Several thousand Ethiopians are now living in refugee camps in the capital Addis Ababa, waiting to emigrate to Israel. Some of them have been there for many years, from the beginning of the last decade, and all are waiting for the government of Israel to implement its decisions to let anyone who can prove to have relatives in Israel immigrate to the country.

Still, even among Ethiopian Israelis there is disagreement on bringing in the remaining Ethiopians, since most are not Jewish (according to Jewish religious law), but rather relatives or offspring of people who converted from Judaism in the past. 

In recent decades, about 40,000 Ethiopians immigrated to Israel. Most of them had maintained their Judaism and are called Beta Israel, and the others — the Falash Mura — are those who converted to Christianity or married Christians, mostly due to persecution and pressure. In other words, some were apparently converted under duress.

In some cases, only partial families immigrated to Israel, and over the years those who came to Israel demanded to be reunited with their family members. In the past decades, several government decisions were made to bring first-degree relations over, but the decisions were only partially implemented, among other reasons because every time it seemed most of the relatives had immigrated, more Ethiopian relatives arrived in the refugee camps.