Tourism Ministry calls on PM’s office to allow stranded visitors to exit Israel

The Tourism Ministry is calling on the Prime Minister’s Office to allow tourists stranded in Israel due to the Iran war to apply for special permission to leave the country via air travel.

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister’s Office acting director-general Drorit Steinmetz, Tourism Minister director-general Dani Shahar urges the government to allow tourists to leave the country, subject to approval by an exceptions committee appointed by the Transportation Ministry. The exceptions committee is designated to review and prioritize requests from Israeli citizens with exceptional humanitarian and medical needs seeking to return to the country on repatriation flights.

“Tourists find themselves in a state of uncertainty and distress in light of a fierce war. Some stay here beyond their planned stay, sometimes in difficult financial and personal conditions, and report a sense of abandonment and loss of trust in state institutions,” Shahar writes in the letter. “We request that return [repatriation] flights to Israel also be used for outbound flights to transfer tourists from Israel to their countries of origin, as is the case with cruise ships and land border crossings that are overwhelmed.”

“Prioritization is not only a humanitarian and necessary act, but also has great political and image value: those tourists will become ambassadors of goodwill for the State of Israel, or the opposite, if they are perceived as having been abandoned by the country they chose to visit,” the letter reads.

On Tuesday, the Tourism Ministry launched a digital registration form for tourists stuck in Israel due to the war to facilitate their departure from the country once permitted. About 22,000 tourists have so far registered on the form and are seeking to get on repatriation departure flights to leave Israel, the ministry says.