A couple thousand African migrants from Eritrea and Sudan protested on Monday outside the Rwandan Embassy against Israel's plan to pay thousands of African migrants living illegally in the country to leave.
The migrants are under threat of incarceration if they are caught after the end of March.
Some demonstrators arrived with their hands tied, as if in shackles, and held signs with slogans protesting the policy, such as "deportation to Rwanda = death sentence."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said a barrier Israel completed in 2013 along its border with Egypt had effectively cut off a stream of "illegal infiltrators" from Africa after some 60,000 crossed the desert frontier.
The vast majority came from Eritrea and Sudan. Many said they fled war and persecution as well as economic hardship, but Israel treats them as economic migrants.
The plan offers African migrants a $3,500 payment from the Israeli government and a free air ticket to return home or go to "third countries," which rights groups identified as Rwanda and Uganda. Earlier this month, however, officials from both Uganda and Rwanda denied the existence of such a deal with Israel.
An immigration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there are some 38,000 migrants living illegally in Israel, and some 1,420 are being held in two detention centers.
Some have lived for years in Israel and work in low-paying jobs that many Israelis shun. Israel has granted asylum to fewer than 1% of those who have applied and has a yearslong backlog of applicants.
Rights groups have accused Israel of being slow to process African migrants' asylum requests as a matter of policy and denying legitimate claims to the status.
Netanyahu has called the migrants' presence a threat to Israel's social fabric and Jewish character, and Culture Minister Miri Regev has referred to them as "a cancer."
