Israel is planning another major border fence project to thwart a possible “invasion” of Syrians from Jordan via the West Bank (and for other reasons). According to Albawaba.com :
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he intends to build a separation barrier between the West Bank and Jordan after completing walls on the Egyptian and Syrian borders, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Sunday.
Netanyahu plans to construct the wall in order to send a message to Palestinians who oppose Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, the report says.
The wall will also guarantee continued Israeli control of the border crossing, Netanyahu reportedly said.
He added that the thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan pose a threat to Israeli security, the article continues. The wall would protect Israeli settlements from possible invasion.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Ma’an that new construction plans are a clear message from the Israeli government to the United States “declaring the failure of the peace talks.”
As we have reported many times on these pages, Israel was being invaded by Africans coming across its border with Egypt, but a sturdy fence has slowed that migration to near zero.
See our entire category on ‘Israel and refugees’ by clicking here.
Your chances of being granted refugee status are minuscule according to this report(Iceland Review Online):
Roughly 6.5 percent of applications for asylum in Iceland have been accepted so far this year. A total of 128 of the 137 applications processed by the end of September were rejected,
Maybe Malta, another tiny EU country, should take a lesson.
The UK Mirror has an incredibly detailed story today about how human trafficking gangs are moving Syrians into Europe and making millions doing it. No surprise! Turkey is one of their transit points and the leader of the gang profiled here is a Palestinian.
The amount of money these “refugees” have in their personal bank accounts again raises questions for me about who these people really are and I’ve become a cynic about the beatings, rapes, and imprisonment stories the “asylum seekers” tell.
Here is how the Mirror storybegins, but you must read the whole report, they have done a lot of work on this. Emphasis is mine:
A people-trafficking gang raking in millions of pounds by bringing hundreds of Syrian refugees into the UK is today exposed by the Sunday Mirror.
The gang in Istanbul, Turkey, told our undercover investigators that for £34,000 they would smuggle three men here from Syria using false passports and minders. [One British pound is equal to $1.62 US dollars at the moment.—ed]
We had earlier met a Syrian woman who used her life savings to pay the gang to help her flee after being tortured in her home country.
The teacher, who we are calling Ishtar to protect her identity, is now living in southern England.
She told how traffickers got her from Turkey to Britain after handing her a false passport.
She was flown to Austrian capital Vienna, driven to Sweden, then caught a BA flight to the UK.
The gang’s activities raise serious concerns that terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda could use similar tactics to sneak jihadists into Europe.
We were alerted to the criminal organisation by an anonymous phone call to our London offices.
Our investigator was warned: “This trade is making millions for Turkish gangs.
“They have fixers around Europe and in the UK flying people across Europe. They have people working in airports who look the other way.
“They are taking Syrians to Italy, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, but Britain is the most expensive. On landing, the Syrian asks for asylum.
Read it all! The graphic is further explained. Imagine having a ticket in Istanbul for Lebanon, but airport personnel allow the Syrian to get on a plane to Austria instead!
Our ever-expanding archive on Syrian refugees is here.
Update! What do you know, Bulgaria is building a fence, check it out here.
As I scoured my alerts this morning I see there are several about Bulgaria struggling to cope with the Syrian refugee flow coming across their border from Turkey. Previously I speculated that the flow out of Turkey toward Bulgaria instead of Greece was due to Greece’s strengthened border security. This article confirms that.
See all of our recent coverage of poor Bulgaria’s predicament, here.
About 100 people are arriving at Bulgaria’s border with Turkey daily, and the numbers are rapidly increasing. In the past, Bulgaria received, on average, 1,000 migrants and asylum seekers per year. This year, more than 6,500 have arrived, leaving officials scrambling to find housing and funds to accommodate them.
Arrivals have increased steadily since August, and at the current rate, the ministry of the interior estimates it will have received 11,000 to 15,000 by year’s end – the vast majority Syrian.
“We see that the government is overwhelmed, and that the reception capacity has been depleted,” said Cheshirkov.
Smugglers who used to lead migrants from Turkey into Greece are increasingly moving them to Bulgaria instead, in part due to the construction of a 10.5km fence at one of the most popular crossing points along the Turkish-Greek border.
Bulgaria, a country of just 7.5 million people, is one of the poorest in the European Union.
“We are just at the beginning of this crisis,” Vasil Marinov, deputy minister of the interior, told IRIN.
Of course no one ever says a word about how Turkey, which is financially and militarily in a better situation, should be stopping them on their side of the border!
It is maddening (as so many things are these days!)! Why does the American media rarely (here Bloomberg News does write about it) mention that the much ballyhooed RAINBOW NATION of South Africa is experiencing xenophobic violence and a murder rate six times higher than the US?
Somalis in recent violence in Pretoria. Photo: Marc Morris/AP
I do know why, the Left is so invested in the idea of South Africa being run successfully by commie blacks (who would wipe out racism and ethnic nationalism) that it would never allow its media arm to tell the world what a bunch of ‘unwelcoming’ xenophobes they are! The Mandela mythology is so deep, the truth will rarely be told in the West.
And, of course they have to use the word xenophobe instead of racist because this is black on black violence.
Kind of interesting though that it is Somalis getting the brunt of the hatred there.
Here are some excerpts from a longish piece at Bloomberg News. (Emphasis mine)
Let me know if you see this article reprinted in say the Washington Post or New York Times!
Ali Omar Mohamed fled Somalia’s civil war two years ago to seek a better life in South Africa. Now after being robbed at gunpoint and seeing scores of his countrymen murdered in xenophobic violence, he’s ready to leave.
Mohammed, a 21-year-old shopkeeper, is part of a growing tide of immigrants who say they prefer returning to a war zone rather than face the hatred and jealousy they are subject to in South Africa where they’re called “the enemy.”
What a coincidence! Muslims have the money to own the convenience stores there too!
Over the past six months, disputes between Somali shopkeepers and South Africans have deteriorated into looting and burning sprees of dozens of stores in parts of Johannesburg and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, according to police.
[….]
Somalis and Pakistanis, who’re able to tap their close-knit communities for capital to start businesses, dominate convenience stores known as spaza shops in townships and shantytowns on the outskirts of South Africa’s major cities.
Conspicuous by their distinctive languages and Muslim religion in a mainly Christian country, their business acumen has stoked jealousy among many citizens in South Africa, where one-in-four are unemployed. [Do I see a little Islamophobia creeping in?—ed]
“There are too many foreigners here, they undercut everyone. Every corner, there is a Somali shop,” Magdalene Thabana, 56, said as she sat on a red plastic stool selling bags of scones across the road from Mohamed’s store. “I don’t have enough money to start a shop.”
Murder rate six times higher than the US!
A wave of xenophobic violence led to about 60 deaths, including some Somalis, and as many as 50,000 people being forced to flee their homes and shops in 2008. Since then, Somalis have been the hardest hit by outbreaks of xenophobic violence, police spokeswoman Brigadier Marinda Mills said in a phone interview.
While South Africa’s murder rate has dropped by more than half to 31.1 per 100,000 people since 1995, it remains six times higher than that of the U.S. [And, I’m betting they don’t always do their killing with guns!—South Africa has strict gun control laws according to theWashington Post.—ed]
Guess it’s time to go home to Somalia!
In South Africa, the situation for Somalis is deteriorating.
“Somalis are subjected to a high rate of fatalities and loss of livelihoods,” Munyaneza said in an interview. “This is unprecedented. They’re being attacked with impunity. The Somalis are the ones who are the hardest hit amongst the foreigners.”
As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, “asylum seekers” should not be passing through South Africa as a conduit to America. Legitimate asylum seekers/refugees should be asking for asylum there.
We have written a lot about South Africa, click here, for our complete archive.
