ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- Israel Thursday said it would move the last of Ethiopia's Jews to the Jewish state, but warned the transfer would not occur all at once.
"We could like to bring all Falashas to Israel beginning next week," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters in Addis Ababa, referring to the Ethiopian Jewish community. "We believe they should live in Israel."
But he told leaders of the community Israel would not take all 23,000 Jews at once.
"We cannot ignore the fact that bringing them is complex and complicated, and includes economic aspects that are not simple, and which the finance minister will have to deal with," said Shalom's spokesman Moshe Debi in a statement.
The Ethiopian government has said it does not want mass airlifts of Jews like those staged by the Israeli government in 1984 and 1991, during times of crisis.
Some 80,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel. An addition 200 to 300 Ethiopian immigrants arrive in the country each month.
