Petah Tikva's municipal council is expected on Sunday to approve a proposal that would block any more immigrants from Ethiopia from settling there. This comes in the wake of a petition filed by municipal department heads, in which they call on the mayor and city council to institute this move: The budget is stretched, and the city cannot handle any more Ethiopian immigrants, they say.

One thousand Ethiopian immigrant families currently live there. Another 500 families from the Falashmura community are supposed to join them in the coming months. The Falashmura are Ethiopians whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Christianity several generations ago.

"The Immigrant Absorption Ministry is looking to justify its existence by creating ghettos for Ethiopian immigrants," a senior city official said, "instead of increasing the mortgage grant for immigrants so that they can buy apartments in better neighborhoods, and helping them obtain housing. The ministry is looking for someone to blame, instead of looking for a solution.

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"They boast about the new special project in the city, which is effectively a city within a city, a neighborhood within a neighborhood, designed to make it harder for the immigrants to receive municipal services like other residents. They say they are helping us to absorb the Ethiopian immigrants, but in reality they are screwing the Ethiopian community," the official said.

"Eighty percent of the students in the national-religious school are Ethiopian immigrants, and there are 40 students to a class. It's impossible to educate them like that," Mayor Yitzhak Ohayon said. "I am going to meet with [Sephardic] Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar this Wednesday and ask him to issue a dispensation to allow the Falashmura children to go to the regular state school while receiving lessons in Judaism to prepare them for their conversion process," Ohayon said.

"The ministry sends me the immigrants without preparing for their absorption, which ruins both the community and the city," the mayor continued. "I will not let the Ethiopian children become criminals in a few years after finding themselves out on the street because there's no room in the classrooms for them now. How can we provide a good education to children who have just arrived in the country and who need to learn the language when there are more than 40 crowded into every classroom?" Ohayon said.

The immigrants consider the municipality's action to be racist, and intend to fight it. The Immigrant Absorption Ministry did not respond by press time.