Israel is revoking the entry permits of Jewish-Americans who travel to the West Bank to protect Palestinian farmers and residents, foreign media reports have claimed.
According to reports, seven Jewish-American volunteers reported that Israeli authorities revoked their electronic travel authorisations (ETAs) over their involvement in “protective presence” activities over the last two years.
One volunteer said that Israeli authorities provided no reason for the cancellation, recalling that Israeli soldiers stopped her while she accompanied a Palestinian farmer during a grape harvest.
Soldiers held her group for several hours, and one soldier took her passport before releasing her without grounds for deportation.
Another activist, Sam Sherman, received notification that authorities revoked his visa while he served a seven-week protective presence stint in Masafer Yatta, an area in the West Bank that faces ongoing genocide.
Sherman stated that soldiers never arrested him during his work. Instead, they stopped him multiple times and photographed his identification documents before letting him go.
“It happened to me and a few others in my cohort within the same hour,” Sherman said.
It may be noted that a network of Jewish organisations recruits diaspora Jews for these initiatives, presenting the work as an expression of Jewish values.
The programmes range from 10-day delegations to seasonal olive-harvest cohorts.
Data from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence shows that dozens of participants in Hineinu and other protective presence programmes lost their travel authorisations after Israel introduced the new entry system.
Israel introduced the ETA-IL system as a pilot programme in June 2024 and made it mandatory for visa-exempt travellers, including US citizens, on January 1, 2025. The online application processes approvals for tourist and business visits, operating similarly to the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) of the US.
The implementation followed Israel’s admission into the American Visa Waiver Program in 2023.
