Tourists at the el Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. Image credit: Tunisia Live
Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said Tuesday his government has decided to allow Israeli citizens to enter the country despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
The announcement came in response to a request by National Constituent Assembly (NCA) members to hold a hearing on the subject.
Jomaa said the decision reflected the government’s desire for the upcoming Jewish pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue on the southeast island of Djerba to be a success.
“We’ve met with tourism professionals, they tell us, in order for the tourism season to succeed, the Ghriba date must succeed,” he said.
Over 80 NCA members have signed a petition demanding Minister of Tourism Amel Karboul and Deputy Minister of Interior Ridha Sfar appear before the assembly for questioning on the government’s policy on the entry of Israeli tourists. [display_posts type="related" limit="3" position="right"]
It is unclear whether Israeli tourists have already been allowed into the country.
Samia Abbou, an NCA member elected with the Congress for the Republic party, is one of the members who demanded a hearing.
“The [initial] purpose of this petition was to verify the fact that Israelis entered the country,” she told Tunisia Live, explaining that it was started before Jomaa’s remarks Tuesday, which she added caught members off-guard.
“We were surprised,” she said, that the prime minister would overtly say Israelis would be allowed to travel to Tunisia.
“The fact that Israelis with Israeli passports entered the country is recognition of the Israeli state and this is normalization,” Abbou said. “This is a red line.”
During the drafting process for Tunisia’s post-revolutionary constitution, a clause forbidding “normalization,” meaning the recognition of the state of Israel and the extension of diplomatic ties, was discussed but not adopted. Israel is not mentioned in the charter, which does refer to Tunisia’s support for Palestine.
Mehdi Jomaa at CSIS in Washington, DC. Image credit: Prime Ministry Facebook page
Abbou referred to a trip Karboul took to Israel prior to joining the government. Karboul has acknowledged the trip and says she was interrogated at Tel Aviv airport.
“She [Karboul] knows normalization is a crime,” Abbou said.
Karboul refused to comment to Tunisia Live, saying she would wait for the hearing.
On Tuesday, Jomaa defended his government’s decision.
“[The Ghriba pilgrimage] has inherited procedures that have been employed for years,” he said, arguing his government’s decision was only to make the existing procedures more transparent.
“We will not normalize relations,” he said.
Jomaa, Abbou said, does not have the right to speak about the issue. Jomaa is an unelected caretaker prime minister selected through talks between political parties and civil society groups.
“He should work and shut up,” Abbou said.
Israeli citizens were permitted to enter the country under former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country during the 2011 revolution.
In March, Yigal Palmor, spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
told Tunisia Live Israeli travel to Tunisia under Ben Ali was “very regular.”
A group of Israeli citizens on a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship were refused entry during a port call in La Goulette in early March. Norwegian Cruise Lines
canceled service to Tunisia after the incident.
Israeli visitors to Tunisia need to arrange their trip through a travel agent as a group with a specific purpose, such as a conference, and receive special permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which issues visas, Karboul
told Tunisia Live earlier this month. Individual Israelis wishing to travel to Tunisia will not be issued visas.
Visitors to Ghriba for the pilgrimage are allowed in under special circumstances.
While over 80 assembly members signed the petition calling for the hearing, it is not clear how much support it holds in the 217-member NCA.
Osama al-Saghir from the Islamist Ennahdha party, which controls a plurality of the assembly’s seats, told Tunisia Live there was no official party position on the issue and that he did not sign the petition.
“It’s not the time to do something like this,” he said.
“We have a technocrat government, we should let them work and we should finish our work and move to elections.”
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