African asylum seekers protest in Tel Aviv, Israel, on January 7, 2014.
PM Benjamin Netanyahu says the country has scrapped a controversial plan
to deport migrants to an unnamed African country. PHOTO | AFP
Thousands of African migrants in Israel will be resettled in
countries including Canada, Germany and Italy under an agreement reached
with the UN refugee agency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
Monday.
"This agreement will allow for the departure
from Israel of 16,250 migrants to developed countries, such as Canada,
Germany and Italy," Netanyahu said.
He made the
announcement in televised remarks after Israel said it had scrapped a
controversial plan to deport migrants to an unnamed African country and
replace it with a new one that would see thousands sent to Western
countries.
Thousands of others are to remain in Israel at least temporarily.
"The
agreement stipulates that for each migrant who leaves the country, we
commit to give temporary residence status to another," Netanyahu said.
Forced expulsion
Netanyahu in January announced the implementation of a programme
to remove migrants who entered illegally, giving them a choice between
leaving voluntarily or facing indefinite imprisonment with eventual
forced expulsion.
According to interior ministry
figures, there are currently some 42,000 African migrants in Israel,
half of them children, women or men with families, who were not facing
immediate deportation.
They are mainly Sudanese and Eritrean.
As
the migrants could face danger or imprisonment if returned to their
homelands, Israel offered to relocate them to an unnamed African
country, which deportees and aid workers said was Rwanda or Uganda.
Netanyahu
said in his remarks on Monday that he had to abandon the earlier plan
because the option of sending them to a third country "no longer
exists".
Rwanda and Uganda have said they would not accept those deported against their will.
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