https://arab.news/p4end
- South Sudan has repeatedly denied reports it would take Palestinians
- Foreign ministry clarified there was no deal with Washington over 3rd-country deportees
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.
In a weekly briefing, foreign ministry spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen also clarified there was no deal between Washington and Juba over third-country deportees — despite South Sudan accepting eight men in July.
“There is no discussions on that and there is no deal that has been signed,” she said, emphasising the recent deportation was the result of a single bilateral engagement.
The sole South Sudanese citizen in the group of deportees has been released to his family, she said.
The other seven remain in the official custody, Mayen said.
All eight were convicted of serious crimes in the US, and deported as part of President Donald Trump’s highly controversial crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Analysts and diplomats warn that South Sudan is on the brink of renewed civil war.
A previous conflict only ended in 2018, and claimed some 400,000 lives.
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