The police will find it difficult to accomplish this for many reasons, if only logistical, and the effort to meet the target will require some very tough steps. The measures taken in the last year to deport 17,000 foreign workers could pale in comparison to what will be needed to increase the expulsion rate by three times or more. In the past year, since the Emigration Police was established, foreign workers have adopted the behavior of people living underground. They live in fear. They rarely leave their homes or use public transport, they frequently change their place of residence, and they fear every knock on the door.

Those who do not hide successfully and are caught by the police - at their employer's, on the street, on a bus - are often subjected to police violence to their persons and belongings. To escape police raids they are ready to hide in airless closets and jump from high windows. Thousands of their children live in constant fear that their parents might not return home at night. The Emigration Police command has tried to instruct its officers to avoid violence with the foreign workers and to respect their rights, but too frequently the urge to meet the expulsions quota overcomes the police and the orders are not followed.

On the way to the deportation flight, not only are the civil rights of the workers trampled, but so are their legal rights. Often police don't bother to inform the detainees of their right to appeal the expulsion order, to ask for a 72-hour delay before the expulsion takes place, to appear before a judicial body within 14 days of being jailed and other instruments the legislator devised for their protection.

The government decided that the national interest requires reducing the number of foreign workers here without permission, mostly to make way for unemployed Israelis who have been shoved out of the work force by the cheaper workers from overseas. The assumptions behind that decision can be disputed and while the state has the right to act in accordance with its interests, it does not need to use draconian measures.

There are many legal and administrative instruments that have been used in other countries dealing with the growing problems resulting from illegal foreign laborers. The policy that makes a worker legal only if they remain employed by the person who brought them to the country could be abolished and thus reduce the number of workers forced to work illegally.

It is possible to impose heavy fines on violators of labor laws, which also apply to foreign workers, thus making their employment more expensive to their employers. It is possible to impose fees, fines and even prison terms on employers. Israel prefers force.