Israelis revive their old family ties to gain EU passports

Despite the sheets of rain falling on Tel Aviv, a queue of people waiting for passports stretched around the outside of the Polish embassy. Those who could not huddle under the narrow door canopy stood and got wet. They were queuing in a strange reversal of history: Israelis trying to get passports from a country their parents and grandparents once fled.

The queue is there every week: the demand for passports from post-communist countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary is suddenly huge. The people applying for passports all had relatives who had lived in these countries. Many fled because of the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust, finding a safe haven in what was then British mandate Palestine.

But for some, Israel is no longer quite as secure as it was. Few of those queuing said they planned to leave Israel but many said they wanted the second passport as a reserve option "just in case".

For some, the relentless violence of the conflict with the Palestinians is a reason to be here. "It is to do with the security situation," Eyal Goldstein said, standing in the rain. "I want to raise a family and I want security for my children."

A life in which you can die in a suicide bombing when you get on the bus to go to work, or sitting in a café, has taken its toll on some. Mr Goldstein had just completed his military service in the Israeli navy, at times off the Gaza Strip. "I served Israel," he said. "I had to give three years and I gave it."

But another part of the reason, perhaps a bigger one, Mr Goldstein said, was the economic crisis in Israel. Many feel there will be better job opportunities, better business openings, in Europe. After two years of the Palestinian intifada, the Israeli economy is in a dire state. Unemployment is soaring and the government has asked the United States for an extra $12bn (£7.5bn) in aid to help Israel through the tough times.

Many of those in the queue outside the Polish embassy insisted they would never leave Israel because of the security situation. "This is my country and I'm going to stay here," Doron Neev said. But he said the economic crisis would push him to look for business opportunities elsewhere. "I never thought to get a Polish passport before," he said. "What would I do with a Polish passport. But now Poland's going into the European Union I think it's a valuable passport."

None of those in the queue said they were interested in a passport so they could live or work in Poland. What they were after was an EU passport. The EU's decision to admit Poland and other post-communist countries in 2004 has set off the rush for passports.

Mr Neev knows how valuable a passport can be. His parents were in Poland during the Second World War. They had already emigrated to British Palestine but went back to visit in 1939. "They got caught," he said. "Luckily they had British passports because they lived here. They got stuck in Poland for one year but they got out."

Without British passports, they probably would have died in the Holocaust. Poland's Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and forced to live in desperately cramped ghettoes where they were subject to brutal treatment by Nazi guards. Most Jews went to the gas chambers.

One woman in the queue – she would not give her name – remembered those times. She was 10 when she left Poland, in 1948. "I cannot forget it," she said of the war. "I felt it on my body." She began to weep silently. "I don't want to speak about it," she said.

She had not come for a passport but for information about her father's history in Poland. "I am too old to do something with the European Union," she said. But she was not troubled by so many Israelis queuing for Polish passports. "It's good for young people," she said. "I mean, today it's good to live in Germany."

At the Hungarian embassy, a short distance away among the low-rise expensive suburbs of Tel Aviv, the situation was similar. One man, who would give his name only as George – his Hungarian name before he moved to Israel and took an Israeli one – had been queuing for hours. "Some of the people came here at 6am," he said.

George left Hungary as a child in 1946, having survived the Holocaust there. Now he is applying for Hungarian citizenship. "It's not for me, it's for my sons," he said. "It's nothing to do with the security situation here. It's economic. I don't have a problem taking citizenship. I still have family in Hungary."

* Yasser Arafat publicly confirmed yesterday that he had agreed to appoint a Palestinian prime minister. Mr Arafat has been under pressure from the US to retire to a largely symbolic role and appoint a prime minister to take over the day-to-day Palestinian leadership and future negotiations with the Israeli government.

But it remains to be seen whether Mr Arafat is prepared to take a back seat, and how much power he will allow a new prime minister. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, said the prime minister would report to Mr Arafat. Terje Roed-Larsen, the chief Unied Nations envoy to the region, said Mr Arafat had told him the appointment would be made "immediately, which must mean within the next few days". It is not clear who it will be.