Israel suspends controversial plan to send African migrants West

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has placed on hold a plan to settle an equal number of African refugees in the west and in Israel

Jay Scott Smith

Apr 2, 2018

After scrapping a plan to deport thousands of migrants from African nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suspended a deal with the United Nations to give those migrants residency in exchange for Western nations resettling the same number.

The BBC is reporting that hours after announcing the deal, Netanyahu put the plan on hold, saying he would meet with residents of south Tel Aviv, where many of the migrants live.

The arrangement had drawn opposition from within his governing coalition.

Under the five-year agreement with the UN refugee agency, more than 16,000 African migrants who entered the country illegally, many of them seeking asylum, would be resettled in Western nations such as Germany, Italy and Canada.

Plans change

For each migrant resettled overseas, Israel would give “temporary residence” to a migrant in Israel, Netanyahu told a news conference earlier on Monday.

It replaced a controversial plan to forcibly send male African migrants to Uganda and Rwanda. The deportations were meant to begin on Sunday but it was blocked by Israel’s Supreme.

Netanyahu said in a Facebook post that earlier deportation agreement had failed because Rwanda had pulled out.

Most of the African migrants in Israel, estimated at nearly 42,000, are from Eritrea and Sudan. They told the BBC that they fled danger at home and that it is not safe to return to another African country.

Most of them entered from Egypt several years ago, before a new fence was built along the desert border. This has ended most illegal crossings.

The original decision that was reached in January was to offer the migrants a cash lump-sum and a plane ticket to leave Israel voluntarily or otherwise face forced expulsion.

Unsurprising backlash

The decision triggered large protests in Israel and outrage among the Jewish community abroad – including former ambassadors and Holocaust survivors. The called the plan unethical and said it was a stain on Israel’s image. The UN Refugee Agency said it violated local and international laws.

Netanyahu said the opposition was “baseless and absurd” and that Israel would resettle “genuine refugees”.

Meanwhile, activists have said that a handful of Sudanese and Eritrean migrants had been recognized as refugees by Israel since they took over the processing of applications from the UN in 2009.