Israeli PM calls for removal of unauthorized immigrants after riot

Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for the deportation of immigrants illegally living in Israel after more than two dozen police were injured responding to a riot involving Eritreans seeking asylum in the Middle Eastern country.

Netanyahu made the remarks Sunday in a statement following a special ministerial team meeting held a day after more than 150 people were injured, including 30 police officers, in violence that erupted during a protest involving hundreds of Eritrean asylum seekers.

Officials declared the incident a mass-casualty event, which was the result of clashes that erupted outside the Eritrean Embassy in southern Tel Aviv between pro-government and anti-government factions.

Hundreds of Eritreans had convened on the embassy for a rally held by Asmara in celebration the country's independence and were confronted by anti-government protesters.

Netanyahu said in his statement that they are seeking "strong steps against the rioters" including their immediate expulsion, but that they will also construct a plan for the removal of all people who have illegally entered Israel.

"I would also like this forum to prepare a complete and updated plan to repatriate all of the remaining illegal infiltrators from the state of Israel," he said. "This is the purpose of our meeting today."

Netanyahu said Israel is dealing with "massive illegal infiltration" of Africans that constitutes "a tangible threat to the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

He said they have employed measures, including the erection of a wall on the southern border, which he said has "stopped the infiltration completely," but the problem remains of the "several tens of thousands of illegal infiltrators" who entered the country prior to its construction.

Some 12,000, he said, had been repatriated but that the Supreme Court rejected a series of other measures to remove more.

"Now there remains the serious problem of the illegal infiltrators in southern Tel Aviv and other places, but what happened yesterday crossed a red line," he said. "This disturbance, the bloodshed, these are things that we cannot tolerate."

He also questioned why those who support the Eritrean government would be in Israel in the first place, stating "they certainly cannot claim refugee status."

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and has since been ruled by the totalitarian regime of President Isaias Afwerki. The U.S. State Department said in its 2022 human rights report on Eritrea that the country suffers from "significant human rights issues," including forced disappearances, torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punished by the government.

The ASSAF aid organization for refugees in Israel states there are about 33,000 African refugees and asylum seekers who have fled to Israel from atrocities and persecution in their native counties.

In a statement, ASSAF accused the Israeli government of knowing about the potential for violence on Saturday but did nothing to stop it and were simply "waiting for a match to ignite the wild campaign of incitement against the community of Eritrean asylum seekers and refugees in Israel."

It continued that it would be better for lawmakers to not draw conclusions from such "a charged event" and to try and understand how it happened.

"Instead, the government proposes the use of anti-democratic practices such as administrative arrests, thereby paving the way for another fatal violation of their human rights, and tries to train public opinion for additional legislative initiatives that will worsen their situation here and lead in practice to systematic persecution and harassment," it said on X, the social media platform formally called Twitter.