IDF, Netanyahu disagree on extent of refugee 'tidal wave'
Knesset report counts far fewer refugees than army estimate.
By Dana Weiler Polak Tags: Sudan migrant workers Israel newsPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned last month that a "tidal wave of refugees" is threatening to turn Israel into a third-world country. Israel Defense Forces Southern Command officials estimated that the refugees number two million. However, a Knesset study shows the figures are much lower.
A report prepared by the Knesset Research and Information Center in September 2009 says 41,423 refugees are in Egypt and only a few hundred of them may enter Israel a month, seeking work or asylum. These figures were corroborated by a report compiled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo last September.
However, MK Yaakov Katz, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Workers, did not pass this information on to committee members during their tour of the southern border a few months ago. Nor did he mention it when IDF officers warned the MKs of "the strategic threat to Israel's survival."
The figures provided by the IDF were not compatible with the RIC report. According to the RIC, from January 2005 to October 10, 2009 some 17,500 refugees - seeking work and asylum - entered Israel illegally via the Egyptian border.
A large community of between one and three million African migrant workers lives in Egypt, mostly from Sudan. The absolute majority of them have been working in Egypt for several years and have no desire to leave. There is also a community of some 122,400 refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, 70,000 of them Palestinian, the report says.
The report was also not passed on to the members of the Knesset's Interior and Environment Committee, who will soon vote on a bill imposing heavy penalties on infiltrators and anyone who helps them. However, some committee members are apparently not interested in knowing the accurate figures and information pertaining to the refugees ahead of voting on the bill.
"It really doesn't matter how many [refugees] enter Israel," said committee member Miri Regev. "Today on the tour in Arad they told us more than 1,000 infiltrators entered Israel in the past month. A clear-cut immigration policy must be set, distinguishing between infiltrators and refugees."
"We received information from the IDF, I didn't see the [RIC] report and it doesn't interest me," said committee member Arye Bibi. "Some infiltrators they know about, and others they don't. I'm humane, but the border can't be wide open."
Katz's spokesman said the committee discussed the matter and the chairman accepts the IDF's assumptions.
"Almost all the migrants who came to Israel are people who requested asylum at the UN in Cairo, waited for years for their situation to improve, and lost hope," Bill Van Oswald, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said after the committee's meeting in October.
"Today, there are around 20,000 people in this situation, and they are the relevant ones. Certainly not one million," he said.
Human rights representatives were not invited to the committee's meeting on refugees. A worker for the Hotline for Migrant Workers said the committee was probably afraid to hear the real figures.
"They're afraid to hear that there are not one million migrants waiting to enter Israel, and that this figure is not based on information but on hatred of foreigners," the worker said.
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
I wonder how comes it never apeared to our prime minister. we have in our disposal just about the best person to whom we should trust the delicate problem of the refugees "tidal wave". more over to my poor knoledge he is the only real professional in this area, namely our national moldavian bouncer LIEBERMAN. this solution will solve many problems first of which and above all he will be relagated to the Sinai desert border and stay there...
This is border between Israel and Egypt, it has nothing to do with border between Israel and Palestinian territories. Egypt no longer allows Palestinians to enter because they have tried to attack Egypt authorities and foreign tourists many times in the past.
Binyamin, there has always been some security along the border where the wall will be built. If suicide bombers attempted to infiltrate there most of them would probably be caught, which would humiliate them and rob them of their chance at "martyrdom". The wall is meant to deal with the fact that a large percentage of infiltrators still get through, which is a serious vulnerability in the long term.
The committee members who say that the exact number of refugees trying to enter Israel doesn't matter are right. What matters is Israel's ability to control its border, either it can or it cannot, and if it cannot then that creates a serious vulnerability that could cause far worse problems later. The "human rights" organisations who play around with the numbers to claim that Israel shouldn't take precautions, and who accuse Israelis of "hatred of foreigners" when Israel does try to take precautions, are simply trying to bring about demographic change in Israel. They have done the exact same thing in Europe, first they low-ball the numbers, then they say that anyone who is still concerned must be "racist", or "xenophobic" or "hate" foreigners. Their real goal is to bring about demographic change in Western states, to bring an end to that country as a nation-state of its traditional majority. In Israel's case, this means ending Israel as a Jewish state. Do not listen to them.
"Today on the tour in Arad they told us more than 1,000 infiltrators entered Israel in the past month." If one-tenth of them had suicide vests on, Israel would be awash in blood. The reason there are not suicide bombers any more is because the Palestinian political leadership, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not wish to do it. What the wall is about is humiliation and degradation. At every checkpoint a Palestinian struggling just to get to work, or attend a family gathering in a distant village is reminded that he lives in prison. The wall is intended to force the Palestinians to accept Israel's terms for surrender.
close down and empty the racist, exclusivist ones it maintains only for Arabs - UNRWA never having lifted a finger or spent a penny on hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe or the Arab countries who fled to Israel. 90% of UNRWA's Shuafat "refugee camp" is built on land owned since the 1920's by JNF, expropriated by Trans-Jordanian conquistadors in 1949 and "donated" by these thieves to the UN, who have used it for 60 years without paying rent to the actual owners of record, in violation of UN charter rules.
The supporters of the "State of Human Beings instead of the State of Israel" would get a rude awakening and solution to this tidal wave threatening Israel would be found in a jiffy.