Declaring they were fed up with delays in finding them permanent housing, some 250 Ethiopian immigrants on Monday walked out of an Eilat hotel serving as a temporary absorption center and went on their own to a prefabricated housing site in Hulda, in central Israel.
They traveled by bus in stormy weather to reach the site. The rebellion was clearly embarrassing to Jewish Agency officials, who were chastised by the olim. But the agency said it would assist the newcomers for humanitarian reasons and not require them to return to the hotel.
The immigrants complained that whenever they were told they were about to be moved to permanent housing, some Jewish Agency official delayed the move.
The agency said it had offered the immigrants permanent housing at a choice of sites in the south of the country this past week but that the immigrants insisted on going to Hulda.
They were quartered in the Eilat hotel to shelter them from the severe winter storms that have swept Israel for the past month, the Jewish Agency said.
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