JERUSALEM, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Israeli officials and aid organizations are debating plans to send African refugees in Israel to African nations other than Egypt.
“To say that Israel has a humanitarian duty to care for everyone who comes here is an irresponsible exaggeration,” Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert told the Knesset Wednesday in outlining the plan, reported the Jerusalem Post.
A spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office said, “the intention is to find other options for those people whom we are not absorbing here.”
The previous policy was to return refugees entering Israel through the porous Egyptian border back to Egypt. However, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say the deportation of refugees to Egypt is a violation of international law.
Both groups also cite Egypt’s poor human rights records as a motive to seek an alternative solution to Israel’s refugee problem.
Amnesty International said over 2,400 African refugees crossed the Egyptian border to Israel in the past few years, said the Post. Most were from the Sudan. Some 500, mostly from Sudan's Darfur region, have been granted asylum.
Although Ghana and Kenya have been mentioned as possible destinations for the refugees, neither country has agreed to any plan.
