A month of activity, 3 government ministries

Following the Yedioth Ahronoth investigation and in light of the lack of transparency in the committee’s decision-making process and the hidden criteria for deciding who is happy or refusing to return or leave Israel, we tried to understand how decisions are made and the scope of activity of people sitting at the entrance and exit gate.

The committee consists of representatives from the Ministries of Health, Foreign Affairs and the Interior. The committee is chaired by Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Transportation Sheila Adler, along with other government representatives: the representative of the Ministry of the Interior is the director of the Ben Gurion Airport cluster at the Population and Immigration Authority, the representative of the Ministry of Health is Dr. Iris Leitersdorf and the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is Ziv Bilaus. The Ministry of Diaspora also has a representative on the committee.

The committee operates on a continuous working basis every day of the week from the Ministry of Transportation, which is located at Ben Gurion Airport and is active 24 hours a day. Work so that there are 45 employees on duty.

The conditions set for submitting the application are arrival for the purpose of very essential medical treatment that does not suffer delay, arrival at the funeral of a first-degree relative, accident or sudden injury of a first-degree relative hospitalized in Israel and arrival at work of an essential worker in a system essential to the state. The arrival of government delegations and official emissaries will also be approved. In addition, it was determined that return to Israel would be conditional on a negative result of a corona examination in the 72 hours prior to boarding the plane, and a prior commitment to stay at least 10 days in an isolation lodge.

Every day, the committee receives about 3,000 applications that undergo an initial screening by the Immigration and Population Authority, which verifies the details of the applications. The committee members examine the requests that reach them and approve the requests that meet the criteria set by the government. The Ministry of Transport said that “most requests are answered within a few hours, up to 24 hours from the moment the application is submitted. Some inquiries require further clarification or completion of documents and their response time is lengthened. Representatives of the offices. ”

The Ministry of Transportation said that “in the future, the committee will also work to establish a call center for inquiries and public inquiries,” and a source in the Ministry of Transportation stated that there is no confirmation that most of the passengers on the rescue flights are ultra-Orthodox.

David, 49, lives in Frankfurt, Germany, and became homeless after being fired from his job. Although he expressed suicidal tendencies and stated that he was being treated with psychiatric pills, the eight applications he filed were rejected one after another. Only with Ynet’s intervention was his request to return to Israel finally approved. “We need to understand what people are dealing with. There is a violation of human rights here, we have all our rights revoked,” David said in despair. “We are the citizens of the country, and the country is abandoning us. I am experiencing a loss of hope here because of whoever is upstairs. Instead of giving me help – doing the opposite. It discourages me.”

Or Navon, 28, a law student who is in New York and is due to begin his internship in Israel next week, received the committee’s approval to return to Israel, but after his flights were canceled, he was forced to submit a third application – and it was denied. Navon tried to submit another request, and soon received an email stating that his request had been approved, but the document was not accompanied by a document confirming this. Navon again approached the committee and asked to attach the required document – and was surprised to receive that his application was rejected at all.

“I am in New York without a visa because my tourist visa is no longer valid,” he told Ynet. “The state simply makes me an illegal resident in a foreign country. It is simply a huge absurd circus. I have already been approved to return to Israel and then the application is rejected even though I left Israel legally and I meet all the criteria that have already been approved for me.”

Keren, an Israeli who has lived in London for more than 20 years with her Norwegian husband, came to visit her family in Israel in March with her 12-year-old daughter Annie, and with the opening of the UK education system tried her luck to leave the country – but in vain. All her requests to the Exceptions Committee were not answered. “The schools are opening and no one on the committee is answering me,” Keren said. “There’s no one to talk to, no email or representative to check if my application has arrived or not. I see news and understand that it’s happening to everyone, it’s hallucinatory. “If she has an Israeli passport, she must apply – but there is no one to talk to and the system is sealed.”

After a long period in which the omissions of the Exceptions Committee were published in the media, Knesset members sent out announcements and announcements on their next steps on the matter, even though the committee has been active for a month, closing the sky on January 26.

Justice Minister Benny Gantz announced that he would demand that a representative from the Ministry of Justice be included in the committee and that the criteria according to which it operates be revealed. His office said that “Gantz intends to announce at a cabinet meeting on Monday that if no outline is received in which every Israeli who wishes to attend and exercise his right to vote, regulations on Ben Gurion Airport ending at 10.3 will not be extended at all, and it will be Netanyahu’s sole responsibility. To politics before he cares about human life. “

The Minister of Transportation said in response to his remarks that he never demanded that there be a representative on his behalf, but only to the Ministry of Diaspora. “For your information, already on Thursday at a meeting with the ombudsman, the legal adviser of the Ministry of Transportation asked to be a representative of the Ministry of Justice on the committee and so far he has not arrived,” Regev tweeted. To the committee, and will see up close how the committee does a matter-of-fact and transparent professional work. In addition, as Minister of Justice so that you know that the committee is accompanied by representatives of the legal advisers of the relevant ministries that are members of the committee, the legal advice representative of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Transport.

The Yesh Atid party has approached the Attorney General with a demand to reveal the committee’s decision-making process. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that “what works today at Ben Gurion Airport is not an exceptions committee, it is a voters’ committee. Tens of thousands of good Israelis are stuck abroad and the only people who are allowed to enter are the voters of Netanyahu, Litzman and Ben Gvir. “We will appeal to the High Court, turn to the Attorney General and stop this national scandal.”

In Yisrael Beiteinu, they decided to collect signatures for a special discussion in the Knesset plenum. “From what we have seen, the Exceptions Committee is a machinists’ committee that unilaterally discriminates against the public who serve in the army, work and pay taxes,” said Avigdor Lieberman. “What drives this government is just combos.”

Gideon Saar, chairman of Tikva Hadasha, said that “there is no logic in continuing to violate civil rights, and the return of Israelis to the Political Protection Committee should not be conditioned,” while right-wing chairman Naftali Bennett wrote: “Dying, she begs and there is no one to talk to. It is not clear what the criteria are, who determines, what should be passed on to them, when they will give an answer. It is possible otherwise.”

In March, Netanyahu, Transport Minister Regev and Housing Minister Litzman were accused of “selection.” Chairman Nitzan Horowitz said that his party also turned to the ombudsman and said: “Haredim and associates? Inside. Secular? Your problem. In direct continuation of Corona’s treatment according to the rabbis’ instructions, we have now moved to the selection method to introduce Haredi voters and harm the left.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri claimed that this was a campaign against the ultra-Orthodox that stemmed from political considerations: “In the Exceptions Committee, there is no preference for any population,” Deri claimed. “Many ultra-Orthodox come from New York, many secular people come from Frankfurt.”