JERUSALEM, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Israeli police beefed up forces in south Tel Aviv on Thursday, just hours after a protest against African migrants residing in the city turned violent.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch is weighing plans to bolster Tel Aviv District Police with Border Police units which are largely deployed in the West Bank, the Yediot Aharonot daily reported, to assist Tel Aviv District Police in confronting crimes and thwarting reprisal attacks against the Africans.

Yaron Zamir, a spokesman for the minister, on Thursday confirmed to Xinhua that such a plan is underway.

"The minister toured south Tel Aviv last week. Following that visit, he concluded that local police should be reinforced in order to combat crimes and increase the public's sense of security, " Zamir said.

Several months of rising tensions culminated on Wednesday night, when some 2,000 protesters rallied in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood and called on the government to expel African asylum- seekers from both their community and Israel.

Demonstrators attacked passers-by, set garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.

Riot cops arrested 17 people, some of whom beat African migrants and attempted to reach the city's central bus station, a rundown area which has become an epicenter of migrant workers' housing.

Right-wing lawmakers and activists attended the rally and inflamed the crowd.

"(The migrants) are a cancer in our body," said Likud legislator Miri Regev, vowing to "bring them back to where they belong."

Her colleague, Danny Danon, who chairs a lobby group which deals with illegal migrants, said Israel was "in a war with an enemy country of infiltrators whose capital city is Tel Aviv."

Similar, albeit smaller, protests were held in southern cities that have become the home of asylum-seekers from South Sudan and Eritrea, with demonstrators expressing their frustration with the government's failure to deal with the issue.

Wednesday's protests came amid a backdrop of rising violent incidents between the community of African migrants and their Israeli neighbors in Tel Aviv, where the municipality and police have been coping with growing street crimes by Sudanese infiltrators and revenge attacks, including fire-bombings and assaults, by Israelis ired by their presence.

Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said he supported the immediate mass deportation of some 3,000 South Sudanese nationals - - a mere fraction of the 60,000 African asylum-seekers and work migrants who currently reside here -- back to their country.

The Ministry of Justice released a statement earlier in the day that Weinstein reached his decision based on the position of the Foreign Ministry, according to which Israel would not be in breach of international law if it were to return migrants not seeking asylum back to their country.

The Foreign Ministry outlined its position in a 20-page document released last week. It was based on a senior Israeli diplomat's recent visit to Sudan meant to ensure that the situation for returnees to that country was safe, and a vetting by the ministry's legal department.

The document said it would be legal to deport the Sudanese only after it is established that they are not entitled to asylum.

Weinstein will ask the Jerusalem District Court next week to lift a temporary order it issued at the request of human rights groups looking after the migrants' welfare, which prohibits deporting them until a final ruling on the issue, according to the Ha'aretz newspaper.

The attorney general will argue that there is no legal obstacle to the expulsions since none of the migrants slated for expulsion face any threat in South Sudan, the report said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier this week said the migrants endanger Israel's "social fabric, economy and national security," on Wednesday ordered senior officials to begin implementing an emergency program to expel estimated 3,000 South Sudanese, following a meeting with Weinstein.

However, officials at the Prime Minister's Office stressed that Weinstein has not okayed the deportation of Eritreans, who comprise 70 percent of the African migrants, due to the situation in their country.