The US Embassy in Tel Aviv. Photo: Krokodyl via Wikimedia Commons.

Israeli citizens who were born in countries covered by the controversial travel ban executive order issued on Friday by President Donald Trump can enter the US, the American Embassy in Tel Aviv announced on Tuesday.

A statement published on the embassy’s website said, “If you have a currently valid US visa in your Israeli passport and were born in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen, and do not have a valid passport from one of these countries, your visa was not cancelled and remains valid.  Similarly, we continue to process visa applications for applicants born in those countries, so long as they do not have a valid passport from one of those countries and have not otherwise declared themselves to be a national of one of those countries. Authorization to enter the United States is always determined at the port of entry. We have no further information at this time.”

As reported by The Algemeiner on Monday, Israel had sought clarifications from the Trump administration regarding the status of its around 140,000 citizens who were born in one of the seven Middle Eastern and North African countries subject to the three-month travel restrictions put in place by the executive order — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Most are older Jews who made aliyah in their youth or young adulthood, due to persecution they faced in their home countries following Israel’s establishment.

Some 53,000 living Israeli Jews were born in Iraq and 45,000 were born in Iran, data published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics shows. Syria, Yemen and Libya also used to host large Jewish communities.