History
The first Israeli passport was issued in 1948 to Golda Meir.
The first Israeli passports bore the inscription: "Valid to any country except Germany" (in Hebrew and French). An Israeli citizen who wished to visit Germany had to ask that the words "except Germany" be deleted from their passport. This was done manually by drawing a line through these words. The inscription was changed into "Valid to all countries" shortly after the signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany (1952).
Until 1980, Israeli passports used Hebrew and French. New regulations issued by the Israeli Minister of the Interior on March 30, 1980, ordered the use of Hebrew and English in Israeli passports. Subsequently the French texts were substituted with English texts.
According to Israeli law, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Iran are considered "Enemy states" and an Israeli citizen may not visit them without a special permit issued by the Israeli minister of the interior. Therefore, an Israeli who visits these countries, be it with a foreign passport or an Israeli one, may be prosecuted when coming back to Israel. This list was set in 1954, and was updated only once on 25 July 2007 to include Iran.
On 1 April 2008, the Israeli government proposed a new revised law which includes a list of 9 countries and territories to be defined as "enemy countries": Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Gaza Strip.
Since 2006 a valid Israeli passport is one of the documents accepted for identification in the general elections. Until then, only an internal identity card was accepted for this purpose. Voting outside Israel is impossible, unless the voter is a member of an Israeli diplomatic delegation (or members of the Israel merchant marine at sea during the time of elections), so in practice the new regulation merely enables the use of the passport as a backup on election day in case the internal ID is lost or defaced.
Denial of an Israeli passport is one of the sanctions an Israeli rabbinical court may use in order to enforce divorce upon a husband who chains his wife into marriage against her will (see: agunah).
Biometric passports are being introduced in compliance with United States and European Union regulations. To obtain a biometric passport, "an applicant will have to appear in an Interior Ministry office to be photographed by the special camera which records information such as facial bone structure, distance between one's eyes, ears to eyes and ratio of facial features one from another. One will also be fingerprinted and all this information will be contained in the new high-tech electronic passport." The passports are valid for ten years.
Read more about this topic: Israeli Passport
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