JUBA: South Sudan will not accept Palestinians from Gaza, its government said Thursday, telling reporters there was also no deal with Washington to take more third-nation deportees.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he would permit Gazans to emigrate voluntarily, and that his government was talking to a number of potential host countries.
Among them was reportedly South Sudan, which in August welcomed Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel, calling it “the highest-level engagement from an Israeli official to South Sudan thus far.”
But the desperately poor country, which is itself struggling with a worrying uptick of violence, has repeatedly denied reports it would take Palestinians.
“There has never been any question that has been discussed... on the issue of Palestinians being resettled in South Sudan,” Philip Jada Natana, director general for bilateral relations, told reporters.
