Israel to deport 40,000 African asylum seekers ‘without their consent,’ many to Rwanda
Israel will begin deporting 20,000 African asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and the Sudan, to an unnamed third-party country “without their consent,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday in a cabinet meeting. According to Israeli media the refugees will be sent to Rwanda, in return for which Israel will pay the African nation $5,000 per head.
Using the term “infiltrators” to refer to Africans who crossed into Israel through the Sinai, Netanyahu said he had reached “stage three” of a plan to remove all asylum seekers.
“Regarding infiltrators, we will discuss one of the aspects of this topic at the cabinet meeting,” Netanyahu said. “Our policy towards infiltrators is three staged:
Stage one is halting. We built a fence and enacted laws that completely blocked the flow of infiltrators and today we have zero infiltrators. Second stage is removal. We removed approximately 20,000 out of the existing infiltrators using various measures. Stage three is increased removal.”
Israel to deport 40,000 African asylum seekers 'without their consent' to Rwanda or Uganda