Seven foreign yeshiva students are currently stuck in Ben-Gurion Airport after the Interior Ministry decided on Wednesday not to allow such students into the country due to the spike in COVID-19 cases over recent days. On May 21, the Interior Ministry decided to allow the entry of foreign yeshiva and seminary students into the country, after many left before Passover when educational institutions were shut down because of the pandemic. But on Wednesday however, Interior Minister Arye Deri said that “with great pain” he was forced to halt the entry of foreign yeshiva students, and that any permits which have not been used until now would be cancelled. Some 15 such students who had obtained permits to return to their institutions had a scheduled flight at 23:35 from JFK airport in New York, and boarded the flight because they had not yet heard of the policy change. An official at Har Etzion Yeshiva in Alon Shvut told The Jerusalem Post that the yeshiva only received notice of the change in policy at 11:55 a.m. Thursday morning long after the flight had taken off, and was therefore unable to alert the three students from the yeshiva on the flight about the problem. The flight landed at 17:15 Thursday afternoon, and seven yeshiva students in total have been waiting at the airport ever since.
At least six female seminary students were however allowed to enter the country, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told the Post. The spokesperson said that a decision on whether or not the seven yeshiva students would be allowed in would be made shortly.
Jordan Stebbins, 19, from Detroit, Michigan, who flew from Detroit to Boston and then on to JFK, in order to get on the flight to Israel, and who is currently waiting in the airport, noted that the group had received water but no food since they arrived, and that the restaurants in the food court are not open.
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