At least 1,000 Ethiopian Jews still living in Ethiopia will be able to immigrate to Israel in the coming year, after the Prime Minister’s Office and the Interior Ministry say they have worked out an initial list of potential immigrants and expect to approve them within four weeks.
There are approximately 8,000 Jews in Ethiopia with close relatives in Israel who are waiting to emigrate.
The last flight of Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel on December 28, 2017, among a total of 1,300 immigrants who arrived last year.
But the cabinet did not approve the approximately NIS 200 million needed to absorb the 1,300 immigrants initially planned to arrive 2018, putting the flights on hold until today.
“I am serving the state and fighting the state at the same time,” Belaynich Indishu, who was soldier in the Duvduvan combat unit and now works in security for the government, tells today’s Knesset meeting.
Indishu moved to Israel in 2007 and has two sisters still in Ethiopia. “For what? So that I can’t be with my sisters?” he asks.
— Melanie Lidman
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From the Liveblog of
Monday, February 12, 2018
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