December 27, 2007

By Anshell Pfeffer

Ethiopian immigrants protesting discrimination, carrying signs reading 'stop the apartheid' and 'stop the racism' in Petah Tikva last week. (Nir Keidar)

The petitioners asked the court to defer Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit's decision to recall the officials pending the High Court's decision on a separate petition calling for Israel to issue another 8,000 immigration permits to the Falashmura, Ethiopians who claim Jewish ancestry.

Wednesday's petition was filed by the organization Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry and relatives of would-be immigrants from Ethiopia. According to a government decision from 2006, the Jewish Agency is slated to stop its activities on immigration from Ethiopia by June, when the last group of immigrants issued with permits arrives in Israel.

Last week, Sheetrit held a meeting reviewing all the remaining applicants for immigration to Israel. But petitioners say thousands of Falashmura who under the Law of Return have the right to immigrate remain in temporary camps, waiting permission to move here.

To date, some 30,000 Falashmura have immigrated to Israel, where they have undergone strict Jewish conversion. Despite efforts to bring the remaining Falashmura to Israel over the years, their numbers keep growing. At the moment, some 8,000 people claiming Jewish descent and asking to immigrate to Israel still populate camps in Ethiopia's remote Gondar province.

Jewish Agency officials say the process has become rife with corruption and that many non-Jewish Ethiopians have claimed Jewish ties to immigrate to Israel, where they later revert to Christianity.