Netanyahu Suspends Agreement on African Migrants; UN Calls for Reconsideration

On Tuesday, April 2, the United Nations called on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, to reconsider his decision to suspend the agreement between his government and the UN regarding the status of African migrants in Israel, in order to allow the implementation of the agreement. The UN's request came after Netanyahu suspended the agreement he had announced just six hours earlier due to severe internal criticism. On Monday, Netanyahu initially announced that under the agreement with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 16,250 African job seekers would be transferred to Western countries in the near future, and 18,000 others would be granted residency in Israel for a five-year period during which they would be 'voluntarily' transferred to third African countries. According to Netanyahu, Germany, Italy, and Canada had accepted Israel's and the UN High Commissioner's request and agreed to absorb about half of the wandering Africans in Israel. The implementation of this agreement was supposed to replace a plan that the Israeli government had devised to immediately imprison thousands of African migrants with the aim of forcing them to go to third countries such as Rwanda and Uganda. Most of these migrants are from Eritrea and South Sudan. However, on Monday evening, Netanyahu announced the overall suspension of the agreement with the UN, arguing that Rwanda had canceled its agreement with Israel to accept other groups of these migrants. According to reports, Rwanda stated on Monday that it was not willing to accept migrants who are forcibly made to leave Israel after being imprisoned. Rwanda announced that it would only accept those Africans who voluntarily wish to leave Israel and go to Rwanda. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees emphasized in its statement on Tuesday that it still believes in a 'win-win agreement' that benefits both Israel and the African refugees. For the past three months, Israel has been enclosing thousands of Africans in an open detention facility in the southern desert of Israel called 'Holot,' offering $3,500 and free airfare to encourage them to leave Israel. Naftali Bennett, the leader of the right-wing 'Jewish Home' party, criticized the agreement initially announced by Netanyahu on Monday, saying that the coalition parties were not informed of the agreement and that its implementation would turn Israel into 'a paradise for job seekers.' Conservatives argue that Israel is the home of Jews, not job-seeking migrants from other countries. Only a very few, just a handful, of the 60,000 economic migrants who entered the country in recent years have been granted official residency. However, groups in Israel, including some writers, human rights activists, and Holocaust survivors, have called for compassion towards African migrants.