Israeli
Passport
Wrote and edited: Yair Bar-Zohar
Date: 30.04.2005
Every citizen must have a passport – even a baby
New passport
You need to go to the ministry of interior
with your updated picture (presence is
required). You should come when it's not the
holidays season and at the morning.
For an adult, the validity of the passport
is 10 years from the day it was given (section
4a). If the validity of the passport is less
than 10 years, you can extend it, as long as the
sum of the extensions is not bigger than 10
years.
For a minor (till the age of 18), the validity of the
passport is only for 5 years, and a parent
presence is required. In case the parents are
not married, both parents need to come.
There is a passport
with 64 pages
designed basically to
business men who fly frequently.
Passport extension
In Israel, extending your passport doesn’t require
payment.
You can also extend it in the airport, but the price
there is very high.
Its open 24 hours a day, not including Saturdays and
holidays, and on Friday, they work till 14:30.
While you're abroad, you can extend your passport at the
local embassy/consulate. In Israel, you can use
the 171 postal service, and a messenger will
bring you the documents for a fee.
In case the passport was stolen or lost, the
renewal in Israel is valid for one year only,
whereas abroad you will receive a pass
certificate (for your information, some
countries don’t allow passing through them with
it, so you'll need to check it) or any other
certificate so you can continue the trip. It's
your duty to inform the local police or the
representatives back at your country and bring
confirmations
that you have lost or, bring two passport
pictures, documents that you
download from their website or at the
consulate/embassy. You are also recommended to
bring a picture of the lost/stolen
passport.
Renewing lost/stolen passport costs money.
Important rule: the passport must be in
valid for at least half a year from the time you
leave Israel's borders. There are countries,
like Turkey and the Czech Republic that require
at least 3 months validity.
In case you have another passport, you are
allowed to carry them both. When you arrive or
leave the country, you must bring the Israeli
passport, and when you arrive abroad, you can
choose which passport suits you.
The guidance is conclusive, and reasonable:
don’t take the passport out of your sight, even
for a second. At the check-in, you can see that
the officer prints the first page at most
places, compares it to the information in the
computer, and sings the passport.
At the front desk in the hotel, for the
convenience of the clerk, he demands that you
leave him your passport, so he could write your
information. First of all, you don’t hand out
the passport to someone you don’t know
(terrorists pay a lot of money for an Israeli
passport). Second, your passport is your method
of identification abroad.
You cannot leave the passport in the
reception when you register, but they can copy
your passport with the following information:
your first and last name, the year you were
born, your nationality, and your passport's
number (it takes no more than a minute). They
can't copy anything else (they don’t need to),
and they must return it to you as soon as
possible. These actions must be made in your
line of sight and you need to watch if they copy
it like the original. The only place it's
allowed to print your passport alike is at the
check in at the airport.
If you don’t
want to stand on the
this principle, give them a copy
(size 1X1 with a passport picture -
laminated), and make
sure you take it back. At the rest of the time,
the passport must be found on you, at all time,
and just in case, store it with your money,
licenses, flight tickets and credit cards in
a pocket's sock
or in an interior pocket you sewed, attached to
your belt.
Recommendation
Scan all the important documents you own
(including the passport) before you fly, and
send it to your private email account, just in
case you might need it (it will be easy to print
it from all over the world).
Today, a biometric signature is available
(reading you palm), and it saves a lot of time
waiting in line for the clerk.
It's recommended to print this article
