From the Prime Minister’s Office:

PM Netanyahu’s Remarks at the Start of the Cabinet Meeting

01/03/2018

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, made the following remarks:

“Every country must guard its borders. Guarding the borders against illegal infiltration is both a right and a fundamental obligation of a sovereign state. To this end, we carried out two good actions.

The first is building fences, the barrier, against the massive infiltration into the country from Africa. This fence, which was erected along the border with Sinai, has prevented – in my estimation – the entry of hundreds of thousands of infiltrators who came from other places, but did not reach Israel. Thanks to this great effort, we have lowered illegal infiltration into Israel to zero.

Now there is another mission. The second mission is to deport the illegal infiltrators who entered Israel prior to the construction of the barrier. This is approximately 60,000 people; we have deported approximately 20,000 and the mission now is to deport the rest. Last year we deported approximately 4,000 and the major effort is to deport most of those who remain, who have infiltrated and are present in Israel illegally. …

Today the Cabinet will approve the plan for deporting the infiltrators from Israel. We will step up enforcement and we will allocate budgets and personnel to implement the plan. I think that it is important that people understand that we are doing something here that is completely legal and completely essential.

The infiltrators have a clear choice – cooperate with us and leave voluntarily, respectably, humanely and legally, or we will have to use other tools at our disposal, which are also according to law. I hope that they will choose to cooperate with us. …

I am pleased that we are getting underway; this problem will be solved. Israel is, in effect, one of the only countries in the world that has succeeded in taking control of this phenomenon, and this has become more vital, and not less, in the restless world in which we live.”