Residency Abroad

The military defines the category of those who can adjust their status as following:
A Child of Immigrants: a person with an Israeli citizenship, who was born abroad or has left Israel for the purpose of immigration accompanied by his/her parents before reaching age 16.

Sometimes Israel allows those holding dual citizenship to serve in the military of the country they live in and doesn’t require enlistment to the Israeli Military in addition. It seems that this is determined in agreements between the states in question.

Why is it important to adjust your status as a child of immigrants?

If you are not exempt from military service and will not act to adjust your “child of immigrants” status vis-a-vis the military, the law will treat you like any other citizen designated for military service. You will receive an order for preliminary military checkups and later will be assigned a date for enlistment. If during this period you’ll stay abroad and ignore it, shortly after your enlistment date, the military will see you as a deserter. From that moment, if you try to enter Israel, you may be detained and sent to military prison (read on to see what can be done in this situation). In addition, Israel will not agree to renew your Israeli passport. If you don’t have citizenship or permanent residency in your country of residence, you may be deported to Israel and sent to military prison when your Israeli passport expires.

It is important to note that only a small number of children of immigrants who arrived in Israel for the first time after their enlistment date were sent to jail. However,  when there is a repeated attempt to enter Israel without adjusting one’s status, the situation may have a different outcome.

If you have status of permanent residency in your country of residence, no one will try to arrest you and to bring you to Israel by force. Seemingly, you can keep living your life without disruption. But in most cases, you would still have family and friends in Israel, whom you could not visit without risking imprisonment. We ran into cases in which people could not visit dying relatives because they emigrated from Israel without adjusting their status vis-a-vis the military. It is a risk which will resume at least into your 40s and perhaps later. Legally, it is not clear what would happen to a deserter who would try to visit Israel after the age of exemption from reserve duty, as defined by Israeli law. 

Please note that you cannot give away your Israeli citizenship without an approval of the military that you don’t have to enlist, unless you were born abroad and haven’t reached the age of 15. We have even seen a case in which the military tried to insist on the conscription of a daughter of an Israeli citizen who was born abroad though her parents renounced her Israeli citizenship in her childhood, and despite there being no legal justification for conscription in this case.

How to adjust your status vis-a-vis the military, and what does it mean in reality?

Every Israeli citizen designated for security service, who is permanently abroad in any status, is required to report to the consulate near their current place of residence upon reaching the age of 16 and 4 months, in order to adjust their status. It is done by filling a form and presenting documents attesting that one’s center of life is abroad, such as an official letter from a school.

The conditions under which one can hold a status of child of immigrants

• Parent residence: If one of the parents of a child who emigrated lives in Israel, the child has to prove he/she is under the custody of the parent who lives abroad in order to be recognized as a child of immigrants. If both parents live in Israel, he/she will not be recognized as one. If one of the parents of a recognized child of immigrants returns to live in Israel, the status holder has to prove he/she is under the custody of the parent who stayed abroad in order to keep this status. If both parents return to Israel before the status holder turns 18 (if born abroad) or 21 (if born in Israel), the status will be revoked and he/she will be required to enlist in the military. A child of immigrants who emigrated before the age of 13 will be required to enlist if his/her parents returned to Israel before he/she turned 18.
  
• Visits in Israel: Children of immigrants will not lose their status when visiting Israel, as long as the total duration of the visits does not exceed 120 cumulative days in any calendar year. In addition, they have the right for a “year of stay”, which is a one-time visit for a period of 121 to 365 days, while staying abroad 60 days before the visit and another 60 days abroad after the visit. In addition, under certain conditions, children of immigrants are allowed to study in a university in Israel without losing their status (more details here). Please note that the immigrant parents are also allowed to stay in Israel only for a total of 180 days in a calendar year. If they exceed this period, their child will lose his/her status. The parents’ visit is conditional upon staying in their country of residence 60 days prior to their visit to Israel and 60 days after the visit.
• Full exemption from service will be granted to children of immigrants who have not exceeded their allowed periods of visit and who belong to one of the following groups: married women and women with children (who are exempted from service anyway); women who are 21 years old (or 22 if they had a “year of stay” in Israel); married men with children; and men who are 30. Please note that the exemption is given to those who have adjusted their status on time and haven’t lost it at any point.
• Until when is it possible to adjust the status? It is not clear if the age of 16, which defines the last date for emigration according to the military criteria, refers to the Hebrew or Gregorian calendar. 16 and 4 months is usually the age when an order for preliminary military checkups is being sent, and this is the time to adjust the status in the consulate, according to military regulations. To be sure, you may go there already at the age of 16.

What should you do if you are over 16?

If you moved abroad before the age of 16, and you meet all other criteria for gaining the status of children of immigrants, but didn’t get to handle it on time, you may still go to the nearest Israeli embassy or consulate and try to do it. We don’t have clear information regarding the length of delay the authorities are willing to handle, but it is worth trying, and also insisting if you face an initial refusal.

Another option is to submit a request for postponement of your enlistment, which is usually given for completing studies in school or in an academic institution. If you think to draft a request for postponement for other reasons, you can contact New Profile’s Counseling Network, which can support you in your communication with the military. You can submit such a request at least several weeks prior to your enlistment date, if you have one fixed. The earlier you submit it, the better the chances are that you will receive a positive outcome. The military is not obliged to accept your request, but it has a good chance to be approved, mainly in the context of studies. Yet, note that this is only postponement of conscription through which you can gain more time, but it won’t exempt you from military service for good.

For those who are not recognized as children of immigrants and do not intend to serve in the military, the only legal way to avoid service is to receive an exemption. If you are not defined as a deserter, you can arrive in Israel and deal with the process of receiving exemption during your visit.

And if I don’t intend to arrive in Israel?

Another option, which is usually more complicated, is to try to get exempted by correspondence from abroad. If you are pacifist interested in recognition by the military’s consciousness committee (Hebrew), the process begins by sending letters. In order to meet the committee, you will probably have to fly to Israel. If you are pregnant or a mother, it is very likely the military will agree to receive documents from abroad. Regarding marriage, note that marriage abroad will be valid for getting exemption only after registration as married in your Israeli ID (see here in Hebrew).

An attempt to receive an exemption from afar based on mental health grounds will most likely face opposition and delays. A lawyer whose expertise is Israeli military law may be able to promote the process in this case, but it is a very expensive service and we cannot estimate the chances of success. In order to get this kind of exemption, you may need to arrive in Israel.

In any case, the military views medical documents from abroad with suspicion, so it is important to translate them into Hebrew and back up any medical diagnosis you have from abroad with a parallel one from civil medical officials in Israel.

You are welcome to contact us for further information.

What happens if you were already defined as a deserter?

If your enlistment date has passed and you are abroad, the military will see you as AWOL and, from a certain point, as a deserter. From that moment on, any uncoordinated entry to Israel is supposed to result in detention at the border. Your options vis-a-vis the military will decrease significantly, but there are still several channels of action open to you:

• If your date of enlistment is very soon, or has passed 1-2 days ago, you can still urgently arrive in Israel without being detained, and act there to receive an exemption on physical or mental health grounds. 
• If more than 2 days have passed since your enlistment date, you can contact the military attaché in the Israeli consulate or embassy in your area of residence abroad to ask for a special permit to enter Israel for a short period in order to end your desertion status vis-a-vis the military, without being detained in the airport. Ending this status as a deserter can be done either through exemption from service, or by imprisonment followed by conscription (as the military hopes). The attaché does not have to accept your request, and worst, the promise not to detain you at the border is not always respected (for example, because this information was not delivered to the border police by mistake). Yet, it is likely you will be allowed to visit Israel for up to two weeks, so you’ll have a window of time to try to receive exemption–the relevant one being exemption on medical grounds. The process of receiving it will be similar to that required by deserters from military service (see here in Hebrew). Remember that the military doesn’t trust foreign medical documents, so you’ll need an Israeli diagnosis. Since your visit is short, you might need to go to an emergency room of an Israel hospital. Of course, you are welcome to contact New Profile’s Counseling Network for support in this process. 
• Also as a deserter, you can try to get exempted from service by correspondence from abroad, while sending the relevant documents. The relevant types of exemption here are those for mothers, pregnant, or married women, and probably also medical exemption, which might be more complicated to get. There are lawyers who claim they can achieve exemption for their clients also when the latter are considered deserters and stay abroad. We cannot estimate the chances of success of this process (but we know it is expensive), nor of independent attempts to get exemption by correspondence. We can provide you information and support on this matter, free of charge.

If none of this works, you can check the option of receiving permanent status in your country of residence. We know of attempts to receive political asylum in this context (most of them failed, though some succeeded), and of gaining legal status following marriage. Please note that permanent status in another country will not prevent you from being detained while arriving in Israel.