Crackdown on Migrants Tugs at Soul of Israelis

June 18, 2012June 18, 2012 assenna

 

By ISABEL KERSHNER

TEL AVIV — One by one, immigration inspectors escorted the migrants out of a dilapidated building into an alley teeming with African-run stores and hair salons. Then, they were led onto a waiting bus, in the first steps on the way to deportation to their native South Sudan.

One woman grasped a leopard-print purse. A man left with a book in his hand. Some wore brightly colored shirts and held their heads high. One shouted “Juba! Juba!” — the name of South Sudan’s capital — and raised his hands in a victory sign.

“It must be done,” said Mor Sheffer, an Israeli bystander, “or tomorrow we will have no country and we will have to look for another one.”

Many residents here in the Neve Shaanan area of south Tel Aviv complain of rampant crime by migrants and say that it has become “Soweto,” a reference to the site of a 1976 uprising in South Africa. At a recent protest fanned by right-wing politicians, one lawmaker described the Africans, known here as “infiltrators,” as “a cancer in our body.” Later, Africans’ stores and apartments were attacked.

But the government clampdown is also ripping at Israel’s soul. For some, the connotations of roundups and the prospect of mass detentions cut too close to the bone.

“I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936,” said Orly Feldheim, 46, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, as she doled out food last week to a long line of immigrants in the neighborhood’s Levinsky Park.

Since 2005, about 60,000 sub-Saharan Africans have surreptitiously crossed the porous border from Egypt into Israel after traversing the rugged desert of the Sinai Peninsula.

The rising tensions caused by their presence have prompted the government to announce a tough new policy to stem the influx of African immigrants and asylum seekers. The interior minister, Eli Yishai, has vowed to clear the country of all illegal immigrants within three years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contends that most of them are economic immigrants and that they threaten the Jewish character of Israel. On Sunday, he said that all new arrivals would immediately be placed in detention.

Mr. Netanyahu told his cabinet that Israel was “building holding facilities to house tens of thousands of infiltrators until they can be sent out of the country.”

For now, most of the immigrants and asylum seekers — about 50,000 — cannot be deported, in line with international conventions. They come from Sudan and Eritrea, countries considered too dangerous for their repatriation, and so they are afforded temporary collective protection in Israel. That protection was recently lifted for immigrants from South Sudan. On June 7, a Jerusalem court ruled that it was safe enough to repatriate them to South Sudan, a newly independent nation that has diplomatic ties with Israel.

There are 1,500 South Sudanese here, according to Israeli officials; South Sudanese activists put the number at 700.

In recent days, about 300 South Sudanese have been detained for hearings pending deportation. Hundreds more have agreed to leave voluntarily to avoid arrest and to qualify for a departure grant of $1,300. The first planeload was to depart late Sunday.

Some immigrants tell harrowing tales of cruelty by Bedouin smugglers in Sinai. They recounted how, after dashing across the border, at risk of being shot by Egyptian officers, they sought out the Israeli border patrols. The soldiers who picked them up, they said, told them they were safe and welcomed them to Israel.

The immigrants were then taken to Saharonim, a prison near the border, and registered. Israel carried out no background checks to sort the genuine asylum seekers from opportunists or fugitives. Most, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese, were released after a few days under the collective protection provision. They were put on buses and dropped off at Levinsky Park or other locations, ending up in a kind of limbo.

Their visas state that they are not permitted to work. The new government measures include hefty fines for employers of illegal immigrants. Most immigrants end up doing odd jobs for low wages.

Under the recently amended infiltrators law, even those entitled to collective protection can be detained for up to three years. Along with a fence that Israel is constructing on the border with Egypt, these measures are meant to deter more immigrants from coming.

People can apply for refugee status, but priority is given to those not covered by collective protection, said Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority. The approval rate is negligible. Since 2009, out of 7,000 applications, 16 people were granted refugee status or asylum.

Critics say that Israel, a nation largely founded by refugees, lacks a proper immigration policy.

“We say: ‘Be fair, we are Jews. Decide who is or isn’t a refugee,’ ” said Iftah Cohen, a lawyer working for We Are Refugees, an Israeli organization that provides free legal aid to asylum seekers threatened with deportation.

One of them is Mary Eze, a widow who has a 4-year-old boy, Valentine. Ms. Eze left Nigeria in 2007 with her husband after his family disapproved of their marriage. They went to Cairo, where Valentine was born. But even after her husband died in a car accident, his family tracked her down in Egypt. “They came to take Valentine,” she said.

Ms. Eze and Valentine escaped to Sinai, where, she said, over 15 months they were beaten and abused by Bedouin smugglers. Eventually, one tribesman took pity and sent them to Israel. After five months in Saharonim Prison, she and Valentine were taken to the airport to be sent back to Nigeria where, she believes, they would be killed.

Then, We Are Refugees lawyers intervened. Ms. Eze’s case is now in court.

“We came with nothing,” she said. “We have nowhere in the world.”

Another case taken on by We Are Refugees is that of Takleb Melake Abtew and his wife, Lamlam. Of Eritrean origin, they met and married in a refugee camp in Sudan. In 2009, they crossed into Israel with their son, Ermias, then 3.

In Israel, they were detained and separated for two years. Denied collective protection after their release, because, their lawyers said, the authorities decided they “looked Ethiopian,” they are threatened with deportation.

For now, they live in a tiny apartment in Or Yehuda, a town south of Tel Aviv. Ms. Abtew, who is pregnant, rarely leaves home, afraid of being rearrested. Mr. Abtew said that in Eritrea he would be considered an army deserter for avoiding conscription, though he was 10 when he left.

“I’d prefer to be here in prison,” he said. “Whatever the Israelis say, we will do.”

Some Israelis invoke the biblical injunction to “love the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Others say they now feel like strangers in their own country.

In Levinsky Park, an Israeli veteran who refuses to be identified helps immigrants find jobs. “My head tells me that it is not good that they are here,” he said, “but I follow my heart. I am split half and half.”

The NewYork Times