Tel Aviv, Israel - When Tzvi Khaute arrived six years ago from a remote corner of India, claiming to belong to the lost Jewish tribe of Menashe, Israeli authorities weren't buying it.
Things may be starting to change. About 1,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community now live here as Israeli citizens, and beginning Tuesday, an additional 218 are to land here — the largest single group to arrive so far.
Members of the community greeted the new immigrants with traditional Israeli songs as they stepped off the plane, waving banners inscribed with the biblical passage, "The sons shall return to their borders."
But the community's immigration ordeal is not over. More than 7,000 Bnei Menashe in India are still waiting to come, and authorities in both countries have created formidable obstacles.
The Bnei Menashe's story touches core issues of Israel's existence and its conflict with the Palestinians. They are bound up in an age-old debate over who is a Jew, and many have settled in the West Bank, which Palestinians claim for a future state.
The latest arrivals' flights and initial expenses will be paid by American Christian evangelicals who believe they are helping to fulfill the biblical prophecy of returning Jewish exiles to their homeland.
Not all Israelis think the Bnei Menashe qualify as Jews. Some suspect they are fleeing poverty in India, and the government won't grant them tourist visas, let alone citizenship. Israeli rabbinical authorities accept their claim of descent from the tribe of Menashe, but demand they convert to Judaism.
The group now arriving converted in India, but the conversions there have stopped because they've angered Indian politicians who oppose missionary work. As a result, the rest of the community remains stranded in India.
In its demographic race with the Palestinians, the settler movement has scoured remote communities for people with claims, often tenuous, to Jewish heritage. They are then converted to Judaism and settle in the West Bank.
Khaute, who came on a tourist visa in 2000 and is now a citizen, is among 450 Bnei Menashe living in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement near Hebron in the West Bank.
He says he has no doubt he's Jewish.
"When I was small boy in India, we never knew where Zion is, where Jerusalem is," he said in his apartment, decorated with photographs of rabbis. "Whenever we sang a song that mentioned 'Zion' or the name 'Jerusalem,' we thought it was in heaven."
Some experts note that Russian immigrants, including those with dubious claims to Jewishness, have had a much easier time immigrating. They wonder whether the Bnei Menashe, who are ethnically Tibetan and Burman, and have Asiatic features, are victims of discrimination.
"I think there is some racism there," said Hillel Halkin, who wrote a book about the Bnei Menashe. "If there had been a similar story with the Russian population ... there would be no problem."
The Bnei Menashe come from the states of Mizoram and Manipur, near India's border with Myanmar, where, they say, their ancestors landed after the Assyrians banished them from biblical Israel in the eighth century B.C. Over the centuries they became animists, and in the 19th century, British missionaries converted many to Christianity.
But the group continued to practice ancient Jewish rituals, including animal sacrifices, which they say were passed down orally.
They started coming to Israel in the late 1980s, but without work papers and health care, life was tough. While many left behind lives of poverty, Khaute said he gave up studies and white-collar job prospects to work in an Israeli greenhouse.
In 2003, then-Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, a secular politician and opponent of the West Bank settlements, stopped issuing tourist visas to the Bnei Menashe — a policy that remains in effect. "I saw nothing that really linked them to Jewish people," he said.
Two years later, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar recognized the Bnei Menashe as a lost tribe, but insisted they undergo conversion to be recognized as Jews. He sent a rabbinical team to India that converted 218 Bnei Menashe until Indian authorities stepped in.
Poraz, who is now out of government, also claimed the settlers were using the Bnei Menashe to strengthen Israel's claims to occupied lands.
Avigdan Hangshing, 49, denies that politics brought him to the West Bank.
"City life is very fast and everything is expensive," he said. "In the settlements, we also have more attachment to our religion."
The 218 who began arriving Tuesday are to settle in Galilee, in Israel proper.
Their journey is being funded by American Christians, through a group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which channels millions of dollars a year in donations from evangelicals to Israel.
The 51 immigrants who arrived Tuesday were handed plastic Israeli flags when they stepped off the plane and families, who have been separated for years, embraced tearfully.
Arbi Khiangte, 21, left the rest of her family behind. But with no option for converting in India, it is unclear when other Bnei Menashe will be able to come.
"I feel lonely a little bit, but this is our home," she said with tears in her eyes just after stepping off the plane. "This is the promise of God_the promised land of God."