The Child
of an Israeli Citizen Is Also an Israeli Citizen<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn short, a child born to an Israeli citizen in Israel or abroad is also an Israeli citizen according to the 1952 Israeli Law of Citizenship. The question of parenthood is resolved automatically for the Israeli mother, *but the process is more complex when only the father is an Israeli. The state of Israel will acknowledge the child of an Israeli father and a non-Israeli mother as an Israeli citizen if the child’s paternity is well established. The paternity is established by default if the state of Israel recognizes the relationship between the child’s parents as “valid.”<\/p>\n
Valid relationships include marriage or common-law marriage entered at least 10 months or 300 days before the birth of the child. If the state recognizes the “sincerity” or validity of the relationship, the parents can approach an Israeli Consulate abroad within 30 days of the birth, present their documents, and receive acknowledgement of the child as an Israeli citizen. This recognition of the child as an Israeli citizen grants the child an Israeli passport, and the child is entered into the Israeli population registry.<\/p>\n
Note that this is the only official<\/em> procedure for recognition of the child as the child of a citizen by the state of Israel. Foreign documents stating that the Israeli citizen is the father, such as a foreign birth certificate presented on their own, may be ignored<\/p>\nWhen Will You Be Required to Take a Paternity Test Abroad?<\/strong><\/h3>\nIf the couple has broken up or if the state of Israel refuses to recognize their relationship, the father may be required to submit to a paternity test to determine that the child is his. Not just any paternity test will do; DNA tests by non-Israeli institutions will be rejected out of hand. The only officially\u00a0acceptable paternity test is conducted by the Israeli Family Court order. The court will specify which of the limited number of officially qualified Israeli laboratories or institutions will be in charge of the DNA\u00a0test. Since the court determines which lab does the test, the applicant has no need to find that information.<\/p>\n