Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an extraordinary press conference in his chambers with Interior Minister Aryeh Deri on April 2. He presented to the Israeli public a dramatic agreement signed between Israel and the UN that is supposed to regulate migrant workers, tens of thousands of whom have entered Israel in the last decade from the African continent.
Netanyahu departed from his custom by allowing questions without setting a time limit, determined to convince the Israeli public of the agreement’s necessity and advantages. Israel had signed on the dotted line after all the other solutions failed. Rwanda reneged on its agreement with Israel (Rwanda officials claimed no agreement was signed), in which the country had agreed to absorb the illegal immigrants, and the Israeli leadership was left without any alternative. Netanyahu knew that he was right. It was a display of leadership and charisma by a prime minister who made an executive decision and resolved a long and tiresome saga with an agreement that was the lesser of two evils, even according to his political base.
