Israel to allow Palestinian Americans Entry in Bid for US Visa-Free Access

Israel is set to allow Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank or Gaza Strip to enter Israel legally using its main airport. This is part of preparations needed to get Israel into the US Visa Waiver Program, which would give Israelis free access to enter the US without needing to apply for a visa in advance. The US previously rejected Israel’s request to join the Waiver Program over concerns that some American citizens might be profiled on their way in by security at the airport.

Most everyone gets asked a number of security questions, and many foreigners go through special security checks, but Palestinian Americans have had a tricky issue. Palestinians cannot enter Israel without a permit, but Americans with an American passport can enter without any prior arrangements. One of the tenets of the program is that every American be treated the same by the country absorbing them. It took a while to get Israeli officials to agree that they could promise to treat Palestinian Americans the same, and security officials have expressed concern over needing to conduct security in any other way it does now – which includes a lot of profiling.

Now, Israel is changing this to improve its chances of joining the program. The US is going to monitor the new policy for six weeks before deciding whether to grant Israel visa-free access. The number of Palestinian Americans affected by this change is relatively low, with some estimates saying out of 122,500 and 220,000 Palestinian Americans or American Palestinians, between 45,000 and 60,000 are actually residents of the West Bank.