Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was cancelling an
agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to relocate thousands of
African migrants, bowing to right-wing pressure to scrap the
deal.
Hours after announcing on Monday the arrangement, which also
would have given thousands of other migrants the right to stay
in Israel, Netanyahu posted on his Facebook page that he was
putting its implementation on hold until a further review.
He then declared the agreement dead at a meeting on Tuesday
with representatives of residents of south Tel Aviv, a poor area
that has attracted the largest migrant community and where many
of its inhabitants want the Africans out.
"I have listened carefully to the many comments on the
agreement. As a result, and after I again weighed the advantages
and disadvantages, I decided to cancel the deal," a statement
from the prime minister's office quoted Netanyahu as saying at
the session.
The fate of about 37,000 Africans in Israel has posed a
moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from
persecution and a national home.
The right-wing government has been under pressure from its
nationalist voter base to expel the migrants. It had been moving
ahead with plans to deport many of them to Rwanda when Israel's
Supreme Court intervened and froze such deportations in March.
According to the agreement with the UN refugee agency that
Netanyahu outlined on Monday, about 16,250 African migrants,
most of them from Eritrea and Sudan, would have been relocated
to Western nations.
"Despite legal restraints and international difficulties
that are piling up, we will continue to act with determination
to explore all of the options at our disposal to remove the
infiltrators," Netanyahu said in the statement on Tuesday.