Israel's security forces will be tasked with sending African refugees who infiltrate into the country back to Egypt, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told senior cabinet ministers at the conclusion of a follow-up consultation on the issue held in Jerusalem on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police instituted the policy of arresting and returning refugees to Sinai in August 2007.
Olmert convened the meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, and senior officials from the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, and the Population Registry.
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Defense officials noted that Egypt's refusal to accept the refugees complicates Israel's efforts to send the infiltrators back across the border. Olmert summoned legal officials to inquire whether or not the state is within its rights to immediately expel the refugees and if the matter requires a change in legislation.
"The security forces still are not doing enough to prevent the entrance of infiltrators, and the Foreign Ministry has not examined all the options with African states," Olmert said. "The situation is not ideal. This is a tsunami that can grow and we need to take every measure in order to stop it."
"Israel holds to a strict line vis-a-vis the Palestinians on all matters related to the entry of people and the right of return, and here in a span of a few months 10,000 people have entered the country and nobody is doing anything about it," Olmert said.
The prime minister instructed Barak to take steps to prevent the infiltrations, even if the matter requires the use of force. "If need be, you could consult with legal officials over how this can be done," Olmert told the defense minister.
Dichter proposed enlarging the holding facilities at the Ketziot prison, which currently has a capacity of just 1,000 inmates.
"We have to find other countries and send [the refugees] there," Dichter said, adding that a fence which runs along the Israel-Egypt border would put a stop to the infiltrations and would also aid in the efforts to halt drug and weapons smuggling as well as human trafficking.
Defense officials said that the average number of refugees who snuck across the border into Israel stood at 800 per week as of earlier this month. Last week, the number dropped to 80 infiltrators. The decrease can be attributed to the heightened vigilance displayed by Egyptian security forces as well as the IDF and the Border Police on the Israeli side, defense officials said.
Earlier this month, Olmert rebuked defense officials for not doing enough to seal the border and block the flow of refugees across the border.
Egypt arrests 13 African refugees Meanwhile, Egyptian police arrested 13 Africans on Sunday as they tried to cross into Israel to look for work or political asylum there, a police official said.
The arrested Africans included men, women and children from Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Sudan, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to talk to the media.
The traffickers had charged each African from the group US$500 for shelter and passage from Cairo, the Egyptian capital where the group was first assembled, and across Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the Israeli border, the official said.
From there, they were to be smuggled into Israel just a few kilometers (miles) south of the Rafah border crossing point.
The arrest was the latest in near-daily attempts by illegal migrants to make it to Israel from Egypt. Among the three children and four women in the group, one was a Sudanese Christian woman who was arrested with her two children. She told police that she had come from the wartorn Darfur region and was seeking asylum in Israel.
Imad Kharboush, head of the northern Sinai emergency unit said all the
Africans were examined at the Rafah hospital to make sure that they didn't carry any serious disease.
Hundreds of African refugees hope to make it to Israel. Dozens have been detained over the past year and at least six have been killed this year by Egyptian border guards.
Africans began trickling into Israel in 2005, after Egyptian authorities quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees. In recent months, the number has surged as word spread of job opportunities in Israel.
More than 7,000 African migrants have entered the Jewish state illegally in just over a year, including at least 2,000 since January, according to U.N. officials in Israel.
Israel has asked Egypt to do more to stem the tide of trafficking and weapons flow across Egypt's volatile boundaries in the Sinai - both the border with Israel and the adjoining boundary separating Egypt and the coastal Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas.
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