In a 2007 file photo, Israeli troops surround a Sudanese refugee family after they crossed illegally from Egypt into Israel. Ariel Schalit/AP

Israel's parliament has approved a law which allows illegal immigrants from Africa to be detained for up to a year without trial in the latest in a series of measures aimed at reducing the numbers of African migrants in the country. The new bill passed by 30 votes in favor to 15 against during a late-night vote in the 120-member Knesset, Israel's parliament, and was announced Tuesday. A previous law, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in September, had set a maximum detention period of three years. Supporters of the bill in the government see the migrants as illegal job-seekers, but critics say many of the migrants are asylum-seekers fleeing hardship and persecution in their homelands.

Is this how we, as a people who have sought asylum, treat human beings? Zahava Galon Left-wing Meretz party

Members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party praised the new legislation. Interior Minister Gideon Saar said it would "allow us to keep illegals away from our cities." Miri Regev, another Likud Knesset member, said Israel should "send them all back to their countries." "This law is needed in order to deter potential infiltrators. The present reality is a human ticking time bomb," Regev, who also heads the Knesset's Interior Committee, told parliament. But others, like Zahava Galon, head of the left-wing Meretz party, said the migrants were no threat to Israel's Jewish identity. "Is this how we, as a people who have sought asylum, treat human beings?" she asked on Israel Radio.

Detention facilities

A recently built Israeli fence along the Israeli-Egyptian border has effectively choked off illegal African migration, but there are already an estimated 50,000 Africans living in Israel, most of them Sudanese and Eritrean nationals. The new regulations, which opponents predicted would also be challenged in the Supreme Court, enables authorities to send migrants, now living illegally in Israeli cities, to what the government describes as "open facilities". Under the law, their detention would be open-ended, pending resolution of their asylum requests, implementation of deportation orders or voluntary repatriation. The first such open facility, which can hold several hundred people, is due to begin operating this week in the southern Israeli desert. The facility, to be inaugurated on Dec. 12 and run by the Israel Prisons Services, will be open during the day but locked at night, and it will initially house up to 3,300 people, Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported. It said capacity could be expanded to hold up to 11,000. Migrants detained there will be able to leave the facility during the day but must return at night, and they will not be allowed to seek employment. Women, children and families will not, at this stage, be sent to the complex. Tuesday's legislation comes after the Israeli cabinet approved measures in November aimed at tackling the question of illegal immigrants who, according to the government, "disturb the public order." These measures included a crackdown on employers who house illegal immigrants and financial incentives for those immigrants that agree to return to their country of origin. Israel has been trying to persuade them to leave voluntarily in return for a payout. Some 1,700 Sudanese and Eritreans have gone home this year, the Interior Ministry said.

'Racism and xenophobia'