450 Ethiopian immigrants arrive on 'Dove's Wings' last flight

450 Ethiopian immigrants arrive on 'Dove's Wings' last flight

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky: We are closing a 3,000-year-old circle • Immigration and Absorption Minister Sofa Landver: I want a promise that the Israeli government will do everything it can to absorb the immigrants in the best way possible.

Yori Yalon

An Ethiopian immigrant at Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday |  Photo credit: Yossi Zeliger

Two special flights carrying 450 Ethiopian Jews landed in Israel Thursday. The passengers are the last to immigrate within the framework of Jewish Agency's Operation Dove's Wings.

The emotional immigrants fell into the arms of their loved ones already living in Israel. Among the new immigrants was the Katala family, for whom dozens of relatives from their extended family were eagerly waiting. After seeing 7-year-old Surapal, his little sister and their parents, the family erupted in joy.

In a ceremony held at Ben-Gurion International Airport, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said: "We are closing a 3,000-year-old circle."

Sharansky said that since the creation of the state, some 92,000 Jews from Ethiopia had immigrated to Israel.

Immigration and Absorption Minister Sofa Landver (Yisrael Beytenu) said, "I want a promise that the Israeli government will do everything it can to absorb the immigrants in the best way possible."
Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi), who has done much over the past 20 years on behalf of immigration from Europe, said, "Today we are ending an era of 2,500 years in exile."
Founder and President of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, said he was "excited and proud to be a part of the enterprise bringing the remaining Ethiopian Jewry to Israel."
Meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli Ethiopians demonstrated on Wednesday outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, claiming that with Operation Dove's Wings' conclusion, the doors of immigration would be shut to hundreds of their family members still in Ethiopia.