Ukrainians in Israel: their status, problems, and social rights

Tens of thousands of ethnic Ukrainians have come to Israel in various ways. Many were driven to the Jewish state by Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine. How legal and problematic is their status? How does the Israeli state system view these Ukrainians and provide for them?

To find answers to these questions, I have turned to Attorney Alex Zernopolsky, one of Israel's most experienced lawyers in refugee assistance and the head of the relevant commission at the Israel Bar Association.

We discussed the problems faced precisely by those Ukrainian citizens who do not fall under the Israeli "Law of Return," i.e., those who do not have Jewish roots and/or are not family members of Jewish Israeli citizens. According to Zernopolsky, there could be approximately 20,000 Ukrainians in Israel by mid-2025, including legal and illegal workers, war refugees, and other social categories.

Paradoxically, these people, who are viewed as refugees by society, do not fall into that category under Israeli law. Israel is extremely reluctant to grant refugee status, which entails the state's obligations to the person and the prospect of obtaining citizenship. Therefore, after the war in Ukraine broke out, a special status was developed for Ukrainian citizens — "foreigners temporarily staying in Israel under collective protection." Such Ukrainians are essentially viewed as "tourists who entered Israel but did not leave the country after 90 days due to the war." (Tourists are allowed a 90-day visa-free stay under an agreement between Ukraine and Israel.) Due to the temporary nature of this status, Israel will make every effort to ensure that these Ukrainians promptly return to their country as soon as the war in Ukraine ends.

This temporary status for Ukrainians includes the following:

• a guarantee against forced deportation from Israel
• permission to stay in Israel legally during the war in Ukraine
• permission to legally work in Israel without sanctions against employers for providing jobs
• health insurance: it was funded from the state budget from 2022 until mid-2024 but is now replaced with the right to private health insurance in one of Israel's health insurance funds
• children of Ukrainians staying in Israel for more than 90 days are placed in kindergartens and schools.

In sharp contrast to the policies of EU countries, this status does not allow for any direct financial payments to Ukrainian citizens. Most Ukrainian citizens who have come to Israel in recent years were invited by relatives or friends. The high cost of living, constant military threats, and the lack of cash payments from the state make Israel an "unattractive" place for Ukrainian war refugees. So, many of those who came to Israel in 2022 returned to Ukraine within 1-3 years.

Zernopolsky emphasizes an interesting detail. Ukrainians who worked illegally in Israel in 2018–2021, for example, by arriving as tourists and overstaying the 90-day limit, saw their problem of illegal stay partly resolved when the war broke out on 24 February 2022. This was because Israel extended the new status to all Ukrainians, allowing them to remain in Israel with the right to legal employment.

There were two important moments in the chronology of Ukrainians' stay in Israel.

First, in early March 2022, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, representing the Naftali Bennett government, prohibited all airlines from putting Ukrainian citizens on flights to Israel without special permission from the Interior Ministry. Occurring during the most terrible weeks of the invasion, this cruel measure de facto denied Ukrainian refugees entry to Israel.

The second moment came in July 2022, when the Supreme Court of Israel ruled Ayelet Shaked's decision illegal after Zernopolsky and his fellow attorneys filed a lawsuit.

According to Zernopolsky, several hundred or possibly several thousand Ukrainian citizens have filed asylum applications in Israel. While these applications may take several years to be processed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to the heavy workload of the bureaucratic apparatus, they give Ukrainians official proof that the asylum process is underway. According to some Ukrainians, this kind of paper is viewed favorably by Israeli employers.

Several thousand Ukrainian construction workers were employed legally in Israel between 2019 and 2021 under an agreement between the two countries. Some of them rejoined their families in Ukraine after the war began in 2022, while others remained in Israel and tried to bring their families. A similar situation occurred with Ukrainian software engineers who previously worked remotely for Israeli high-tech companies. After Russia invaded Ukraine, some Israeli employers offered their Ukrainian employees the opportunity to relocate with their families to Israel.

Zernopolsky estimates that the largest number of Ukrainian citizens with this status are women and children.

On 1 July 2024, in the context of a general cost-cutting effort due to the war in the Middle East, the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs did not extend the free health insurance program for Ukrainian citizens staying in Israel under collective protection. Previously, more than 120 million shekels (USD 35 million) were allocated from the Israeli budget for this program in 2022, 2023, and the first half of 2024.

According to the new rules, Ukrainian citizens can apply for paid health insurance through the Leumit Health Services. People aged 60 or older have to pay 320 shekels per month, while the monthly premium for a child under 18 is 140 shekels. If such a citizen is employed and their health insurance policy was previously issued through an employer, this insurance remains valid if the employer continues to pay for it.

In November 2024, the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs issued an updated policy on the stay of Ukrainian citizens in Israel. Minister of Internal Affairs Moshe Arbel (Shas party) decided to extend the current rules until the end of 2025. Ukrainian citizens will continue to be protected from deportation and will not be subject to employment sanctions provided that 90 days have passed since their entry into Israel and they are in possession of a Ukrainian passport. Thus, Ukrainians will continue to have the right to legal employment in Israel.

This decision automatically extended the tourist status (B2 visas) of Ukrainian citizens who were legally in Israel on the day the war began or entered Israel later. This arrangement will be valid until 31 December 2025 or the end of the war in Ukraine, whichever comes first.

Ukrainian citizens in Israel: some statistics

According to the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1,649 Ukrainian citizens worked in the elderly care sector at the end of 2024, of which 1,220 were employed legally and 429 illegally. At that time, 1,317 Ukrainian citizens worked in the construction sector in Israel, of which 1,169 were employed legally and 148 illegally.

By the end of 2023, there were 4,600 Russian citizens and 3,900 Ukrainian citizens in Israel who had entered the country as tourists but remained after their tourist visas expired.

Over the past four years, 7,645 Ukrainian citizens were denied entry to Israel upon arriving there: 299 in 2021, 2,801 in 2022, 3,115 in 2023, and 1,430 in 2024. To compare, nearly 12,000 Russian citizens were not allowed to enter Israel during the same period.

Ukrainian citizens staying in Israel illegally were deported: 873 in 2021, 494 in 2022, 352 in 2023, and 209 in 2024. This dynamic shows that the Israeli authorities slashed deportations after Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022.

Only three Ukrainians left Israel voluntarily in 2024 (204 in 2021) in the framework of a special program run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs that provides a grant of USD 3,500 to anyone leaving Israel. For the most part, Ukrainians leave Israel on their own and outside the scope of this subsidized "voluntary departure" program.

Ukrainians who fled the war in Ukraine in early 2022 ended up, since October 2023, in wartime conditions in Israel as it continues to fight off terrorist attacks and rocket strikes from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. In this sense, thousands of Ukrainians have shared the fate of the Jewish people of Israel.

Text: Shimon Briman (Israel).
Photos: from the personal FB page of attorney Alex Zernopolsky.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Vasyl Starko.