Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suspended a deal struck with the United Nations refugee agency to resettle or give residency to thousands of African asylum seekers, just hours after news of the plan was made public.
Under the five-year deal, around 16,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers currently in Israel who were facing prison or deportation would have been sent to countries including Germany, Italy and Canada.
Netanyahu had earlier announced that for every one of those that were resettled in the West, Israel would grant one asylum seeker “temporary residency”.
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Netanyahu faced strong criticism from “anti-migrant groups in southern Tel Aviv and powerful politicians in his own governing coalition”, says the BBC, leading him to rethink the deal.
Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett warned that the new UN deal would “turn Israel into a paradise for infiltrators”.
Both Italy and Germany said they were “unaware of any such resettlement deal”, says The Guardian, which has added to the confusion.
The UN deal was intended to replace a controversial plan that had resulted in the forced deportation of asylum seekers to African countries including Rwanda and Uganda.
It was halted by the Supreme Court, says The Times of Israel, after asylum seekers who had been deported said they were facing “serious danger and even imprisonment after arriving in Africa without proper documents”.
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