In mid-April, Israel stopped the emergency repatriation of Jews with Russian and Belarusian passports. The decision was made by internal order of the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, it was not officially announced, so the press did not immediately learn about what was happening. The Knesset demanded an explanation from the government, and some experts accused the cabinet of not wanting to see repatriates from the countries of the former USSR in Israel.
The simplified system of repatriation, introduced after the start of the war in Ukraine, allowed Russians with Jewish roots to bypass the stage of consular verification in the country of origin. A person could come to Israel as a tourist and already on the spot apply to one of the emergency repatriation centers. According to statistics from the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, 61,180 people moved to Israel from Russia over the past year. Before the war, about 17 thousand people were repatriated annually.
On May 2, an emergency meeting was held in the Knesset, at which deputies demanded that a representative of the Ministry of Aliyah explain why the emergency repatriation had been stopped. Ela Saban, deputy director general of the department, said that in recent weeks the flow of people to emergency centers has dried up and they are no longer needed.
“Emergency centers were the right decision at the beginning of the war and fulfilled their function. Now that the situation in Europe has changed, there is no longer a need for such a number of centers, so we decided to leave only three points in different cities of the country. They will accept arrivals from Ukraine. These are the people who are at risk. There is no danger for Jews in Russia,” Saban was quoted by the Russian-language Israeli newspaper Vesti as saying.
As Alla Gavrilova, journalist of NEWSru.co.il, explained to The Insider, now Russian Jews need to go through the same procedure as before the war in order to repatriate. In particular, the requirement to provide a certificate of no criminal record and certify documents with an apostille has returned.
The Marom company, which represents the Jewish agency Sokhnut in Russia, confirmed to The Insider that you can apply to the agency for free help only after obtaining a repatriate visa at the Israeli consulates. This assistance includes, in particular, the purchase of tickets.
According to the rules from the website of the Israeli embassy in Russia, those wishing to move are required to pass a repatriation eligibility check by providing a list of documents. The procedure includes personal presence, including children of any age.
At the aforementioned Knesset meeting, MK Zeev Elkin called the government's decision to cancel emergency repatriation "shameful." According to him, now the queue for a consular check in Russia has to wait eight to ten months, and the whole procedure can take up to a year and a half. “Everything is being done before our eyes to stop the repatriation. Budgets are being cut, unacceptable decisions are being made, and now they are also closing the “green corridor,” Elkin said.
“We know that this decision was made contrary to the recommendations of experts, the opinion of Nativ and Sokhnut. Therefore, let's call a spade a spade: the government simply does not want to see repatriates from the countries of the former USSR in Israel, ”added MP Avigdor Lieberman.
“The government is lowering the iron curtain in front of repatriates from Russia. And I'm shocked at the form in which this was reported to the Knesset – by an undated document. I demand that all state institutions that have signed the new rules provide us with protocols on how this decision was made in order to verify its legality,” Oded Forer, head of the parliamentary commission on aliyah, summed up.
Israeli political scientist and public figure Mikhail Pellivert, in an interview with The Insider, linked the abolition of emergency repatriation to the priorities of the current government of the country.
“Today, the Israeli government consists of conservative parties, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is a representative of the ultra-religious conservative Shas party. Representatives of the current coalition have explicitly stated that the reception of immigrants from the countries of the former USSR is not their priority. We are talking about the grandchildren of the Jews, that is, the third generation. One of the main promises of the leaders of the current coalition is to change the law of return, according to which children, grandchildren of Jews and members of their families now have the right to move to Israel.
The second reason is that the flow of repatriates coming from these countries has decreased significantly. It is possible that, technically, someone felt that there was no point in leaving this emergency repatriation in place. The war has passed into a chronic stage, and at this stage, many prefer to undergo consular checks on the ground, without coming here and without going through an emergency procedure.
Thirdly, the current government believes that many visitors are not going to stay, and that everyone who wanted to come to Israel for permanent residence has already done so. Today it is just a passport-tourism. This is combined with the reluctance of today's conservatives to accept "non-Jews" in Israel, as they call it. As a Russian-speaking Israeli, I see this as a spit on the one and a half million community of Russian-speaking Israelis.”