National Post (National Edition)
Israel walks back deal to resettle migrants
Confusion over where thousands would be sent
JERUSALEM • Israel has backed away from a controversial plan to deport thousands of African asylum seekers after striking a deal with the UN to have many of them resettled in Western countries, possibly Canada, Germany and Italy.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had announced on Monday that under the deal 16,250 asylum seekers — mostly Eritreans — would be sent to “developed countries” while roughly 20,000 others would be allowed to remain in Israel.
But there was confusion Monday as both German and Italian authorities said they were not aware of the plan.
Canadian officials said they were in touch with Israel about the matter. Mathieu Genest, a spokesman for the immigration minister, said the government was reviewing over 1,800 requests by Eritreans to resettle in Canada.
He noted that Canada has pledged to resettle a total of 4,000 Eritrean refugees by the end of the year.
Late last night, Netanyahu said he was “suspending” the deal in order to discuss the arrangement Tuesday with Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv areas with large migrant populations.
“After meeting with the representatives I will reexamine the agreement again,” he said.
Most of the asylum-seekers in Israel are from Eritrea, an authoritarian east African state where men are often conscripted into the military for life.
A smaller number are from Sudan, including the war-torn Darfur region.
Under the deal, roughly half of the 35,000 migrants living in Israel would be resettled in the West. But the rest would stay in Israel.
The migrant community is concentrated in south Tel Aviv, angering longtime Israeli residents of the working-class area. Israeli hardliners had criticized the deal for allowing so many Africans to remain.
The deal would have allowed Netanyahu to scrap the Israeli government’s original plan to give asylum-seekers a choice: stay in Israel and face indefinite imprisonment or accept US$3,500 from the Israeli state and agree to go to a “third country” such as Rwanda or Uganda.
That plan was met with protests by liberal Israelis and was widely condemned by human rights groups. Activists warned that asylumseekers could end up facing torture and extortion in Libya, and possible death by drowning in the Mediterranean.
Many of the asylum-seekers said they would choose prison rather than go back to Africa, and Israeli officials were privately concerned about the challenges of jailing such a large number. However, Netanyahu had also been under pressure from parts of the Israeli public to remove the asylum-seekers, especially from areas in south Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu, who described the agreement as “the best possible,” said he had reached an “unprecedented common understanding” with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) over the issue. “The agreement stipulates that for each migrant who leaves the country, we commit to give temporary residence status to another,” he said.
“I am excited because they cancelled the deportation,” said Tesfazgi Asgodom, a 34-year-old man who fled from Eritrea in 2011 to avoid military conscription.
However, the agreement was immediately attacked by the most right-wing members of Netanyahu’s coalition government.
Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the Jewish Home party, said the deal would encourage other migrants to come to Israel and turn the country “into a paradise for infiltrators.”
He said the agreement was “a total surrender to the false campaign that has been disseminated in the media.”
The Africans started arriving in 2005, after neighbouring Egypt violently quashed a refugee demonstration and word spread of safety and job opportunities in Israel. Tens of thousands crossed the porous desert border with Egypt before Israel completed a barrier in 2012 that stopped the influx.
Israel has struggled with what to do with those already in the country, alternating between plans to deport them and offering them menial jobs in hotels and local municipalities.
Due to the large migrant presence, poor neighbourhoods in south Tel Aviv have become known as “Little Africa.” Working-class Jewish residents have complained of rising crime and pressed the government to take action.
But the migrants also found wide pockets of support, with many Israelis arguing that the country, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, had a special responsibility to help those in need.
Thousands of Africans and their Israeli supporters held a demonstration in February claiming the deportation plan amounted to racism.
Groups of Israeli doctors, academics, poets, Holocaust survivors, rabbis and pilots also objected to the planned expulsion.
Critics at home and in the Jewish-American community had called the government’s deportation plans unethical and a stain on Israel’s image as a refuge for Jewish migrants.
Before Monday’s announcement, the government had remained steadfast, bristling at what it considered cynical comparisons to the plight of Jewish refugees during the Second World War.
Since 2015, Israel has granted asylum to just four Eritreans out of 6,723 — an acceptance rate of 0.06 per cent.