Israel to build 2 massive fences on Egyptian border to keep out migrants, militants

Israel to build 2 fences on porous Egyptian border

JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister has ordered the construction of two massive fences along the long and porous southern border with Egypt, saying he wants to stem a growing flood of African asylum seekers and to prevent Islamic militants from entering the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the structure would help preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, while providing a layer of protection along an open border with an area suspected of having an al-Qaida presence.

“I decided to close Israel’s southern border to infiltrators and terrorists after prolonged discussions,” he said in a statement. “This is a strategic decision to ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel. Israel will remain open to war refugees but we cannot allow thousands of illegal workers to infiltrate into Israel via the southern border and flood our country,” he said.

The two fences will cover nearly half of the 150-mile (250-kilometer) border. One section will be near the Red Sea port of Eilat. The other will be in southwest Israel, near the Gaza Strip town of Rafah.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said government ministers approved the plan Sunday evening. He said a date hasn’t been set for construction and it is unclear how long it would take to complete the fences.

The project is expected to cost about $400 million, according to local media reports.

The structure would come in addition to a massive fence surrounding the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, as well as a separation barrier that snakes along parts of Israel’s more than 400-mile (680-kilometer) frontier with the West Bank, biting into chunks of the territory as it runs. Egypt has its own fence along Gaza’s southern border, and is reinforcing the area with underground metal plates to shut down tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons into Gaza.

The planned Egypt fence, like the West Bank and Gaza barriers, is rooted largely in security concerns, along with efforts to keep illegal migrants out, Israel says.

The military began planning the fence in 2005 after Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip, fearing that militants would freely travel to Egypt and sneak into Israel. These concerns were underscored in early 2007, when a Gaza suicide bomber sneaked into Eilat through Egypt.

But the massive influx of African migrants into Israel in recent years has given the project added momentum. U.N. officials and human rights workers estimate some 17,000 to 19,000 people have poured into Israel through the southern border since 2005, most of them from Eritrea, Sudan and other war-torn African countries, searching for a better life in Israel’s relatively affluent Western-style society.

Most of them live in crowded slums in Tel Aviv or Eilat, where many work as dishwashers and hotel bellboys.

The new arrivals have created a dilemma for authorities. On one hand, they strain Israel’s social service system, and officials fear they could upset the country’s demographic mix, possibly tilting it away from a Jewish majority. About three-quarters of Israel’s 7 million citizens are Jewish.

On the other hand, Israel is a country created in large part as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, and many feel they cannot turn their backs on the Africans, believing the government must be more sensitive to their needs.

Advocacy groups also note that the asylum seekers are far outnumbered by foreign workers who have flown into the country legally and overstayed their visas.

Israel’s policy toward the asylum seekers has been muddled, with frequent changes in rules and procedures.

At present, Africans who cross into Israel through Egypt are detained for several months in a nearby prison while their applications are processed.

Most are eventually given one-month visas to stay in Israel that they must renew every month, said Yonatan Berman of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group that helps the asylum seekers. They are not allowed to work, but the government turns a blind eye.

Israel requested Egypt tighten its border patrols. Amnesty International says Egyptian security forces have killed 39 people, mostly Sudanese and Eritreans, trying to cross into Israel between 2008 to mid-2009. More updated figures were not immediately available. Both countries have been criticized by human rights groups for their approach to the problem.

In Cairo, Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said his government had no objections to the fence, as long as it is on Israeli territory. “This is a matter which concerns Israel. This is something which Israel is building inside its territories, so let it be,” he told reporters.

Security and crime concerns have also prompted Israel to erect the fences. Israeli officials frequently issue warnings urging citizens to avoid travel to the neighboring Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The area is believed to be a stronghold for al-Qaida-inspired extremists who have aligned themselves with lawless Bedouin tribes in the area. In 2004, a total of 32 people were killed in a pair of hotel bombings in the Sinai.

Smugglers use the porous area to traffic women into Israel’s prostitution trade, and it’s also a main conduit for drugs entering the country.

But its many walls illustrate Israel’s sense of isolation in a largely hostile region. The West Bank barrier in particular has sparked international criticism because it frequently juts into the West Bank, drawing accusations that Israel is using it to gobble up land claimed by the Palestinians.

There are also fences separating Israel from hostile Lebanon and parts of the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed after seizing the Syrian territory in the 1967 Mideast war.

“Defense against terror activity clearly requires a fence,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio Monday. “Good fences make good neighbors,” Barak said, noting only Israel’s western border — the sea — did not need to be blocked off. “Along the sea we don’t need a fence,” he said.