Israel will accommodate thousands of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, says interior minister

Israeli interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, announced that her government would take a decision to set up seven to twelve new residential areas in the Negev region “to house new Jewish immigrants.”

“We think tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of immigrants will arrive from Russia, Ukraine, and former Soviet states,” Shaked told Channel 7, adding that the new communities would “bolster the Negev” and would be “necessary to absorb the expected wave of new immigrants.”

Calling on the heads of local councils to prepare for the absorption of immigrants, Shaked pointed out that there was a “national housing crisis” in Israel.

“What will happen when new immigrants reach us from Ukraine and Russia,” she reiterated, adding that more homes were requiring “aggressive and rapid construction to accommodate the mass arrivals.”

READ: Ukraine asks Israel to stop turning refugees away