Israel extends $3,500 departure grant to nationals of all African countries

Officials hope payment will bring number of departure back up after resettlement routes to Canada and the United States narrowed In this file photo, residents of the southern district of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv protest against the presence of African refugees and asylum seekers on 30 August 2018 (AFP) Published date: 13 November 2026 13:07 GMT | Last update: 3 sec ago Israel is extending its $3,500 voluntary departure grant to nationals of every African country in a bid to reverse a decline in the number of migrants leaving with state assistance, according to Haaretz. Until now the payment had been limited mainly to people from a handful of states. The change took effect on Monday and will remain in place until the end of the year, Israel's Population and Immigration Authority said. Applications must be submitted by 31 December. It covers African nationals who have stayed in Israel for more than two years without a valid visa, and those holding temporary residency permits. For the first time, it also includes people who entered Israel legally but overstayed their visas. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The authority expects several thousand more people to be eligible, including citizens of Nigeria, South Africa and Togo. Before the change, the grant was mostly open to people who crossed into Israel outside official border points. That group includes nationals of Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Guinea, along with citizens of countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel. The authority’s figures show that 3,511 African nationals left with help from its Voluntary Departure Unit in 2024. That fell to 2,815 in 2025, a drop of about 20 percent. In its 2025 annual report, the authority blamed smaller asylum quotas in Canada, the closure of US borders to asylum seekers, and war-related airspace closures that disrupted flights. Eritreans made up 89 percent of African departures through the scheme last year. According to the authority’s data, about 90 percent of Eritreans and Sudanese who left went to countries outside Africa. Around two percent returned to their home countries. Shrinking options The grant is the same amount Israel offered in 2018. That year, under then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the government gave about 38,000 mostly Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers a choice: leave for an unnamed third country with $3,500 and a plane ticket, or face imprisonment. Israel arrests and plans to deport Ethiopian asylum seekers Read More » The plan was abandoned in April 2018 after Netanyahu scrapped a UN resettlement deal. Israel’s refugee recognition rate is under 0.1 percent, according to a December 2025 report by the Forum of Refugee and Asylum Seeker Organizations in Israel. The forum estimates that about 13,000 Eritreans and 6,700 Sudanese are in Israel under group protection from deportation. In August, the interior ministry said it would grant temporary residency to Sudanese asylum seekers who had applied by June 2025. Refugee aid group HIAS called the decision “a direct result of relentless legal pressure”. Ethiopians have lost protection altogether. After Israel’s high court upheld the government’s withdrawal of their group protection in December 2025, authorities began arresting Ethiopian asylum seekers in March and planned to start deportations in April, MEE reported. The aid group Assaf estimated that about 8,000 Ethiopians faced deportation, around 1,000 of them from Tigray. In June, police arrested Eritreans in Tel Aviv under a 2025 law allowing deportation of people identified as supporters of the Eritrean government. Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.