This double reversal, concerning one of the biggest political issues in Israel in recent months, is a rare public display of weakness from Netanyahu, and a sign that he is feeling immense strain from the right wing of his coalition. It’s also an extreme example of how perilous the politics of migrants and refugees can be, trapping national leaders between the pressures of domestic politics and the demands of the international community.

Israel’s political left has been rallying aggressively around this issue for months, and the government’s initial announcement was a victory for activist groups—and for left-leaning immigration groups across Europe. Israeli groups ranging from secular activists to Orthodox rabbis argued that Israel’s treatment of African migrants—many of whom crossed through the Sinai desert to reach Israel from war-torn Eritrea or Sudan—compromised Israel’s moral and religious integrity. The deportations had been scheduled to begin around the start of Passover, the holiday that memorializes ancient Israelites’ slavery in Egypt and their ensuing exodus, also through the Sinai—poor timing for government-PR purposes.

When Israel initially announced its policy reversal, progressives celebrated the Jewish symbolism. “It’s remarkable that this victory happened over Passover—the holiday of liberation,” said Daniel Sokatch, the CEO of the New Israel Fund, in an emailed statement. “Today, we have shown that our power as a civil society—the power of each of us standing up for what is right, and joining together to press for change—is stronger than the power of the cruel and fearful few.”

The Prime Minister’s Office presented the initial agreement in terms that seemed designed to placate the right, saying it “will allow for a larger number of migrants to leave Israel than the previous plan, and under the auspices of the UN and the international community.”

Yet members of Netanyahu’s coalition seemed to recognize that the new plan might make the government seem hypocritical. The prime minister has consistently referred to the African migrants who have arrived in Israel since 2006—roughly 40,000 people in a country of 8.5 million—as “infiltrators,” claiming they were not refugees or asylum-seekers, but economic migrants looking for work. The country did not process more than a few asylum applications each day despite a massive backlog of requests. Many of those seeking asylum waited for years to hear back about their status. This created a kind of self-fulfilling policy: The government could claim there were barely any refugees because it had not processed refugee-status applications.

Monday’s first announcement revealed this as a bureaucratic fiction, since it seemed to tacitly acknowledge that there were refugees among the migrants, after all. The new plan made significant concessions to the requests of left-wing organizers, including a promise to provide the migrants with job training and distribute them across Israel. Until now, the migrants have largely been concentrated in one neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and the resulting crowding and noise have been a significant source of local tension.