The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is poised to ad­mit Is­rael this week in­to an ex­clu­sive club that will al­low its cit­i­zens to trav­el to the Unit­ed States with­out a U.S. visa de­spite Wash­ing­ton’s on­go­ing con­cerns about the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment’s treat­ment of Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans.

U.S. of­fi­cials say an an­nounce­ment of Is­rael’s en­try in­to the Visa Waiv­er Pro­gram is planned for late in the week, just be­fore the end of the fed­er­al bud­get year on Sat­ur­day, which is the dead­line for Is­rael’s ad­mis­sion with­out hav­ing to re­qual­i­fy for el­i­gi­bil­i­ty next year.

The De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty ad­min­is­ters the pro­gram, which cur­rent­ly al­lows cit­i­zens of 40 most­ly Eu­ro­pean and Asian coun­tries to trav­el to the U.S. for three months with­out visas.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas is set to make the an­nounce­ment Thurs­day, short­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion from Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken that Is­rael be ad­mit­ted, ac­cord­ing to five of­fi­cials fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter who spoke Sun­day on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause the de­ci­sion has not yet been pub­licly an­nounced.

Blinken’s rec­om­men­da­tion is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered no lat­er than Tues­day, the of­fi­cials said, and the fi­nal an­nounce­ment will come just eight days af­ter Pres­i­dent Joe Biden met with Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu in New York on the side­lines of the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly. The lead­ers did not raise the is­sue in their brief re­marks to re­porters at that meet­ing but it has been a sub­ject of in­tense ne­go­ti­a­tion and de­bate for months as has been the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ef­fort to se­cure a deal to nor­mal­ize re­la­tions be­tween Is­rael and Sau­di Ara­bia.

Both State and the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ments said they had “noth­ing to an­nounce pub­licly at this time,” adding that the two agen­cies will make a “fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion in the com­ing days.” The U.S. is work­ing with Is­rael to­ward “ful­fill­ing the full range of law en­force­ment, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and im­mi­gra­tion re­lat­ed re­quire­ments” of the pro­gram, ac­cord­ing to the State De­part­ment.

Is­rael’s ad­mis­sion has been a pri­or­i­ty for suc­ces­sive Is­raeli lead­ers and will be a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for Ne­tanyahu, who has sparred fre­quent­ly with the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion over Iran, the Pales­tin­ian con­flict and most re­cent­ly a pro­posed re­make of Is­rael’s ju­di­cial sys­tem that crit­ics say will make the coun­try less de­mo­c­ra­t­ic.

Ne­tanyahu’s far-right gov­ern­ment has drawn re­peat­ed U.S. crit­i­cism over its treat­ment of Pales­tini­ans, in­clud­ing its ag­gres­sive con­struc­tion of West Bank set­tle­ments, its op­po­si­tion to Pales­tin­ian state­hood and in­cen­di­ary an­ti-Pales­tin­ian com­ments by se­nior Cab­i­net min­is­ters.

The U.S. move will give a wel­come boost at home to Ne­tanyahu. He has faced months of mass protests against his ju­di­cial plan and is like­ly to come un­der crit­i­cism from the Pales­tini­ans, who say the U.S. should not be re­ward­ing the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment at a time when peace ef­forts are at a stand­still.

Is­rael met two of the three most crit­i­cal cri­te­ria over the past two years — a low per­cent­age of visa ap­pli­ca­tion re­jec­tions and a low visa over­stay rate — to join the U.S. pro­gram. It had strug­gled to meet the third, which is a re­quire­ment for reci­procity that means all U.S. cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans, must be treat­ed equal­ly when trav­el­ing to or through Is­rael.

Claim­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, Is­rael has long had sep­a­rate en­try re­quire­ments and screen­ing process­es for Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans. Many com­plained that the pro­ce­dures were oner­ous and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry. Amer­i­cans with Pales­tin­ian res­i­den­cy doc­u­ments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were large­ly barred from us­ing Is­rael’s in­ter­na­tion­al air­port. In­stead, like oth­er Pales­tini­ans, they were forced to trav­el through ei­ther Jor­dan or Egypt to reach their des­ti­na­tions.

In re­cent months, Is­rael has moved to ad­just its en­try re­quire­ments for Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans, in­clud­ing al­low­ing them to fly in and out of Ben Gu­ri­on In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Tel Aviv and go­ing di­rect­ly to the West Bank and Is­rael prop­er, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cials. Is­rael al­so has pledged to ease move­ment for Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans trav­el­ing in and out of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

New reg­u­la­tions took ef­fect ear­li­er this month to cod­i­fy the changes, al­though con­cerns re­main and the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty De­part­ment in­tends to stress in its an­nounce­ment that it will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion to en­sure that Is­rael com­plies, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cials. Fail­ure to com­ply could re­sult in Is­rael’s sus­pen­sion from the pro­gram, the of­fi­cials said.

Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can ac­tivists have been crit­i­cal of the im­pend­ing de­ci­sion, which has been ex­pect­ed for some time due to the pri­or­i­ty placed on it by both the Is­raeli and U.S. gov­ern­ments.

“There are so many prob­lems with this de­ci­sion,” said Yousef Mu­nayy­er, the head of the Pales­tine-Is­rael Pro­gram and se­nior fel­low at Arab Cen­ter Wash­ing­ton. “The reci­procity re­quire­ment is clear­ly still not be­ing met since Is­raeli pol­i­cy con­tin­ues to treat some Amer­i­cans, specif­i­cal­ly Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­cans, dif­fer­ent­ly. The ad­min­is­tra­tion how­ev­er seems com­mit­ted at the high­est lev­els to over­look­ing this con­tin­ued dis­crim­i­na­tion against Amer­i­can cit­i­zens to rush Is­rael in­to the pro­gram be­fore the dead­line.”

Mu­nayy­er said it was “un­clear why the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion seems dead set on of­fer­ing po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ries for Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu at a time when his far-right gov­ern­ment is out­rag­ing Pales­tini­ans and many Is­raelis with their ex­trem­ist agen­da.”

Un­der the waiv­er pro­gram, Is­raelis will be able to trav­el to the U.S. for busi­ness or leisure pur­pos­es for up to 90 days with­out a visa sim­ply by reg­is­ter­ing with the Elec­tron­ic Sys­tem for Trav­el Au­tho­riza­tion.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Josef Fe­d­er­man in Jerusalem con­tributed to this re­port.

BY MATTHEW LEE

WASH­ING­TON (AP)