Palestinians line up to receive a hot meal distributed by a charity kitchen in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip besieged by Israel, on September 4, 2025, where the UN has declared a state of famine after nearly two years of war. (Credit: Eyad Baba/AFP.)
South Sudanese authorities on Thursday denied any agreement with Israel to resettle Palestinians on their soil and assured that they also had no commitment to the United States to accept more deported migrants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated earlier this month that he “would allow” residents of the Gaza Strip — devastated by a deadly war since October 2023 between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas — to emigrate abroad.
Media reports had then mentioned a plan to relocate Gazans to this poor and unstable African state, which immediately denied it. Nevertheless, the rumors sparked intense controversy both on social media and in the streets of Juba.
During a press conference Thursday in Juba, South Sudan’s Director General of Bilateral Relations Philip Jada Natana said he had signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel but assured it focused notably on “strengthening agricultural capacities,” investment, and mining.
“There was never any talk of resettling Palestinians in South Sudan,” he said.
In early July, South Sudan had agreed to accept eight migrants expelled from the United States — almost all from Asia and Latin America — at the request of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, a staunch ally of Benjamin Netanyahu.
South Sudan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen nevertheless repeated that there is no agreement between Juba and the United States, and that it was a “single bilateral commitment.”
One of the expelled individuals was South Sudanese and was handed over to their family. The seven other third-country nationals remain in the custody of the competent authorities, she said.
South Sudan, poor and unstable, has faced insecurity and instability since gaining independence in 2011.
The world’s newest country this year experienced months of clashes between the forces of President Salva Kiir and those loyal to First Vice President Riek Machar.
The arrest of the latter in March fueled fears of a return to civil war nearly seven years after the end of a bloody conflict between supporters of the two men that left about 400,000 dead between 2013 and 2018.
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