On Sunday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office will convene an urgent ministerial meeting to examine measures against Eritreans who participated in the riots during the Sabbath. One of the measures that should be on the table, according to a statement from the Prime Minister's Office, is the expulsion of some of the rioters alongside additional sanctions.
As of June 2023, there are about 18,000 asylum seekers and migrant workers from Eritrea and about 5,500 from Sudan. Since the beginning of the year, 1,794 Eritreans have left for Canada, 118 have left for a third country/Uganda, 228 have left for another Western country, and 62 have returned to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. A total of 2,202 have left since the beginning of January.
Eritreans and Israel, photo: AP
In a discussion chaired by the prime minister yesterday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proposed examining the expulsion from Israel of Eritreans who participated in the riots in Tel Aviv. The prime minister replied that the matter should be examined together with legal advice. Ben-Gvir later raised a request with Population Authority officials to examine options for expelling the rioters. Minister Ben-Gvir also appealed to the interior minister last night to initiate a move to expel them and take additional steps against the rioters.
The last attempt to evacuate the infiltrators to a third country in 2018, led by Netanyahu and Deri as interior minister, collapsed. The reason: sharp criticism from the right against Netanyahu and his government for the fact that the plan he promoted led the back way to granting permanent status to thousands of other infiltrators.
The attempt to evacuate the infiltrators failed. Netanyahu and Deri, archive, photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
The right, led by the Center for Immigration Policy, argued that Eritreans are leaving the country anyway and therefore there is no reason to grant some of them permanent status in Israel's periphery, and flood it with people who will cause its residents to suffer from becoming Israel's backyard.
His government also left behind the expulsion plan. Yair Lapid, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The UN outline advanced by the Netanyahu-led government and left behind led to severe disappointment on the left. That government left behind the deportation plan, but on the other hand, they did not deal with the problem of the infiltrators and did not enforce the law against their stay here.
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