​(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Sunday, 6 September 2015), made the following remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting:
 
"Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of the refugees from Syria and Africa. We have already devotedly cared for approximately 1,000 wounded people from the fighting in Syria and we have helped them to rehabilitate their lives. We are speaking with African heads of state, and with the Italian Prime Minister recently and with other European leaders, about multi-lateral aid packages for the countries of origin in Africa – in agriculture, economics and security – in order to deal with the problem at its source. But, Israel is a small country, a very small country, that lacks demographic and geographic depth; therefore, we must control our borders, against both illegal migrants and terrorism. This is what we have done on our border with Sinai; we blocked illegal migration from there.
 
Today, we are starting to build a fence on our eastern border. In the first stage, we will build it from Timna to Eilat in order to protect the airport being built there, and we will continue the fence up to the Golan Heights, where we have already built a strong security fence. We are not waiting. To the extent that it is possible we will encompass Israel's borders with a security fence and barriers that will allow us to control our borders. We will not allow Israel to be flooded with illegal migrants and terrorists.
 
Over the weekend a group of Jewish worshippers were almost lynched in Hebron. It is the relentless Palestinian incitement that created the atmosphere for murdering Jews and Israelis. Luckily for the group of Israelis, there were some individual Palestinians there who did the humanitarian and obvious thing and rescued them, and we appreciate this. But I call on Abu Mazen to stop the incitement and condemn the attempted lynch and act against it.
 
We are just ahead of the fall holidays. We will do our utmost so that Jews will be able to go everywhere safely, especially to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
 
This will be the last Cabinet meeting before the holidays so I will take the opportunity to wish the entire Jewish people – especially the soldiers of the IDF, who are defending our borders and our security – a happy New Year."