- (AFP) -- About 2,000 immigrants from Ethiopia have demonstrated
outside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's offices to persuade the Government
to allow their relatives to join them in Israel.
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- The protesters, who claimed they were victims of racism,
carried photos of their relatives and demanded the lifting of immigration
restrictions.
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- Most of their relatives left behind belong to the Falash
Mura community, Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity about a century
ago and who are concentrated around the capital Addis Ababa and the north-eastern
Gondar province.
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- The Government gave the green light in February for some
20,000 of them to immigrate under Israel's law of return, which says that
Jews anywhere in the world have the right to make the aliyah (ascent) to
Israel and claim citizenship.
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- But Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, from the secular
Shinui party, has said that he will not allow them to arrive en masse without
assurances that more candidates will not seek to immigrate by citing family
ties.
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- During Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon
in 1991, about 35,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel.
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- Their community in Israel now numbers about 80,000, including
several hundred in West Bank settlements, but doubts about their Jewishness
have sparked intense debate among religious authorities and Israeli society.
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- The essentially rural Falash Mura community has had to
bridge a wide cultural gap and has faced a difficult integration into Israeli
society.
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- The Ethiopians suffer from discrimination and high unemployment.
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- In 2000, Israel accepted 2,246 Ethiopian immigrants,
3,298 in 2001 and 2,693 in 2002, according to the ministry of absorption.
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s990683.htm>
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