State tells court: African country suitable to receive deported migrants
Unnamed state said to meet conditions to accept expelled asylum seekers after PM flip-flop on UN Deal.
By JPOST.COM STAFFEritrean protester: We are human beings, April 4, 2018 (Reuters)
Lawyers representing the state told the High Court of Justice Thursday that an unspecified African country meets the conditions required to enable it to receive asylum seekers that Israel chooses to deport.According to the state's response to a Hight Court petition, a special senior envoy that was hurriedly dispatched to the nation in question, widely believed to be Uganda, assessed the situation and determined that "there is high probability that the conditions to deport migrants to that country are in place."The state added however that more inspections need to be carried out to finally determined the move's legality.The fate of tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, was thrown into question this week after a series of contradictory government announcements.On Monday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a deal struck with the United Nations that would see 16,00 asylum seekers resettled in Western countries and another 23,000 dispersed to communities across Israel, all this to ease tensions in neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, where a majority of people who entered the country illegally over the past decade have congregated.Netanyahu was quickly made to backtrack on the announcement after his right wing coalition partners decried the deal, arguing it would leave a majority of the migrants in the country and encourage others to try to enter its borders.On Tuesday morning, Netanyahu officially nixed the deal and announced the government would revisit prior plan to deport the migrants to a third African country.The developments sent hundreds of migrants and Israeli opponents of the government's deportation policy to the streets in protests that took place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.