Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, took to Twitter on Saturday to endorse President Trump’s plan to build a wall on the United States’ border with Mexico.
“President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea,” Mr. Netanyahu tweeted.
The Israeli wall reference by the prime minister is a 150-mile barricade that extends from Eilat to Gaza adjacent to the country’s border with Egypt. It was completed in 2014, and has been attributed with drastically reducing the number of migrants who attempt to enter Israel from Africa. That statistic shrank from hundreds per month to only 213 during all of 2015, according to Jewish News Service, and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said recently that new fortifications to the fence “significantly curbed the flow of illegal infiltration into Israel, with only 11 successful attempts to cross the fence throughout 2016.”
Israel maintains another wall along its border with the Palestinian Authority, the likes of which has restricted for decades the freedom of nearly 2 million Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Trump has vowed to order the construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in a bid to curb the influx of illegal immigrants, notwithstanding objection from Democratic politicians, human rights advocates and his Mexican counterpart.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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