Updated 10:02 AM PDT, September 3, 2023
Ahead of an official visit to Cyprus, Netanyahu said the ministerial team was seeking to deport 1,000 supporters of the Eritrean government who were involved in Saturday’s violence.
“They have no claim to refugee status. They support this regime,” Netanyahu said. “If they support the regime so much, they would do well to return to their country of origin.”
About 25,000 African migrants live in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression. Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.
The country has tried a variety of tactics to force them out, including sending some to a remote prison, holding part of their wages until they agree to leave the country or offering cash payments to those who agree to move to another country, somewhere in Africa. Critics accuse the government of trying to coerce the migrants into leaving.
Migrants’ supporters say Israel, a country founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust and built up by Jewish refugees, should welcome those seeking asylum. Opponents claim migrants have brought crime to the low-income southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods where they have settled.
On Sunday, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited the site of the unrest, voicing his support for the police and calling for those who broke the law to be placed in detention until they are deported. “They don’t need to be here. It’s not their place,” he said.
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