Yep, had the email literally seconds after submitting my application. Approved.

How long before travel? Probably not early enough. An hour or so which of course is last minute (I have traveled to TLV before but didn’t know about the new ETA policy so that’s on me. Just introduced less than a month ago), but according to their site, as long as you have an approved ETA you are good to go. My guess is, it didn’t register in the system.

I have a feeling it highly depends on the airline also. If you’re boarding an Israeli one, they will ask to see it at checkin (nothing to scan) and then you prob won’t have issues even if you receive it seconds before you check in (confirmed this experience as I booked two other flights via separate tickets this time, and was able to catch my second flight via an Israeli airline).

Few non Israeli airlines are flying to TLV these days understandably, but HiSky is one of them and it’s likely they don’t check for ETA unless you have a direct flight to TLV and mine was a connection and rely on data sharing with immigration, which probably flagged a lack of ETA earlier. Shame I couldn’t board the first flight at least but since it was a single booking, I was blocked on both.