Guardian

ISRAEL has struck a deal to deport up to 2,000 illegal Eritrean immigrants to an unnamed African country in return for supplying it with military aid, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper said  Wednesday.

The paper said that, under an agreement in principle, the country will take 1,500-2,000 Eritreans currently in Israel in exchange for military, technological and agricultural aid.

On Monday, a high-ranking Israeli official told the Supreme Court an agreement was about to be reached with the country in question for the deportation of Eritrean immigrants.

While the country was not named, Yediot said the understandings were cobbled together by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, Haggai Hadas, after he visited a number of countries in the past two months, including Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda.

Of some 60,000 illegal African immigrants in Israel – more than half of whom are from Eritrea – around 2,000 are being held in a detention centre. They have applied for refugee status, but their requests have yet to be processed.

Rising tensions over the influx of illegal immigrants from Africa exploded into violence last year when a Tel Aviv protest turned ugly.

Demonstrators smashed African-run shops and property, and there was a worrying number of attacks against African.

In a bid to stem the flow, Israel has erected a barrier along its border with Egypt. Netanyahu has credited it for a dramatic fall in the numbers of people crossing from Egypt, with only two “infiltrators” entering this month.