Israel has canceled a plan to deport African migrants to Africa after reaching an agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to send more than 16,000 migrants to Western countries instead.
The new deal would be implemented in three stages over five years. Under terms of the agreement, many African migrants remaining in Israel will be integrated and granted official status.
The deal lifts the threat of a forced expulsion to unnamed African destinations, widely believed to be Rwanda and Uganda, with whom Israel has reached a secret agreement.
The Africans, nearly all from dictatorial Eritrea and war-torn Sudan, say they fled for their lives and faced renewed danger if they returned. Israel has said it considers the vast majority of the 35,000-40,000 migrants to be job seekers and has said it has no legal obligation to keep them.
Critics at home and in particular, the Jewish community in the United States have called the government’s proposed response unethical and a stain on Israel’s image as a refuge for Jewish migrants.
As the world grapples with the worst refugee crisis since World War II, the issue has struck a raw nerve in Israel — established in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
The optics of black asylum seekers accusing the country of racism has turned into a public relations liability for Israel, and groups of Israeli doctors, academics, poets, Holocaust survivors, rabbis and pilots have all appealed to halt the plan. Israeli nationalists, on the other hand have pressured the Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government to expel the migrants.
Before Monday’s announcement, the Israeli president had remained determined to deport African migrants and dismissed what he said were cynical comparisons to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Africans started moving toward Israel in 2005, after neighboring Egypt violently quashed a refugee demonstration and word spread of safety and job opportunities in Israel.
The U.N.’s refugee agency had urged Israel to reconsider its original plan, saying migrants who have relocated to sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years were unsafe and ended up on the perilous migrant trail to Europe, some suffering abuse, torture and even dying on the way.
