Immigration says it may take several weeks to finalize procedures to print it again<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nDHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the \u201cexcept Israel\u201d clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bangladeshi passports carried the sentence \u201cThis passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel\u201d until 2021, when authorities rolled out a new travel document and the phrase was removed without any public notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While authorities justified it by saying it was meant to \u201cmaintain international standard,\u201d many people in the country \u2014 which has no diplomatic relations with Israel \u2014 questioned the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new interim government, which took charge of Bangladesh in August after the ouster of its long-standing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has decided to undo her cabinet\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve received the government\u2019s directive to reinstate the \u2018except Israel\u2019 clause in Bangladeshi passports. We are currently working to implement it,\u201d Brig. Gen. Mohammed Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told Arab News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor many years, our passports carried the \u2018except Israel\u2019 clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it. We were used to seeing \u2018except Israel\u2019 written in our passports. I don\u2019t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you\u2019ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pressure to reinstate the clause has been mounting since the beginning of Israel\u2019s ongoing deadly onslaught on Gaza, which began in October 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over 51,000 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region\u2019s infrastructure and buildings while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A clear ban on travel to Israel in Bangladeshi passports was one of the key demands raised during a series of Gaza solidarity protests, which have been held regularly in Dhaka since last month after Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire agreement and resumed bombing hospitals, schools and tents sheltering displaced people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest such protest took place in Dhaka on Saturday, with about 1 million people taking to the streets to call on the international community to \u201ctake effective and collective action to end the genocide,\u201d and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to \u201cimpose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state\u201d and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople will definitely welcome this new decision. It reflects the feelings of the people of this country,\u201d Salam said, but he was not able to specify when the new passports will be available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are some technical challenges involved with this change. Currently, we import e-passports from Germany under a government-to-government agreement \u2026 It may take another week to finalize the necessary procedures. In the meantime, we are exploring whether there\u2019s any option to modify the existing stock of printed booklets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reference Link:- https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/2597163\/world<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman holds a Bangladeshi passport which carries the sentence: \u201cThis passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.\u201d DHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the \u201cexcept Israel\u201d clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government. Bangladeshi passports carried the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[58,189,16344,16339,16343,16341,52,16340,16338,51,16342,40,60],"class_list":["post-17694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-america","tag-bangladesh","tag-bangladesh-restores-except-israel-clause-in-passports-after-public-pressure","tag-bangladeshs-stance-on-israel","tag-banning-israel","tag-interem-government","tag-israel","tag-israeli-genocide-in-gaza","tag-muslim-bangladesh","tag-palestine","tag-public-pressure","tag-us","tag-geopolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17696,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17694\/revisions\/17696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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