Palestine Travel Forum

Please advise,

My wife who is Australian, and myself who is travelling on both a Canadian travel document as well as Palestinian passport, would like to go visit family in Palestine this summer. I am not sure as I have not been back for 10 years to Palestine WB, if its ok for me to go to Tel Aviv airport using either Canadian travel document, or Palestinian passport. I have both Canadian residency as well as UK. I know I will be question as expected, however I do not know how much I will risk using this airport Tel Aviv. We will only be in Palestine for 2 weeks and have our return ticket. Is it best to go via Jordan or ok for me to go to Tel Aviv with my Australian wife?


Any advice of people recently visiting WB like Palestinians that hold residency in other countries would be most appreciate.

From the Candian government site at http://www.voyage.gc.ca/dest/report-en.asp?country=135000#6

Palestinian Canadians

Canadians with Palestinian nationality are urged to be aware of border control policies affecting entry and exit into and from Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They may be denied entry into Israel, either at Ben Gurion International Airport or other entry points. Those who are allowed entry to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will no longer be able to obtain permits to re-enter Israel for the purposes of departing via Ben Gurion International Airport. Such travellers are required to exit the West Bank via Allenby Bridge Border Crossing, and exit the Gaza Strip via Rafah Border Crossing. For subsequent trips, such travellers who have exited via Allenby or Rafah at their last departure will not be allowed to re-enter via Ben Gurion International Airport. They will be required to enter overland, so that there is no travel through Israel.

Canadians with Palestinian nationality should also note that, during periods of heightened civil unrest, the Government of Israel may place demographic restrictions (such as age and gender) on who may and may not cross through the border points identified in the above paragraph.

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You should probably contact your Foreign Office for more detailed information before traveling

I advise you call the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and seek their advice, as this kind of thing changes all the time.

I think that you are likely to be denied entry into Israël if you land at Ben Gurion, or be denied access to the airport once you want to travel back to your country. The latter happened to some Palestinians with US passports. Seems that the only solution is to land in Amman, Jordania and to enter and exit through Allenby. Be aware that you are likely to be asked to wait for several hours at the border.

If you were just going to be within the green line and don't want to go on to Gaza or the West Bank, then you could probably go in and out of Tel Aviv. But we have never done that. We have always travelled via Amman and the Allenby Bridge, even when we were visting Jerusalem. Since your destination is the West Bank then best thing is to go via Amman and take a taxi to the Allenby Bridge. There is a special place in Amman where you go to get the taxi. What is really important is not to let the Israelis stamp your passport directly. Coming or going. It won't just stuff you up for travelling to the rest of the Middle East. Try places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and a host of other developing and more developed countries where their citizens are not allowed to travel to occupied Palestine.

It's better to go in and out on the Canadian passport, because Allenby Bridge has two types of crossings - one for people who only have Jordanian or Palestinian passports (humiliating and takes days sometimes - I don't recommend it) and another for the foreigners. And don't buy in Palestine more than it is easy for you to carry on and off buses. On one occasion, at the border, on the Israeli controlled side, we were told to get off the bus but leave out belongings on them. We removed all of ours and an Israeli girl in military uniform (who was clearly enjoying her role as enforcer and bully of the underdog), really laid into us. I refused to put anything back on the bus because some of the people with us said this was the point where the Israeli guards got on the bus, rifled through everyone's belongings, and helped themselves to anything they wanted.

It would be helpful if you made sure you had someone to meet you from your family on the other side of the crossing. We crossed once and my father in law had been held up at a checkpoint, so wasn't there to meet us. We waited for hours and had problems with the Israeli soldiers, even though we had already crossed to the West Bank.