Post date: Jun 11, 2012 7:6:37 PM
EILAT, ISRAEL (JUNE 11, 2012) (CH 10) - Israel said on Monday (June 11) it had started rounding up African migrants in the first stage of a controversial "emergency plan" to intern and deport thousands deemed a threat to the Jewish character of the state.
Israeli authorities arrest 80 African migrants as roundup for deportation officially begins. Others are encouraged to leave willingly as early as next week.
Israel Radio reported that dozens of Africans, mainly from South Sudan, had already been detained in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, including mothers and children. Most of the migrants, however, were given a chance to sign documents promising they will leave the state willingly, and were given a few days to prepare for the move.
According to the Israeli ministry of interior affairs, 80 migrants were arrested and taken into custody on Monday, while six families were later released to properly prepare themselves for upcoming deportation.
The goal is to repatriate all the estimated 60,000 African migrants, whose growing numbers are seen by many Israelis not just as a law and order issue, but also as a genuine threat to the long-term viability of the Jewish state.
Illegal migration, and the pool of cheap labour it provides, is a common headache for developed economies.
For some in Israel, a country built by immigrants and refugees, internment and deportation are bad solutions that may damage the international image of the country needlessly.
Rounding up members of a different racial group and holding them in camps for deportation may invite allusions to the Nazi Holocaust, however irrelevant or malicious such comparisons may be, and betrays Jewish values, opponents say.
On Sunday (June 10), about 500 Sudanese men held an orderly protest in Tel Aviv against expulsion, the solution chosen by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after two months of heated debate over how to handle the flow of migrants.
"We are not infiltrators, we are refugees," and "UNCHR this is the time to take responsibility" read signs held by the Sudanese.
"Israel is one of the countries that signed the UN refugee community in Geneva, but its not implemented regarding refugees. We asking peacefully that refugees from Sudan should be recognised as refugees here, to take their rights. And to give them healthcare, education, and you know, living. All these things, its lack (lacking)," migrant Adam Basher told Reuters.
Many Sudanese, including hundreds who escaped from conflict and humanitarian disaster in Darfur, have been in Israel for several years, living in legal limbo without formal refugee status, but peaceably, they say.
Now they are caught up in a wave of hostility towards blacks in general, focused on a poor area of south Tel Aviv where they congregate. Some Israelis living there say they are lawless thieves and rapists who must be kicked out immediately.
"We are demonstrating to fight for the refugee's rights, because last two weeks ago, like Israelis they started attacking the refugees in the streets. And we are against the violence, the violence is enough that has been happening to us in our homeland and we are looking for the safest place that we can get our rights," migrant Guy Joseph said/
The number of migrants crossing into Israel over the Sinai desert border has accelerated since 2006. It ballooned last year when revolution drew Egypt's attention from policing Bedouin people-smugglers operating in the Sinai peninsula.
Israel has now built a high fence along the frontier.
Israeli human rights and activist groups back the Africans. But rightwing and religious parties say that if they are not stopped today's 60,000 will become 600,000 in a few years, in a population of 7.8 million.
Poor south Tel Aviv residents say affluent north Tel Aviv Jews can afford to be liberal, because the Africans are not in their back yard. An opinion poll last week showed 52 percent of Israelis agree that the Africans are "a cancer".
"Infiltrators" is the government term for migrants. It is also applied to armed Palestinian militants.
Voluntary deportees will get financial assistance of 1,000 euros, Israel's Minister for Interior Affairs Eli Yishai told Israeli radio.
The first planeload is expected to leave Israel next week, on June 17th.