President Shimon Peres said Thursday that it was inconceivable for Israel to deport Israeli-born children of migrant workers, this in the wake of a government decision to deport 400 such children.
"In the case of the 400 children, who were born in Israel, who speak Hebrew, speak Israeli, and feel Israeli – to cut them off and deport them would be unconscionable. I that that we certainly should let them stay in Israel," Peres said.
The president added that there are a lot of people who want to come to Israel but "we simply don’t have the capacity to absorb them." He emphasized, however, that the deportation of the children is unthinkable.
Peres’ remarks came at the heels of an announcement Wednesday by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who said he would try to initiate a renewed discussion on the fate of the migrant workers’ children at the next cabinet meeting on Sunday. Shortly after his announcement, associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that no such discussion was expected.
In response to Barak’s remarks against the deportation of the children, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who has campaigned to implement the deportation, said Wednesday that "it is too bad that some people are taking advantage of foreign children to gain ratings."
"[The deportation] is a government decision that stemmed from an in-depth discussion and the thorough work of an inter-ministerial committee. It is not appropriate to make the government’s work hollow. It is strange that he who ignored the immigration issue at first is now acting like he first heard of the problem today," Yishai said.
Barak, who was absent from the meeting on the fate of the children due to a diplomatic trip to Washington, said Wednesday that "the decision to grant legal status to some 800 migrant workers was good and just, but the decision to arrest and deport 400 children is arbitrary. The sight of police raiding migrant workers’ homes and pulling children out by force, the sight of prison guards holding entire families inside cells and the sight of the Ministry of Interior taking Hebrew-speaking children and leading them onto planes, will cause all of us irreversible harm, both inwardly and outwardly."
According to Barak, "Israel’s demographic balance won’t change if legal status is granted to all the children to parents currently living in Israel who arrived here legally. However, the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Hebrew-speaking children, the parents of whom were invited by Israeli authorities to take care of our elderly, build our buildings and work our farmland, will deal a critical blow to Israel’s image in the world."