Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a ministerial meeting on Sunday to discuss recent riots by Eritrean undocumented migrants in Tel Aviv and said that all of them will be subject to immediate deportation.
"Yesterday's events are a crossing of the red line. This unrest and bloodshed is something we cannot accept. We demand tough measures against the rioters, including their immediate deportation," Netanyahu said at the meeting, as quoted in a press release issued by his office.
Netanyahu also instructed relevant agencies to develop a plan for gradually deporting all undocumented migrants from Israel. This order was the reason for today's meeting, according to the prime minister's office.
Netanyahu called illegal immigration from Africa a real threat to Israel's future.
"We have dealt with this threat by building a security fence [on the border with Egypt] .... But there remains the problem of those who have already entered before the fence. These are tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have entered the country. We persuaded 12,000 of them to leave the country voluntarily, through various preferential programs and other measures. We wanted more, we proposed a number of measures ... unfortunately, all of them were rejected by the Supreme Court," Netanyahu said.
There are about 17,000 Eritrean migrants in Israel, constituting the majority of some 30,000 migrants from Africa, Israeli media reported.