JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Syrian infiltrator who breached Israel’s border during Nakba Day protests turned himself in to police in Tel Aviv.
A Tel Aviv court on Tuesday ordered Hassan Hijazi, who said he entered Israel to look for a job, held until later in the week. Two other infiltrators discovered to still be in Israel were returned Tuesday to Syria.
They were among hundreds who breached Israel’s border on Sunday.
Hijazi, 28, in an interview Monday on Israel’s Channel 10 said he hitchhiked and took a public bus to get from the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which was the site of the Nakba Day riots, to Tel Aviv.
Hijazi, reportedly a civil servant in Syria’s education department, said he had gone to Jaffa in search of his parents’ former home, which they left in 1948.
He said it was his "dream" to visit Jaffa and that he did not want to return to Syria.
"I want to stay here in my village, where my father and grandfather were born," Hijazi told reporters.
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