A special Israel Foreign Ministry team is meeting to discuss the possibility of charging Israelis who are taken out of danger areas around the world in cases of emergency. To date, the government has flown Israeli nationals to safety and has incurred the costs of such operations.

Officials explain the Foreign Ministry has learned a lesson from the emergency evacuation of Israelis this past summer during the crisis in Georgia which followed the Russian invasion. The Foreign Ministry turned to the Jewish Agency for Israel and Arkia Airlines to retroactively recoup some of the costs of the operation, which was $80,000.

Officials explain in the case of Georgia, about half of the 160 rescued were Israelis living there and the remainder Jews who were waiting to make aliyah.

The ministry recently released its report on the rescue operation and it states that the operation was successful, but not orderly enough and lessons must be learned for the future. It also questions if the government may retroactively demand payment for the rescue flights which brought the people to Israel in the time of life-threatening danger.

Ministry officials explain that one of the factors that contributed to raising the payment question is the fact that Americans who were bused out of the area were indeed charged for the service. A senior ministry official adds that for as long as the ministry does not have a budget for such emergency situations, the people rescued should at the very least be compelled to incur some of the cost involved in the rescue mission.

The ministry is divided, with some who feel that those who benefit from an emergency airlift should indeed incur the expense while others feel that rescues missions occur once in a number of years and practically speaking, it may not be possible to get the money retroactively so it would be wise not to implement a policy that is doomed to fail from the onset.

Regarding Georgia, officials explain that 550 people were evacuated on three flights but 160 of them held return trip tickets which they did not actualize. The ministry has requested the Jewish Agency and Arkia participate in funding the flights for those 160 only.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)