The Israeli government on Wednesday issued a notice to all African migrants to leave the country or face imprisonment. Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made the remarks at a cabinet meeting on the payment programme in Jerusalem. Netanyahu said a barrier Israel completed in 2013 along its border with Egypt had effectively cut off a stream of “illegal infiltrators” from Africa after some 60,000 crossed the desert frontier.
The vast majority came from Eritrea and Sudan and many said they fled war and persecution as well as economic hardship, but Israel treats them as economic migrants. The plan, launched this week, offers African migrants a $3,500 payment from the Israeli government and a free air ticket to return home or go to “third countries,’’ which rights groups identified as Rwanda and Uganda.
“We have expelled about 20,000 and now the mission is to get the rest out,” Netanyahu said.
An immigration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were some 38,000 migrants living illegally in Israel, while some 1,420 were being held in two detention centres.
“Beyond the end of March, those who leave voluntarily will receive a significantly smaller payment that will shrink even more with time, and enforcement measures will begin,” the official said, referring to incarceration.
Some have lived for years in Israel and work in low-paying jobs that many Israelis shun.
Israel has granted asylum to fewer than one percent of those who have applied and has a years-long backlog of applicants.
Rights groups have accused Israel of being slow to process African migrants’ asylum requests as a matter of policy and denying legitimate claims to the status.
Netanyahu has called the migrants’ presence “a threat to Israel’s social fabric and Jewish character;” and one government minister has referred to them as “cancer.”
Netanyahu condemned the large presence of African migrants in Tel Aviv’s poorer neighbourhoods, where he said “veteran residents” – a reference to Israelis – no longer feel safe.
“So today, we are keeping our promise to restore calm, a sense of personal security and law and order to the residents of south Tel Aviv and those in many other neighbourhoods,” he said.
