Kadima stalls bill aimed at punishing employers of African migrants

A Knesset vote on a law that would have made employing African migrants punishable by up to five years in prison was canceled on Wednesday after Kadima MKs said they wouldn’t support it.

MK Ofir Akunis (Likud), who proposed the bill, criticized Kadima’s decision. The proposed law was intended to combat the influx of illegal African migrants by enabling authorities to punish people who hired them.

Residents of south Tel Aviv, Eilat, Arad and other areas with heavy concentrations of migrants are running out of time, Akunis said. “They can’t continue to suffer.”

Authorities have arrested and detained over 200 South Sudanese refugees, and hundreds of others have filled out forms preparatory to leaving of their own volition as Operation “Returning Home” entered its third day on Wednesday.

The government’s round-up of illegal migrants came under fire by Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On, who denounced Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s “racist and persecutory” policy. Gal-On accused Yishai of “using bounty hunters” to nab the migrants and violating a court’s decision that each African’s case be judged individually before deportation is ordered, Israel Radio said Wednesday morning.

It was unclear whether Gal-on was also criticizing the Immigration Authority’s special task force.

The operation began following a Jerusalem court’s approval last week of the deportation of South Sudanese nationals who entered the country illegally. The Population and Immigration Authority announced shortly thereafter that South Sudanese would have one week to turn themselves in and leave the country or be deported by force.

In the past month, tensions have run high between Israelis and illegal African migrants, resulting in large demonstrations and occasionally degenerating into violence, primarily in the southern neighborhoods of Tel Aviv.