In an interview with Channel Two, Interior Minister Eli Yishai protested against the what he called the "media charade" of Israel's "expulsion" of foreign workers. "I would prefer not to talk about expulsion, but about the return of foreign workers to their homelands," he said. He said that he had warned against increasing the numbers of foreign workers already in 1996, telling then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel would eventually be swamped with hundreds of thousands of them.

"We must be concerned about how the state of Israel will look in another 20 years," he said. "If hundreds of thousands of foreign workers come, they will bring with them many diseases: hepatitis, AIDS, and drugs. Is anyone prepared to face this?"