Israeli leader reaches deal with U.N. on African migrants, then backtracks

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April 3, 2018 2:58 AM

JERUSALEM — In a head-spinning turnaround, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced Monday that he had reached an extraordinary deal with the United Nations refugee agency...

The flip-flop appeared to reflect 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.

His opponents on the left described the prime minister’s behavior as an embarrassing and cowardly surrender under pressure.

Netanyahu, who is battling for his political future under the cloud of multiple corruption scandals and faces possible charges of bribery, had apparently failed to consult with most of his own conservative Likud Party colleagues or coalition allies before announcing the migrant deal.

If the deal with the U.N. refugee agency bought Israel some international goodwill, diverting attention from Friday’s flare-up along the border with Gaza when Israeli forces killed at least 15 Palestinians and wounded many more, the effect was short-lived.

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.

In the afternoon, in a televised news conference, Netanyahu triumphantly announced the new deal, under which the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees committed to persuading countries in the West to take at least 16,250 migrants over five years, while Israel would grant official status as temporary residents to most who remained.

Estimates of the population of African asylum-seekers in Israel, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, range from 35,000 to 39,000.

But the agreement to let many stay in Israel drew harsh criticism from some of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition allies, who were taken by surprise. Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the far-right Jewish Home party, said the deal would “turn Israel into an infiltrator’s paradise.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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