JERUSALEM ¨C Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was cancelling an agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants, bowing to right-wing pressure to scrap the deal.
The agency, the UNHCR, said it hoped Israel would reconsider the decision soon and offered to work with it to identify and ¡°respond to the protection needs¡± of asylum seekers in the country.
Netanyahu¡¯s critics seized on his backtracking on the arrangement ¡ª under which thousands of other migrants would have won the right to remain in Israel ¡ª as a sign of political weakness. The prime minister is the subject of police investigations into suspected corruption, which he denies.
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