated they could enter the VWP as early as July.
Pilot program
Under the proposed pilot program, Palestinian Americans can apply for a 90-day travel pass to enter Israel, but like COGAT revisions, the devil is in the details. Palestinians will still be subjected to the discretion of Israeli security, and individuals previously arrested by the IDF could face complications. The COGAT restrictions on Palestinians visiting the West Bank remain in place, and Palestinians will still need to apply to the Israeli government for travel permits.
“This effort strips the term ‘reciprocity’ of all meaning, gives a U.S. kosher stamp to foreign governments engaging in blatant racism against Americans.”
Lara Friedman, Foundation for Middle East Peace
“This pilot program appears to be an effort by the Biden Administration to bring Israel into the Visa Waiver Program without requiring it to end its systematic profiling and discrimination against Palestinian Americans,” Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman told Mondoweiss. “This effort strips the term ‘reciprocity’ of all meaning, gives a U.S. kosher stamp to foreign governments engaging in blatant racism against Americans, and demonstrates yet again that the rule of U.S.-Israel relations – regardless of which party is in the White House, and even when talking about the welfare and rights of American citizens – is zero accountability.”
“Israel will demonstrate that it doesn’t discriminate against Palestinian-Americans by creating an entirely different process for entry that only Palestinian-Americans will be subjected to,” tweeted Yousef Munayyer. “What a joke.”
Pressure on the Biden administration
While Biden has faced pressure from pro-Israel groups lobbying for the country to be granted a waiver, the administration has also been confronted by critics of the move.
Last month over a dozen Democratic Senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the administration to ensure equal treatment for all U.S. citizens before considering Israel’s admission into the program. “We appreciate the Administration’s stated position that, in order to be eligible for the Visa Waiver Program, Israel must meet the requirements of reciprocity and equal treatment for all U.S. citizen travelers to Israel and/or the West Bank,” it reads. “To date, however, we have seen no statements from the Government of Israel regarding actions or intentions to change current practices and policies that negatively impact U.S. citizens on the basis of their religion, national origin, or ethnicity, especially in the case of Palestinian-Americans or Arab Americans.”
More recently, a group of more than 30 community leaders representing thousands of Palestinian and Arab Americans met with Homeland Security officials to express concern over the waiver. Among the concerns raised were the demands that all American citizens and nationals, including Palestinian Americans on the Palestinian Population Registry, be allowed to travel through Israeli–controlled entry points and checkpoints unimpeded, the end to Israeli travel bans without due process, and an end to the extended detention and interrogation of American travelers.
“Travel bans are yet another tool in Israel’s toolbox to fragment the Palestinian community.”
George Salem, American Federation of Ramallah Palestine
American Federation of Ramallah Palestine’s (AFRP) Government Affairs Committee Co-Chair George Salem released a statement after the meeting. “Travel bans are yet another tool in Israel’s toolbox to fragment the Palestinian community and deny us our right to visit and maintain relationships with our ancestral homeland,” he said. “Before even being considered for the VWP, all travel bans on entering and exiting issued by Israel without due process must end, and past visa denial decisions that were made without due process cannot be used as a basis for blanket denial of entry.”
The meeting was a follow-up to a letter 50 community organizations sent to Antony Blinken and the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in May outlining concerns with Israel’s potential admission into the program.
Chris Habiby, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s (ADC) National Government Affairs and Advocacy Director also issued a statement after the meeting, saying, “Accepting anything less than full and equal treatment of American citizens would be a betrayal of the foundational principles of the Visa Waiver Program. Compromising reciprocity introduces an infinitely increasing, chaotically complex series of conditions that only serves to reinforce Israel’s system of discrimination.”
Israel has expressed consistent optimism on the issue. “After we finish all the necessary legislative procedures, I estimate that Israeli citizens will be able to visit the US without the need for a visa by the end of the year,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters last month.
Lest we forget, Israel’s own Prime Minister personally barred multiple US Congress members (the Muslim ones) from entering Israel and the West Bank and has yet to apologize or even lift the ban on their entry! So as far the Visa Waiver Program goes, Israel can fuck right off until further notice. Period!
When the issue is framed as equality under the law, as human rights, the US political system has firm ground to stand on.
It would make tourism and business travel by Israelis to the U.S. easier. I fail to understand how Israelis’ tourism to the U.S. “could potentially help boost Israel’s economy“.
Visa-free travel to the U.S. is itself a tangible benefit to citizens of any country, regardless of whether it might potentially help boost that country’s economy.
This shows a basic misunderstanding. The relevant thing here is not Israel rejecting visa applicants, but the U.S. rejecting visa applicants who are Israeli citizens. That’s what the 3% figure refers to.
Of course the U.S. doesn’t grant visa-free entry to citizens of countries that prohibit U.S. citizens from entering! I suspect you mean countries that prohibit some categories of U.S. citizens from entering, but what are those categories? Presumably, the U.S. would allow a country in the visa-waiver program to deny entry to Americans who have a criminal record.
“Strident” rules? Strident means loud, or expressed in forceful language. You haven’t actually shared any of that language with us. Maybe you meant “strict”? Where’s your editor?
What about Americans who are not Palestinian-Americans who wish to travel to the West Bank? Are they subject to different rules? You don’t tell us here, and you can’t assume we know the answer. You refer later to “draconian regulations for West Bank travelers“, and these would appear to apply to all American travelers who visit that area. If they don’t, you need to make that clear.
Why not link to your own story, rather than force your readers to look it up ourselves?
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2022/06/apartheid-in-action-the-danger-of-israels-new-west-bank-travel-restrictions/
The “Apartheid in action” that Abofoul is talking about would appear to be about different rules for visitors to Jewish settlements in the West Bank as opposed to other parts of the West Bank.