iPad Now Welcome In Israel

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Israel’s long national nightmare is over – their ban on iPads has been lifted. The country was banning iPads from entering their country on the grounds that it interfered with Israeli WiFi standards. Visitors who tried to enter the country with them had them taken and ones being shipped into the country were taken at customs. But now, after “Intensive Technical Scrutiny” the country has decided to change it’s stance on them.

In a statement to BusinessWeek, the Israeli Ministry of Communications said, “After intensive technical scrutiny, [it concluded that] that the device which could be operated in various standards will be operated in Israel according to local standards.”

As aforementioned, users who tried to enter the country with them had them taken. At one point, the Wall Street Journal reported that there were 10 iPads taken at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, and that the owners of those 10 iPads were being charged a daily ‘storage fee’.

When the Wall Street Journal asked the Israeli government about this bizarre ban, they reiterated that any device that used American WiFi standards, if it be an iPhone, BlackBerry, laptop, whatever, should have been taken in the past.The Wall Street Journal chatted with a few analysts who ran tests on the iPad and said that the aluminum unibody on the device blocked most of the WiFi signals.

The Israeli tech community was allegedly offended by the ban. Israel has tried to establish itself as a leader in the high-tech space (I know they grant a lot of tax credits to high-tech companies, and Intel has a number of engineering labs and chip fabs there) – and some saw this bizarre iPad ban as ruining that reputation.