BICOM

Yesterday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to cancel a deal struck with the UN refugee agency for deporting African migrants to Western countries and giving others temporary status in Israel.

The decision came after Netanyahu met residents of south Tel Aviv, where the majority of the African migrants reside, to discuss the agreement. “I have listened attentively to the statements about the agreement. As a result, and after re-evaluating the advantages and disadvantages, I have decided to nullify the agreement,” he said.

The meeting was held after Netanyahu announced an unexpected decision Monday night that he was replacing original plans to deport the migrants to a country in Africa with a deal struck with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), according to which the latter would work to reach agreements with different Western countries to take in at least 16,250 of the Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers.

The UNHCR said it was disappointment by the cancellation but continues “to believe that a win-win agreement that would both benefit Israel and people needing asylum is in everyone’s best interests,” it says.

Yesterday evening Hadashot news reported that Netanyahu is now weighing a move to reopen the Holot migrant detention facility in the Negev, which had been closed in early March in anticipation of planned deportations.

Netanyahu also declared that he has asked the government coalition chairman David Amsalem to set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the activities of the New Israel Fund (NIF), which he blamed for the failure of Israel’s deportation plans. “The overarching goal of the New Israel Fund is to erase the Jewish character of Israel and turn it into a state of all of its citizens, alongside a Palestinian nation-state free of Jews on the ’67 lines, with its capital in Jerusalem,” he said on his Facebook page.

Shortly after Netanyahu called for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the NIF, leader of the left wing Meretz Party Tamar Zandberg said Netanyahu is “paranoid” if he really believes his smear against the NIF, or an “inciting liar” if he truly doesn’t.

CEO of the New Israel Fund Daniel Sokatch rejected Netanyahu’s allegations saying that he “attacks Israeli democracy and civil society when he attacks NIF” and adding that Netanyahu was “lashing out to deflect attention from his own morally bankrupt choices.”