There is a rapidly growing phenomenon of illegal infiltration into Israel through the Jordan border and the dangers that come with it, warns Dr. Yossi Barda from the Court of the Population and Immigration Authority.
The Court of the Population and Immigration Authority, where Barda works, is the responsible legal authority for reviewing the detention of infiltrators and illegal residents in custody until their removal from Israel.
Such illegal residents have included four infiltrators from Turkey who entered Israel on two different dates. They were only caught after an extended period during routine immigration enforcement.
All four testified that they had contacted a smuggling network in their country of origin. Furthermore, the smuggling network had arranged for them to stay in an Amman hotel until they were transported to the border, where they had Israeli drivers who waited for them on the other side and transferred them to Beer Sheva or Tel Aviv.
Two of the infiltrators testified that they entered the border with a group of five Indians, who have not been caught to this day.
To the Israeli Immigration Policy Center's knowledge, this is the first time that Indian nationals have infiltrated through the Jordan border, joining nationals from Ethiopia, Georgia, Moldova, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Jordan, and Sudan.
A constant warning of the dangers of infiltration
The Court has repeatedly warned about the increase in infiltration. An additional case occurred when two Sudanese infiltrators were arrested at the Jordan border and brought to the Court in July.
The two infiltrators said they arrived in Jordan to work legally on a direct flight and had a valid passport. However, they decided to infiltrate into Israel independently near the Dead Sea without the assistance of smugglers. They were then caught by soldiers and transferred to custody.
In addition to Barda's warning, he added that lessons must be learned from past infiltrations and their consequences, such as in 2006, when there was infiltration through the Egyptian border.
Understanding the consequences of the past infiltration should cause the relevant parties "to find solutions to the issue as soon as possible," Barda said.
"There is also a need to address the repeated testimonies of detainees who were captured after infiltrating Israel. There exists a mechanism that coordinates [the infiltrators] departure from the country of origin and arrival in Jordan" to then breach Israel's border.
Founder of the Immigration Policy Center, Yonatan Yakubovich, referred to the invasion of infiltrators from the Jordanian border as an issue that went from "a trickle to a flood."
"Today, most of the infiltrators caught come from East Africa, exactly as happened in 2006 at the Egyptian border. Even more seriously, similar to the Egyptian border, experience shows that smuggling networks that develop for smuggling infiltrators are later used for terror and criminal elements, and here, too, we see a dangerous increase in the smuggling of weapons from the Jordanian border to the territories of Judea and Samaria," he explained.
Placing urgency on the government, Yakubovich added that "the Israeli Immigration Policy Center has warned of the threat for a long time, and official judicial bodies are now addressing it. The Israeli government must wake up and act quickly to prosecute infiltrators criminally."
"Although it is late, if we act quickly, there is still a chance that deterrence can be restored and the phenomenon reduced before it gets out of control and the damage becomes irreversible," He concluded.