Newly released figures show a seven-year high in the number of Israelis leaving Israel to live abroad long-term. 

According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 16,684 Israeli citizens left the country to live elsewhere in 2015. The figures have only been released now because only those who have been gone from the country for a period of a year or more can be considered to have left for the long term. 

At the same time, the statistics revealed that the number of Israelis who returned to the country in 2015 after a long period of living away was approximately 8,450, the lowest since 2002. Nearly two thirds of those coming back to Israel had lived away from the country for less than three years. It is the first time since 2009 that more Israelis left the country than returned.

However, the bureau’s figures over 25 years reveal a long-term decline in the number of Israelis leaving each year to live abroad. Between 1990 and 2008, around 22,800 Israelis left each year. By contrast, from 2008 to 2015, approximately 16,000 left each year, a 30 percent drop. 

Furthermore, 31,013 people make Aliyah in the same year – the highest since 2002. British Jews making Aliyah also rose in 2015, increasing to 774 from 629 the previous year.

• Talia Friedman, the daughter of the US envoy to Israel, David Friedman, made Aliyah, arriving in Ben-Gurion airport on Tuesday. “We are so proud of our daughter’s Aliyah,” David Friedman told reporters as he met his daughter on the tarmac. “We’re here to greet her and give her a hug and wish her hatzlacha raba [good luck] here in Israel.”