Because Israel isn’t enough of a ghetto already. Any lessons from history, Zionists?
After the separation barrier against Palestinian territories, Israel has begun to build a new wall, this one to keep migrants from Africa out.
The new wall is coming up on the Egyptian border, and with Egyptian support. The Israeli government approved plans late last month to build a detention camp near its border with Egypt to house illegal African immigrants. Local activists decried the move, which they say flies in the face of internationally accepted human rights norms.
“The idea of a prison built expressly for African immigrants is not only racist, it also contravenes basic tenets of international law,” said Hafez Abu Saeda, president of the Cairo-based Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.
On November 28, Israel’s cabinet approved construction of a camp to temporarily accommodate undocumented African immigrants that enter Israel from neighbouring Egypt.
According to Israeli Prime Minister… Binyamin Netanyahu, who provided little else by way of detail, the project comes within the context of a wider plan to halt the “wave of illegal immigrants” entering the country in search of employment.
Israel claims that within recent years tens of thousands of African migrants have illicitly crossed the Egypt-Israel border into its territory. Once inside the country, these migrants are often hired as manual labourers – at relatively low wages – by Israeli farms and in settlements.