Netanyahu says Jewish state must protect itself from influx of ‘illegal immigrants and perpetrators of terrorism’
By Adiv Sterman September 6, 2015, 12:52 pm 4
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected the possibility of Israel taking in refugees from war-torn Syria, saying that while the Jewish state was not unsympathetic to the suffering of citizens across its border, it simply did not have the capacity to absorb masses of people.
“Israel is not indifferent to human tragedy; we conscientiously handled a thousand [people] who were wounded in the fighting in Syria and we have helped them rebuild their lives,” Netanyahu said during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
“However, Israel is a very small country. It has no demographic depth and has no geographic breadth,” the prime minister continued. “We must protect our borders against illegal immigrants and against the perpetrators of terrorism. We cannot allow Israel to be flooded with infiltrators.”
He added that Israel was contemplating sending aid packages to countries in Africa in an attempt to ensure that local residents do not find it necessary to migrate from their homes.
Netanyahu said that Israel would begin constructing a security fence along its eastern border in order to keep out migrants and refugees.
The prime minister’s comments came amid a growing debate among Israeli politicians over how Israel, with its national memory of the struggle by Jewish refugees to escape the Nazi regime, should respond to the regional migrant crisis to which the Syrian civil war is a major contributing factor.
Read more:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-israel-not-indifferent-but-too-small-to-take-in-refugees/
