Israel backtracks on deal for resettling immigrants

JERUSALEM — Israel announced a deal with the United Nations on Monday to resettle African migrants in Western nations but hours later put the agreement on hold.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced the deal on national TV, saying Israel agreed to cancel the planned expulsion of tens of thousands of African migrants. He said the deal with the United Nations called for sending half of them to Western nations and allowing the rest to remain in Israel.

Late Monday, 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 re-examine the agreement again,” he said.

Under the deal, roughly half of the 35,000 migrants living in Israel would be resettled in the West, but the rest would stay.

The migrant community is concentrated in south Tel Aviv, angering longtime Israeli residents of the working-class area. Israeli hard-liners had criticized the deal for allowing so many Africans to remain.

The late-night turnaround threw into limbo the surprise agreement, which had finally offered a solution to an issue that has divided Israel for a decade. The deportation plan had been widely criticized at home and abroad, even by some of Israel’s closest supporters.

“It’s a good agreement,” Netanyahu told reporters earlier in the day. “It enables us to solve this problem in a way that serves, protects the interests of the state of Israel and gives a solution to the residents of southern Tel Aviv and other neighborhoods, and also for the people who came into Israel.”

Most of the African migrants are from wartorn Sudan and Eritrea, the latter having one of the world’s worst human rights records. The migrants say they are asylum seekers fleeing danger and persecution, while Israeli leaders have claimed they are merely job seekers.

The Africans started arriving in 2005, after neighboring 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.

Due to the large migrant presence, poor neighborhoods 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.