* Govt deems migrants a threat to character of state
By Douglas Hamilton
TEL AVIV, June 12 (Reuters) - African migrants chosen for deportation from
Israel were nervously awaiting a knock on the door or a tap on the shoulder
on Tuesday as immigration officials rounded up hundreds for departure
flights due to begin at the weekend.
"The people are very tense. It's pretty traumatic," said Jacob Berri, a
spokesman for the South Sudanese community of migrants, the first to be
repatriated under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's emergency plan.
"There are children here who only speak Hebrew. They won't even know the
language where they're going," Berri said.
Africans were being stopped on the street and issued deportation orders, he
added. "About 100 more have been arrested this morning."
Many of the migrants have been working in hotels and restaurants, while
others have been holding down manual jobs or working as contracted day
labour. All of them were technically working illegally.
Israeli opinion is divided over plans to eventually deport some 60,000
African migrants deemed a social irritant and a threat to the Jewish
character of the state. A columnist in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth called it
"hysteria". Another in the same paper said the methods may be "needlessly
brutal" but it was necessary.
The first deportation flight is expected to leave Israel on Sunday for Juba,
the capital of South Sudan, as part of what Israel calls Operation Returning
Home.
Detentions began on Sunday in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, where Israeli
television filmed weeping African women and men in handcuffs. Those detained
were sent to the Saharonim detention facility in the Negev Desert, close to
where they first entered Israel over the porous Sinai Desert border with
Egypt.
The South Sudanese, whose country was established in 2011 after they fled
civil war in Sudan five or six years ago, will be the first to be
repatriated, under an agreement between South Sudan and Israel. They number
only some 1,500.
"The next stage is the removal from Israel of all the infiltrators from
Eritrea and Sudan, whose number comes close to 50,000 people," said Interior
Minister Eli Yishai.
It is legally questionable whether Israel can actually remove all of the
migrants and some critics have said the government's tough rhetoric is far
removed from reality.
"At the moment, we are permitted only to deport from Israel the citizens of
South Sudan and the Ivory Coast," the minister was quoted as saying.
"I hear those who say these infiltrators cannot be sent back, but this is an
important mission ... saying "No" is tantamount to shelving
the declaration of independence, the end of the Zionist dream," said Yishai,
who heads a religious party.
CASH LEAVING GRANT
South Sudanese who agree to deportation within five days will receive a
grant of 1,000 euros. Those who do not are interned until they can be
forcibly repatriated.
"We have arrested about 140 infiltrators up until last night, a main portion
of whom are South Sudanese," senior immigration official Yossi Edelstein
told Israel Radio.
"There is also an impressive movement in the South Sudanese community of
people coming to us to leave on their own free will. About 100 people have
come forward to register..."
Israel, a country of 7.8 million, has almost completed a high fence along
the border to deter more would-be migrants who are brought to the frontier
by Bedouin people-smugglers.
Newspaper reports said Netanyahu had asked officials to examine whether a
fence should now also be built along the border with southern Jordan, in the
event that migrants try to cross the narrow Gulf of Aqaba and enter Israel
from the Arab kingdom.
An Eilat hotel director said the expulsions were "a terrible shame". "Most
of them are educated people who fled from a bloody war in their homeland.
They speak a number of languages, most of them are Christian, and they did
their job in the best way possible," David Blum of Isrotel was quoted as
saying.
Thousands of Palestinians used to come into Israel daily from the West Bank
and Gaza to do mostly minimum-wage jobs. But tight security provisions to
prevent attacks by Palestinian militants ended that mutually beneficial
arrangement years ago.
Netanyahu says legislation to stop the illegal hiring of Africans would now
be strictly enforced.
Despite claims of rampant crime in sections of south Tel Aviv where most
Africans live, a senior police commander, David Gez, was quoted as saying
the level of crime among the migrants was relatively low. (Additional
reporting by Maayan Lubell; Edited by Andrew Osborn)
C Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved
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Received on Tue Jun 12 2012 - 10:52:26 EDT
