Portugal and Sweden have decided to bar entry to Israeli nationals amid soaring coronavirus infections in the Jewish state, a move some other European nations are expected to follow.
Israelis scheduled to fly Thursday to Portugal were prevented from checking in at Ben Gurion Airport. The Swedish ban will take effect on Monday, a representative from the Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv told The Times of Israel.
Though vaccination rates in Israel are among the world’s highest, Portugal and Sweden have their eyes on the elevated case numbers and aren’t making exceptions for Israelis who are vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19. The two countries only accept European Union vaccination certificates.
Their decisions came after the European Union on Monday removed Israel from a list of nations deemed “epidemiologically safe.”
Member states are not bound by the EU recommendation and Italy has taken a very different approach from Portugal and Sweden, deciding to bar unvaccinated Israelis but welcome those with Israeli vaccination certificates.
Epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch, a professor at Ben Gurion University, said Israel is currently a “strange case” for other governments to try to categorize. “We have some of the highest rates for both infections and vaccinations,” Davidovitch noted, explaining this will cause countries to vary in how they asses the level of risk posed by Israelis.
Frustratingly for many Israelis, the entry bans by Portugal and Sweden come precisely as they plan to resume overseas travel following the government’s relaxation of quarantine rules for returning travelers, provided they are not coming from “red” countries with high infection rates.
On Friday, new quarantine rules for arriving travelers took effect, with those now defined by the Health Ministry as immunized largely exempt from having to self-isolate for a week.
The easing of the quarantine rules was expected to be a boon for travel to Portugal and the Over the Rainbow organization that promotes Israel-Portugal travel wrote to senior ministers in Lisbon appealing the decision.
Itay Mor, Over the Rainbow’s president, said it is “incomprehensible” that citizens of the United States and Brazil, two other countries removed from the EU’s safe list, are welcome in Portugal when Israelis are not.
“It’s absurd that one of the most vaccinated countries is now starting to be blocked out of parts of Europe,” Mor told The Times of Israel, arguing it’s particularly unfair as the count of serious virus cases in Israel has started to fall, he claimed.
Mor wrote to the Portuguese ministers: “We appeal to you to ensure that the measures currently in force in Portugal can be corrected as soon as possible so that the countless Israelis who wish to travel to the country can do so as soon as possible.”
