250 Indians - claiming descent from a biblical tribe - were able to settle in Israel on Thursday while millions of Palestinians in the world still have no right to return to their land and experience ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They were the first “Bnei Menashe” (“Sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the Israeli government decided in November to fund the immigration of around 4,600 members of the community from the state of Manipur in northeast India. The Shavei Israel organisation, which seeks to trace the descendants of the “lost Israeli tribes”, said that some 4,000 Bnei Menashe have already immigrated to Israel since the 1990s, with around 7,000 others still living in India. In India, they were converted to Christianity by 19th-century missionaries. The 250 Bnei Menashe who arrived on Thursday are to settle in northern Israel, according to the ministry of integration. They will need to convert in order to become Israeli citizens. Some of the earliest groups from this Indian community established their illegal settlements in locations such as Hebron in the Israel-occupied West Bank and in illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza prior to 2005. “This is the beginning of an operation that will allow the entire community to immigrate, 1,200 per year,” he said