Israel's Departure Count Reaches 99,000 as Vote Nears

A study of government data puts the number of Israelis who left the country for extended stays at 99,000 over 2023 and 2024, the highest two-year total on record. The count arrives as the country prepares to vote next week, an event Itai Ater, a professor at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University, said could push the figure higher. "These [emigration] numbers will go up dramatically," Ater said.

Ater and his colleagues published the research in February using Central Bureau of Statistics figures. They counted anyone who stayed outside Israel for at least three straight months and spent more than 270 days abroad during the first year after leaving. About 50,000 people departed in 2023 and 49,000 in 2024. Ater said preliminary data indicates the pace held through 2025.

The departures span the period that began with the Hamas attack on southern Israel in 2023, which killed roughly 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Israel's military campaign in Gaza followed, and a ceasefire took effect in October 2025. Israel still controls roughly 60 per cent of the enclave and conducts regular military activity there. Ater said war, economic uncertainty and the corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which opened in 2020 without a verdict, have weighed on families weighing a move. "Israelis are thinking, 'do I want to raise my kids in a country like this?'",

The vote adds another variable. Netanyahu, the country's longest serving leader, is seeking to remain in power, but polls put his far-right bloc short of the 61 Knesset seats needed for a governing majority. A rival bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party is projected to win the most seats while also falling short of 61. Israel's governments are built on post-voting coalitions, a process in which Netanyahu has long been a skilled operator.

The study also tracks the composition of the departures. Net outflows reached 2,360 engineers and 509 doctors in 2023 and 2024, alongside a rise in Ph.D. holders leaving. "Israel's economy depends on the human capital," Ater said, pointing to the tech industry, academia and health care.

Companies are making their own calculations. Liam Schwartz, who runs the corporate immigration department at the Tel Aviv law firm Goldfarb, Gross, Seligman, said some firms are hearing from non-Israeli shareholders and investors who question the viability of operating from the country. Those investors are more willing to move parts of a workforce to North America or Europe, he said. Schwartz traced the shift to January 2023, when the government proposed judicial reforms that would have reduced the Supreme Court's powers. "They feel like the Israeli government is no longer meeting its part of the social contract," he said.

On the ground in the north, Avigail Ben-Porat, a 50-year-old single mother in Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border, said she wants to leave but lacks the means. She still hears rocket fire, and said friends of hers have moved to Portugal, Canada, Thailand and India.