Date: Wednesday, 25 April 2018
Israel tells top court it will stop holding deportation hearings and any previous decisions on deportations have now been nullified
Asylum seekers protest against deportation in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018. Israel considers the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 migrants to be job seekers and says it has no legal obl Credit:Ariel Schalit/APTo really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
In a statement, the state said it would stop holding pre-deportation hearings for the asylum seekers and that any previous decisions on the matter are now nullified.
Israel said on Tuesday that those who had received a deportation date would now have their status renewed every sixty days, as was the case before the attempt to expel them.
The signatories of the letter, all Democrats, said they were “heartened” by the agreement and “disappointed” by Netanyahu’s swift decision to retract it on April 3 following strong pressure from the right wing in Israel.
According to the UN deal, Israel would have sent as many as 16,500 asylum seekers to be resettled in Western countries while allowing a similar number to remain in Israel until a better solution is found.
Israel negotiated the UN agreement following the collapse of a prior arrangement it reportedly had with Rwanda to deport thousands of asylum seekers there.
After he canceled the UN deal, Netanyahu signaled that he is once again examining ways of forcibly deporting asylum seekers to an unspecified “third country” in Africa – most likely Uganda. But a special envoy sent there to negotiate a deal returned last week without signing any sort of agreement with the country.
