60 Africans infiltrate Israel from Egypt overnight
Infiltrators captured by IDF on Wednesday night to be handed over to Migration Authority. Senior military official says only small number of infiltrators are from Sudan
Thousands of Africans have infiltrated Israel since the beginning of 2007. A senior IDF official told Ynet, "Only a small number of those crossing the border are from Sudan, and not all the Sudanese are from the Darfur region."
According to the official, Darfur residents are defined by the Prime Minister's Office as refugees. The rest are defined illegal residents.
The problem begins after the Africans are handed over to the Migration Authority, which is incapable of absorbing all the illegal residents, as well as Darfur refugees.
The Beersheba Municipality has been housing about 150 Africans for more than a month now, and their number is only rising. An ultimatum set by the municipality to the Prime Minister's Office has been postponed.
Only two weeks ago, the municipality announced that it would transfer all the Africans it is housing to the Prime Minister's Office. This decision, Ynet has learned, has been postponed to Sunday.
Dozens of Sudanese were seen wandering around the Negev at the beginning of the week, until Pini Badash, head of the Omer Regional Council, decided to rent two buses to take them to the Knesset in Jerusalem and to the Ramat Aviv neighborhood in north Tel Aviv. They were eventually transferred to Kibbutz Eilot.
The Eilat Municipality has refused to take in any more refugees. Hundreds of refugees have arrived in the southern city over the past few weeks, including families and children. At the moment there are more than 700 Sudanese in Eilat, including 150 children. Most of them have been employed in hotels.
In a letter to government ministers, the Eilat mayor said that "unfortunately, due to demographic and other circumstances, the city of Eilat is not prepared and is not ready to absorb the Sudanese."
Hundreds of infiltrators from Africa and Eastern Europe will be returned to Egypt soon, the Prime Minister's Office decided Thursday afternoon. A solution for the Sudanese refugees has yet to be found, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak failed to reach an agreement on the matter during the Sharm el-Sheik summit.
