Yesterday, the ministerial legislation committee approved a bill to amend the law on entry into Israel. Under the bill, for the first time, all airlines will be obliged to submit to the Population and Immigration Authority details of passengers before they board a flight to Israel, so that the state will be able to prevent people reaching Israel if it finds this necessary.
The bill, put forward by Minister of the Interior Ayelet Shaked, is expected to receive exemption from the need to lay it before the Knesset and to be voted on in a first reading this afternoon.
Under existing law, anyone who brings passengers to Israel on an aircraft, a ship, or a road vehicle is required to report on the passengers only on entering the country. The Population and Immigration Authority is now seeking to exercise control even before departure.
"Obtaining details of passengers only after the transportation vehicle reaches Israel does not allow for advance examination for the purposes of deciding whether to allow entry, and leaves a short time from when the information is received to when the passengers are at Border Control," the bill states. "The need to make the process of border checks more efficient in order to improve service and reduce waiting times entails bringing forward the transfer of passenger details, in a way that will give a response to the challenges and interests of the State of Israel."
According to airline websites, more than 70 countries oblige the airlines to submit passenger details: name, citizenship, type of travel document and its number and validity, and details of the flight by which the passenger arrives, such as final destination. The change in the rules is connected to the visa waiver for Israeli passport holders that Shaked is negotiating with the US, and is a matter of meeting international standards on information sharing about passengers coming to Israel.
One of the most significant hurdles is the setting up of a mutual database, a requirement of the US authorities. The database will contain information on everyone who applies for a visa (estimated at between 200,000 and 300,00 people annually), out of whom the US will be entitled to demand information on one thousand passengers a year, which will chiefly be those with criminal records who have been convicted of serious crimes. For its part, Israel too will be able to submit enquiries about one thousand US citizens seeking to visit Israel.
Thus, under the new law, if Israel will not allow a passenger to enter the country, they can be prevented from boarding the plane in the first place.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents the world's airlines, describes Advance Passenger Information (API) as vital and useful for governments and border control officers, but it also calls for mutuality, that is sharing of information about passengers between countries that sign up to the regulations. Disclosure of passenger information received a push during the coronavirus pandemic, when medical information was required about passengers concerning vaccination, as a condition of entry into many countries. IATA believes that a process whereby the information is supplied before the flight can make pre-flight procedures more efficient.
The API database could prevent the kind of embarrassing incidents that occur today in connection with passengers refused entry. These are mostly labor migrants trying to enter Israel in the guise of tourists. Those refused entry are transferred to a special compound until they board a plane back to the country from which they took off. When a country refuses to let a passenger enter its territory, the responsibility for flying him or her back falls on the airline. Currently, the Population and Immigration Authority receives the API when the passenger reaches Border Control, and the aim set out in the preamble to the bill is to prevent a passenger who will be refused entry from reaching Israel in the first place.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 21, 2022.
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