Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit criticized Israeli policy in a report to the Knesset on Monday. Israel is funding more than 100,000 Palestinian Authority children, he said, and has failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from entering the country illegally.
"Normal countries don't do this – but that's the situation,” Sheetrit said.
According to Sheetrit, Israel sends child payments to roughly 16,000 Palestinian Authority women who claim to be residents of Jerusalem but in fact live in Hevron, Shechem and other PA-controlled cities. In total, Israel is sending monthly payments for almost 112,000 PA Arab children, he said.
Sheetrit also warned that Israel has been flooded with illegal entrants due to weak border security and the ease of forging an identity card. “Give me a sophisticated camera with your picture, and I can give you an ID card right away,” he said.
A law that would require biometric identity cards, which are much more difficult to forge than the current cards, is held up in the Knesset, he added.
Approximately 300,000 illegal entrants from PA-controlled areas and around the world currently reside in Israel, Sheetrit told the MKs. Some of them are criminals, pimps, or terrorists, he warned.