Netanyahu supports Trump's Mexico wall order

By Esra Kaymak Avci

JERUSALEM (AA) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he supported U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to build a wall to the U.S. 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," Netanyahu tweeted, displaying also an Israeli and an American flag.

Earlier this month, Israel completed an electronic "smart fence" along part of its border with Egypt.

In the past, Israel also built a barrier with a height of eight meters around the occupied West Bank where about two million Palestinians live and put limits on their freedom to travel.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the city in 1980, claiming it as the unified capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state -- a move never recognized by the international community.

International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "occupied territories," considering all Jewish settlement building on the land to be illegal.

Netanyahu's statement comes after Trump signed last Thursday an executive order on immigration, which instructs the government to immediately begin the construction of a wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico, and the deportation of undocumented immigrants involved in crimes.

Following the executive order, debates on whether the U.S. or Mexico was going to pay for the wall -- expected to cost about $25 billion -- started.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said his country would not pay for it as Trump suggested.

Shortly before Pena Nieto's decision was made public, Trump wrote on Twitter: "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting."

As a response, Pena Nieto announced he would not attend the meeting with Trump.

Trump is also expected to push for a more comprehensive plan to deport undocumented immigrants, and largely ban Muslim immigration and refugees, in keeping with some of his more controversial campaign pledges.