Tel Aviv race riot flags bitter immigration dispute
Violent race riots that shook south Tel Aviv overnight... ...prompted top-level calls for the immediate arrest and expulsion of tens of thousands of African migrants.
...demonstrators went on the rampage with sticks and stones, attacking African-run shops and smashing up a car driven by two African men.
"Blacks out!" shouted demonstrators in the crowd, while others yelled: "Send the Sudanese back to Sudan,"...
"The infiltrators are a cancer in our body," Likud MP Miri Regev told the crowd, as fellow MP Danny Danon shouted: "The infiltrators must be expelled from Israel! Expulsion now!"
...seven Israeli minors accused of attacking African immigrants earlier this week...
...Netanyahu, warning that the growing number of "infiltrators" poses a major threat to the security and identity of the Jewish state.
...Netanyahu issued a statement promising to resolve "the problem of the infiltrators" by sending them back to their home countries in a process which he said would start "soon."
"We must put all these infiltrators behind bars in detention and holding centres, then send them home because they come and take work from Israelis," Interior Minister Eli Yishai told army radio.
Unless the government took urgent action, there would "soon be half a million to a million, and we cannot lose our country to this," he said.
Wednesday night's violence made headlines in all the Israeli media...
Residents of south Tel Aviv accuse the immigrants of bringing a wave of theft and violent sex crimes to the area, and have expressed fury over what they see as government inaction.
...a Tel Aviv court on Thursday indicted two African migrants from Sudan and Eritrea on suspicion of raping a woman near the central bus station last week.
...hurling Molotov cocktails at the homes of African migrants in a move reportedly connected to the arrest of three Eritreans in connection with another rape involving a 15-year-old Israeli girl.
In a bid to halt the influx, Israel has been building a 250-kilometre (155-mile) fence along the Egyptian border. It has also built a vast detention centre near the border to house anyone caught crossing the frontier.
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