Israel’s ministerial committee on immigrant absorption gave its approval Monday to a detailed plan aimed at settling every Ethiopian immigrant in permanent housing by this time next year.
The ministers acted little more than a week after the remarkable Operation Solomon airlift brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 30 hours.
The Jewish Agency for Israel presently operates 69 absorption centers for the 23,600 Ethiopian immigrants now in the country.
The approved plan was worked out by the Jewish Agency to avoid repeating the situation which kept earlier Ethiopian olim stuck in absorption centers for years because the authorities could not find them permanent housing.
Under the plan, the new immigrants will be installed in permanent homes no later than May 1992, just a year after their arrival.
A key element of the plan is a financial incentive to relatives of the olim to help them achieve permanent housing.
The government plans to provide another 600 mobile homes for the new arrivals to replace hotel accommodations, which are inadequate. The immigrants living in hotels will be the first to move.
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