Israel divided over fate of 400 foreign children by Jeff Abramowitz and Sarah Lemel (Feature)

Aug 15, 2010, 14:18 GMT

Tel Aviv - Naoti sits anxiously on her mother's lap, nervously sucking her fingers. Three-a-half-years old, she is one of the 400 children of foreign workers in Israel slated for deportation.

'It is very hard for us, we live in constant fear,' Naoti's mother, Linda, says softly.

Naoti and her mother were among thousands of Israelis and foreign workers who took part Saturday night in a protest in Tel Aviv to condemn a government decision to expel 400 children of illegal foreign workers, many of whom were born in Israel and know no other country.

The controversial government decision, taken on August 1, grants legal status to 800 others.

Bearing slogans like 'Do not deport us, we are Israelis,' the protestors marched slowly in the hot, humid night from the city's tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard to Meir Park in nearby King George Street.

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sarah, was not among the marchers, on Friday she sent a letter to Interior Minister Eli Yishai, requesting him to find a solution which would allow the potential deportees to stay.

'From the depth of my heart, I ask of you to exercise your authority ... and allow most of the 400 children to stay in Israel,' she wrote.

Yishai, in an interview with Israel Army Radio Sunday, said he was prepared to meet with Sarah Netanyahu to hear her concerns, but at the same time stood by his decision view that the 400 had to be deported.

'Most of these children and their parents came to Israel as tourists. It's time to tell them the trip is over,' he said.

The leader of the conservative Orthodox Shas party, Yishai has been the driving force behinds the campaign to deport the children of foreign workers, whose number is given at 1,200.

The 1,200 had originally been slated for expulsion last year, but in November, bowing to a public outcry, Netanyahu and Yishai postponed the deportation, to allow the children to finish the school year.

On August 1, the cabinet approved a plan to deport 400 of the children, while allowing other to stay. Those who could remain had to meet certain criteria, including being born in Israel or entering the country before their 13th birthday, living in Israel for five consecutive years, and their parents having entered the country with a legal permit.

The cabinet vote was a stormy one, with some saying it was inhumane, and others, led by Yishai, pressing for more, if not all, the children to be expelled.

The cabinet decision unleashed a storm of protest, with human rights and non-governmental organizations, including one of Israeli Holocaust survivors, and liberal legislators leading the condemnations.

Yishai remains unmoved by the outcry. He says the issue is preserving Israel's identity as the national homeland of the Jewish people, and the migrants are a danger to the 'Zionist enterprise.'

His spokesman said the minister was simply trying to to enforce Israeli law against migrant parents seeking to use their children as a means towards getting permanent residency in Israel, without regard for existing immigration laws.

This argument, however, does not impress the opponents of the government decision.

'Innocent children should not pay the price for Israel having no immigration policy,' Rotem Ilan, spokeswoman of the organization Israeli Children, told the rally Saturday night.

For some, the debate over Israel's immigration policy - or lack of - is the real heart of the issue, rather than the decision to expel the children.

'The entire story about foreign workers has been dominated form the beginning by a carefully-scripted story that focuses the debate only on the children,' Seth J. Franzman accused in a Jerusalem Post article.

'Let's start by asking where the numbers come from, and why there is no discussion of the parents in the whole story, ' he said, noting that similar debates about expelling illegal foreign workers are currently being held in France and in the US state of Arizona.

'The activists who have latched onto the foreign workers as a cause realize that while many people have little sympathy for illegal immigrants or legal ones overstaying their visas, most people have sympathy for children. But discussing the children' without the parents is wrong,' he said.