Israel: Thousands of migrants were to be sent to West as Israel reaches agreement with UN
Article publisher:
RT
Article date:
2 April 2018
Article category:
National News
Medium
Article Body:
Western nations will host thousands of asylum seekers currently residing in Israel under a new deal that has just been reached with the UN Refugee Agency. Around half of the 39,000 migrants will remain in Israel.
Speaking about the deal on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Canada, Italy and Germany would host at least 16,250 migrants. The agreement nullifies Israel's original plan to forcibly deport the migrants to Africa, which was set to come into effect on Sunday....
Israel originally planned to deport asylum seekers that refused to voluntarily leave the country to several African states....
Speaking last month, Netanyahu insisted that “a flood of illegal infiltrators from Africa” into Israel would be more damaging to the country than terrorist attacks.
“We’re talking about a Jewish and democratic state. How could we have guaranteed a Jewish-democratic state with 50,000 then 100,000, then 150,000 infiltrators each year?” Netanyahu said.
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Related
In a head-spinning turnaround, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced on Monday that he had reached an extraordinary deal with the United Nations refugee agency to resettle thousands of African asylum seekers in Western countries. Within hours Mr. Netanyahu suspended the deal after coming under heavy criticism from his coalition partners.
The flip-flop appeared to reflect Mr. Netanyahu’s fear of losing support from those partners or from his right-wing constituency, who call the asylum seekers infiltrators and want them gone....
The agreement with the United Nations was meant to replace a contentious Israeli plan that had offered the migrants a stark choice: forced deportation to Africa or prison. That plan fell through after Rwanda, the African country meant to receive the deportees, announced that it would accept only those who left Israel voluntarily....
UN: Israel to send its illegal aliens to Western countries (oops! cancel that), by Ann Corcoran, Refugee Resettlement Watch, April 3, 2018.