Some of the 50 Bnei Menashe members who arrived in Israel Tuesday

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, June 20 (IslamOnline.net) – In yet a new attempt to dodge implementation of the roadmap plan, which stipulates a freeze of all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel is settling Indian immigrants in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip instead of housing them inside its territories.

The Knesset's Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and the Diaspora debated on Wednesday, June 18, settling Indian Jews, though to belong to Bnei Menashe tribe, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reported the Israeli channel 7 on its website.

It quoted the committee chairwoman Colette Avital as saying that the aim of luring new settlers from India was to salvage the Jewish settlements.

She argued that there were millions of people in India willing to live in Gaza settlements rather than being caught in continued shootout between Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir.

Exploited

For his part, Labor Knesset member Ofir Paz lashed out at the settlement scheme, charging that the Indian immigrants are "being cynically exploited for political purposes.

"I think the whole thing is something that is totally unacceptable. You bring people from all over the world - from Mexico, from India, from whatever - straight to the 'settlements.' I don't think they should be the people who are taking the houses of those that left the settlements during the last years and came back to inside the Green Line," he asserted.

"I think it is cynical, I think it is unacceptable, and I demand that they will stop bringing these innocent people to become settlers. It is unthinkable," said the Israeli lawmaker.

"If they want to bring them, okay. Bring them to Afula, bring them to Tel Aviv, bring them to Beersheba, bring them to Rishon Lezion, but don't bring them straight to Gush Katif and to Kiryat Arba. It is immoral," he said, in reference to the two biggest Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Knesset member Marina Solodkin, another member of the committee, branded the scheme as illegal, asserting that similar projects were being carried out in secret involving Jews from countries that were once part the former Soviet Union.

However, Amishav, the non-profit organization funding the immigration of Bnei Menashe Jews challenged Paz's charges.

Amishav director Michael Freund claimed Indian immigrants are being sent to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because no one else agreed to accept them.

"We are bringing the Bnei Menashe here [to Israel] with the approval and permission of the Interior Ministry and the Chief Rabbinate."

Fifty of the Bnei Menashe tribe, whose members all hail from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, arrived in Israel Tuesday, June 17, to join 700 others already in the country, most of whom living in Kiryat Arba and Gush Katif, said the Israeli website.

It noted that there are approximately another 5,000 Bnei Menashe members still living in India and observing a fully Jewish lifestyle.

The new comers, who graduated from the Amishav Hebrew Center of Aizawl, India, would continue to study Hebrew and Judaism in the town of Shavei Shomron, and would eventually undergo formal conversion by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

They, like compatriots, have entered Israel on tourist visas, as part of an arrangement with the Ministry of the Interior, said the website.

After the 50 members complete their conversion course, they will be granted the status of olim (new citizens), it added.