Israel: unprecedented number of Israelis seek foreign passports

A significant increase in the number of Israeli citizens seeking to obtain foreign passports or residence visas has been recorded in recent months, Ynet News said on Wednesday.

It was reported that some of the European embassies where applications for passports and visas have been made “link it to the judicial overhaul legislation.” According to one of the embassies, “Others believe the reason to be the high cost of living” in the Zionist occupation state. “There are more and more Israeli families requesting passports, queues have been growing to numbers we haven’t seen before,” it added. “We feel like this has become a phenomenon.”

The embassies of France, the Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Baltic states are among those which have recorded such an increase.

The Spanish Embassy in Israel confirmed that, over the past three years, there has been an increase in applications for Spanish passports due to the country’s new citizenship law that recognises the rights of Jews of Spanish origin as victims of persecution during the Inquisition. Ynet reported the embassy as saying that there has been a noticeable increase in requests for relocation visas and digital nomad visas that allow Israelis to live and work in Spain. 

“There is an increase in the number of passport requests, but we are not aware of the motivation behind this,” the French Embassy told the media outlet, which pointed out that the issue has been discussed in joint forums of European embassies in Israel.

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