JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli officials will meet with Falash Mura in Ethiopia to check their eligibility for aliyah.
The Interior Ministry delegation is set to leave for Gondar in the coming days to meet with about 3,000 Ethiopian Jews who claim to have Jewish roots and are waiting for permission to emigrate, according to Yaakov Ganot, head of the ministry’s Population Administration. Ganot met Wednesday with members of the Knesset’s State Control Committee.
The delegation is part of an agreement by Israel’s Cabinet last September to allow additional Ethiopians to petition to be allowed to make aliyah as Falash Mura.
In September, Israel’s Cabinet ordered the Interior Ministry, which historically has been slow to verify the eligibility of Ethiopian petitioners for aliyah, to begin the verification process by Jan. 1. Those found eligible were to be brought at a rate of up to 100 per month.
