We reported on one of the protests here on Saturday.
Now The Times of Israel tells us that protests have continued. There were many arrests. The protestors don’t like the new law in Israel that requires that the migrants be detained in a facility each night until their asylum claims are processed, but are free to go wander around and protest during the day. Emphasis below is mine.
Hundreds of African migrants, mostly Sudanese and Eritreans, and human rights activists marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday night shouting “freedom” and “no more prison,” in protest of the implementation of the Israeli government’s policy to detain illegal migrants.
The protesters demanded they not be sent to detention facilities in the Negev and that they be granted full refugee status.
According to some reports, the number of demonstrators reached over 1,500.
[….]
The demonstration came days after migrants staged marches, on two separate occasions, in protest of their detention at the newly established Holot facility in the south.
On Thursday, close to 130 migrants protested the arrests of their fellows, who were apprehended by police during a gathering in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday.
[….]
Since last Thursday, 480 African migrants, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, were transferred to Holot, which is located in the Negev desert and can hold as many as 3,000.
On Sunday, 250 migrants fled Holot for a sit-in in Jerusalem to demonstrate against rules keeping them in the detention center. Hundreds of migrants were arrested during the sit-in.
I’ll wager that all this protesting is not winning over the average Israeli.
The fact that the migrants are not happy with the new facility with small dining areas and recreation areas, a bed, food, freedom in the daytime, etc. says to me that they aren’t that destitute and are being egged-on by Leftists—members of the ‘human rights industrial complex’—which are eager to break down borders the world over. Breaking down Israel’s borders would be a real feather in their caps.
The facility has an open-door policy in which residents are permitted to leave the site during the day but are required to return three times for a roll call. The Holot gates are locked between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. every night, during which time all residents must be behind its fences. Around a dozen migrants were to be housed in every dorm room, and each wing, with a capacity of 140 residents, has its own dining room and recreation areas.
Here is Prime Minister Netanyahu, as always, cutting to core of the issue:
“The infiltrators who were transferred to a special facility can stay there, or return to their home countries,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday.
See our special category, Israel and Refugees, for more.