(VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

Following is the portion of his remarks made on Sunday 12 Elul, at the weekly cabinet meeting, by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pertaining to the illegal migrants and their reign of terror on southern Tel Aviv.

“There are four issues at the start of today’s Cabinet meeting: First, the problem of illegal infiltrators. Last Thursday I visited south Tel Aviv together with Ministers Gilad Erdan and Miri Regev, and MK Amir Ochana, and we met with residents. I accompanied 7- year-old Sophia, to the sixth floor of the building in which she lives, all of which is now, except for her, and if I am not mistaken, perhaps another tenant, inhabited by illegal infiltrators. The filth of the street is one thing, but the fact that she can get down from her little apartment near the roof after she barely climbs up, and can go down once a day, escorted, she cannot go unescorted, and she goes back up at the end of the day with great difficulty. This is intolerable. The things I heard from her and other residents – is tremendous distress in the face of this serious problem of illegal infiltrators. I underscore, this is the problem, not refugees – few are refugees – they are illegal migrant labor infiltrators in the State of Israel. And we have the right, as in every country, to supervise our borders and remove from our borders anyone who is illegally here.

I decided to create a special ministerial team to be established at today’s cabinet meeting. It will meet this week with representatives of the residents, not only from Tel Aviv, but also from other neighborhoods and other areas. We will meet once every few weeks in the first few months in order to advance practical solutions to this problem. The main goal is to return these neighborhoods to the residents and to remove [illegal infiltrators] from the State of Israel, as we have already removed some 20,000 illegal infiltrators, whose place is not here. When I am finished speaking, I would like to ask the Minister of the Interior to say a few words on this matter. I am moving on to the second issue, which is the beginning of the school year.

Prime Minister Netanyahu added: “With regard to the entry of infiltrators, Israel was the first country in the world to physically block entry of infiltrators. We reached a rate of about 20,000 infiltrators per year. Without building the fence we would easily have reached at least 100,000 a year in view of what is happening in Africa. Meaning that within a decade, and we are soon approaching the end of that decade, the state would stop being the Jewish state. There was a real threat to the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The construction of the fence, which I initiated and continuously oversaw, blocked it. Now, there’s the question of expenditure. We spent about a third, just under a third. To spend another third – and I’m not sure what will remain – we will take a series of measures.

It must be understood that we have already created the foundation in my visits to Africa and in my conversations with African leaders. We have created a base of countries willing to absorb these infiltrators, and now we may have to improve not only the legislation, but also the agreements. You will hear about this later. And herein lays the task – blocking and expenditures. Just as we focused on this, and those who were in the previous governments remember it – the same thing; we are focusing on it now and we will give it constant supervision to bring about the result, because the suffering is unbelievable, and the future implications of the burden on the State of Israel are things that require action now.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)