Israel document photos online

If you fly into Tel Aviv as a tourist, Israeli border officers usually won't stamp your passport at all. Since 2013, Ben Gurion Airport hands arrivals a small loose paper slip instead, stamped and kept with the passport for the duration of the stay. The reason is starkly practical: a single Israeli stamp can get a traveller turned away at the border of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and several other states that refuse entry to anyone showing evidence of an Israeli visit. Few countries in the world treat their own entry mark as something best left invisible, but Israel built that diplomacy directly into how it documents who crosses its border.

• Border quirk Tourists arriving at Ben Gurion Airport are given a stamped loose paper slip rather than a passport stamp, so a visit to Israel leaves no permanent mark that could bar entry to Lebanon, Syria, Iran or Yemen.
• Passport power On the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Israeli 'Darkon' ranked around 19th worldwide, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 170 destinations.
• Travel milestone Only on 19 October 2023 did the United States admit Israel to its Visa Waiver Program, letting holders of a biometric Darkon visit for up to 90 days without a US visa.
• Citizenship Under the 1950 Law of Return, anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, plus their spouse, can immigrate and claim Israeli citizenship almost immediately, an unusually wide descent rule extended by amendment in 1970.
• Currency The new shekel was born from crisis: in 1985, with inflation racing toward four-digit territory, Israel replaced the old shekel at 1,000 to 1, and the new unit is still divided into 100 agorot under the symbol ₪.
• Banknotes Israel's 2017 banknote series puts poets on its money and two of the four notes honour women, the 20-shekel note showing Rachel Bluwstein and the 100-shekel note Leah Goldberg, with raised intaglio ink and perforated holes so the blind can read each value by touch.
• Statehood David Ben-Gurion read out Israel's Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, just hours before the British Mandate over Palestine expired at midnight, an act timed to the final moments of foreign rule.
• National ID Every resident carries a 'Teudat Zehut' identity card with a unique nine-digit number, while travel abroad uses the separate blue 'Darkon' passport bearing the golden state emblem.
• Demographics Israel's population passed 10.1 million in 2025, and even in a difficult year about 21,900 new immigrants arrived from 105 countries, with Russia the single largest source group.