​(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning (Sunday, 3 September 2017), at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, made the following remarks:
 
"There are four issues at the start of today's Cabinet meeting: First, the problem of illegal infiltrators. Last Thursday I visited south Tel Aviv together with Ministers Gilad Erdan and Miri Regev, and MK Amir Ohana, and we met with residents.  I accompanied 72 year-old Sophia, to the sixth floor of the building in which she lives, all of which is now, except for her, and if I am not mistaken, perhaps another tenant, inhabited by illegal infiltrators. The filth of the street is one thing, but the fact that she can get down from her little apartment near the roof after she barely climbs up, and can go down once a day, escorted, she cannot go unescorted, and she goes back up at the end of the day with great difficulty.  This is intolerable. The things I heard from her and other residents - is tremendous distress in the face of this serious problem of illegal infiltrators. I underscore, this is the problem, not refugees - few are refugees - they are illegal migrant labor infiltrators in the State of Israel.  And we have the right, as in every country, to supervise our borders and remove from our borders anyone who is illegally here.
 
I decided to create a special ministerial team to be established at today's Cabinet meeting. It will meet this week with representatives of the residents, not only from Tel Aviv, but also from other neighborhoods and other areas. We will meet once every few weeks in the first few months in order to advance practical solutions to this problem. The main goal is to return these neighborhoods to the residents and to remove [illegal infiltrators] from the State of Israel, as we have already removed some 20,000 illegal infiltrators, whose place is not here.  When I am finished speaking, I would like to ask the Minister of the Interior to say a few words on this matter. I am moving on to the second issue, which is the beginning of the school year.
 
On Friday we opened the school year in Harish, the Minister of Education and I. I must say that it was very exciting in two senses.  First of all, importantly, a lot of new children, a lot of classes, it opened without a hitch.  I think that is important in itself. There is tremendous development in the city of Harish and, at the moment, there are 5,000 residents.  According to the government's decisions, there is a possibility for 50,000 and even 100,000, a really big, strategically located, city. We are trying to solve a few more problems, which are deferred to later meetings. Specifically we also will solve transportation problems, [including] connecting to the railway. On behalf of the ministers and the government, I would like to wish the children of Israel a successful school year and a successful year to the parents as well. The Minister of Education will expand later.
 
Third, a solution for Amona evacuees. We determined ways to establish the community of Avichai. We decided to move forward there and we encountered a problem, a budgetary problem. And I want to thank you, Minister of the Interior, for solving the problem of budgetary distribution from your ministry and I want to congratulate you. We want to make a government decision in the wake of this solution in order to advance the establishment of the settlement. 
 
Finally, we are forwarding a plan for national infrastructures. It turns out that there is no single address for all the infrastructure activity. This delays many things and I can tell you that it also impedes external investments.
 
 We spoke with several investors, the Director General of the Prime Minister's Office and I, large investors who invest in the infrastructure world, and they say that partly because of this shortcoming, we are preventing investments of very large sums of money in infrastructures that are important to the State of Israel.  Therefore, we will publish today a multi-year plan that incorporates all infrastructure projects until 2021. The scope of these projects is over NIS 100 billion. As I said, the private sector will also be involved, and in a separate meeting also the bypass roads in Judea and Samaria."
 
Prime Minister Netanyahu added:
 "With regard to the entry of infiltrators, Israel was the first country in the world to physically block entry of infiltrators. We reached a rate of about 20,000 infiltrators per year. Without building the fence we would easily have reached at least 100,000 a year in view of what is happening in Africa. Meaning that within a decade, and we are soon approaching the end of that decade, the state would stop being the Jewish state. There was a real threat to the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.  The construction of the fence, which I initiated and continuously oversaw, blocked it. Now, there's the question of expenditure. We spent about a third, just under a third. To spend another third - and I'm not sure what will remain - we will take a series of measures. 
 
It must be understood that we have already created the foundation in my visits to Africa and in my conversations with African leaders. We have created a base of countries willing to absorb these infiltrators, and now we may have to improve not only the legislation, but also the agreements. You will hear about this later. And herein lays the task - blocking and expenditures. Just as we focused on this, and those who were in the previous governments remember it - the same thing; we are focusing on it now and we will give it constant supervision to bring about the result, because the suffering is unbelievable, and the future implications of the burden on the State of Israel are things that require action now.
 
Regarding education, I highly appreciate mathematics as the mother of science, the queen of science. Essential! English – essential! This is the international language and it will become more and more the international language, because languages  disappear. But we need to ensure that one language does not disappear, and that is Hebrew. It needs to be sophisticated, beyond "like", "you know". It needs to improve. Children in Israel, Jews and non-Jews should be able to express themselves. To express ideas, to express and to be able to communicate with others because it is a necessary condition for success in life and success in livelihood. Ultimately there is one more important discipline if we want to ensure our future here, we need to know our past here, the whole foundation of the heritage and values on which we are rooted, and this foundation is the Bible. I ask once again, I call once again for to bring about a situation in which there are more teachers, of higher quality, to this vital profession, and I do exactly as I say: 'I practice what I preach'."