OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, February 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The immigration of 20,000 Ethiopians authorized by Israel will be the third major wave from the African country, but the disputed Jewishness of the newcomers and the timing of the move raise question marks inside and outside Israel.

Less than a day after the Israeli government authorized their immigration, Israeli newspapers were already enumerating the problems their arrival would cause.

"There is no budget for their integration," read the main headline of the top-selling Yediot Aharonot's weekly supplement. "The operation will raise very serious social and economic issues," it warned, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Before they have even arrived, the case of the 20,000 Ethiopians of Jewish origin who were permitted to immigrate to Israel under the "Law of Return" is already shrouded in controversy.

When Israel airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews in 1984 and 1991, the argument then was that the immigrants were “fleeing humanitarian crises”.

However, this third batch will find the state of Israel going through one of its worst crises ever, with the nearly 29-month-old Intifada taking its toll on the economy and on public tolerance.

Israel's Housing Minister reacted to the news by warning that the move was not in the country's interest and could open the floodgates for more immigration from people with tenuous claims to being Jewish in impoverished countries.

"We must stop this process right now. My fear is that Israel will become an asylum land for immigrants from the Third World it does not need," said Nathan Sharansky, quoted by Yediot.

He founded the Israel B'Alya party to promote the immigration of some 800,000 Jews from Russia in the early 1990s.

However, Rabbi Menachem Waldman, who was active in helping the Falash Mora Ethiopians to reach Israel, told the daily Maariv that there was no need for concern as the government and the Jewish Agency had established closed lists of those authorized to immigrate.

"At the Interior Ministry, there are also fears that the project will fail due to the lack of budget and housing, and the department in charge of welfare has warned it could be stretched beyond its capacity," the Yediot reported.

Some 80,000 Ethiopians live in Israel and complain they are being segregated in separate neighborhoods and are not given access to the same services as other Israelis.

There were no immediate indications as to where the Ethiopians would live, but some reports have hinted they could be herded straight to the occupied Palestinian territories, to bolster Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's active settlement policies.

Many settlers have left their homes because of the rising violence, while the Israeli right sees the settlements as strategically important to maintain a presence in the territories which they say are part of (alleged and controversial) “Israel's biblical heritage”.

A few hundred Ethiopians who arrived during the previous waves still live in (illegal) Jewish settlements in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

But the settlements which are expanding enough to receive such an influx of newcomers are religious ones, where the presence of the Ethiopians would be least welcome.

Although the project was promoted and announced by the ultra-religious Shas party, the Jewishness of the Falash Mora - Ethiopian Jews who were “forced to convert to Christianity” - has sparked intense rabbinical debates and the government turnaround on the issue has discontented some Orthodox hardliners.

Around 17,000 of the Ethiopians hoping to move to Israel and claiming Jewish descent are based in the capital Addis Ababa and in the northwestern province of Gondar, in camps where a Jewish society provides them with medical care.

They insist on their “Right of Return”, an Israeli law which allows Jews from anywhere in the world to obtain automatic Israeli citizenship, while some have managed to come to Israel under family reunification laws.

The government said Sunday a special committee would be created to oversee the implementation of the immigration and it could still be several months before the Falash Mora step off the plane in Tel Aviv.

Israel had previously rejected requests for this new group to immigrate. But following the U-turn by the Israeli Cabinet at its weekly meeting, officials will now be sent to Ethiopia to organize the move, according to the BBC online news service.

In January, 3,000 Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated outside Sharon's office to urge the government to allow their relatives to join them even if they could not prove they were Jewish.

The protesters held up pictures of their relatives left behind in Ethiopia, claiming they were "victims of discrimination".