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Israel Plans Tent Cities for African Immigrants

Israel’s Defense Ministry announced Thursday that it will erect between 20,000-25,000 tents for African migrants at various detention centers by the end of the year.

According to an official statement, the Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces will build the tent cities in five different detention centers within a matter of months. Once built, the centers will be run by the Israel Prison Service.

Three of those detention centers will be built near the Ketziot prison in the near future, and will be connected to water, electric and sewage infrastructures which the Defense Ministry have been building over the last several weeks.

The objective of the plan, according to the ministry, is to ensure that all African migrants who enter Israel will be directly transferred to a detention center where they will stay for long periods of time, in order to prevent their entry to Israeli cities.

The plan was presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Thursday after his bureau ordered a quick and efficient response to the migrant issue.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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