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A troubled exodus
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BY: YOSEF ISRAEL ABRAMOWITZ JTA
Israel in quandary over Sudanese: Let them stay or send them away?
With two miles of bare footprints behind them, Fatima and Ahmed and their three children approached the border with Israel in the middle of a cold winter night. Snow was falling in the Sinai.
Avoid the Egyptian military patrols, they were warned by their Bedouin smugglers, whom they paid with money borrowed from Sudanese friends.
“If they catch you, you could be shot or deported back to Sudan,” the Bedouins said.
The 12-hour trip from Cairo was the last leg of a multi-year journey stretching from the violence of Darfur to Sudan’s dangerous capital Khartoum to the teeming streets of Cairo. Ahmed had been imprisoned in each city.
Israel was their last hope for what Fatima calls “a normal life” without the “fear of being sent back to Sudan.”
Two hours after dusting the sand off their dark clothing from crawling under two security fences, their 5-month-old baby’s cry pierced the silence of the frigid Negev air.
The response was an Israeli military spotlight.
“Do you know where you are?” the soldiers called out in Arabic.
“Yes,” they answered.
“Why are you here?”
“Because we were mistreated in Egypt.”
“Do you know where you are?” the soldiers called out in Arabic.
“Yes,” they answered.
“Why are you here?”
“Because we were mistreated in Egypt.”
“Who are you?”
“We are Sudanese.”
Ahmed lowered his 2-year-old son from his shoulders and held up his Sudanese passport, as well as the worn yellow card from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (the UNHCR). The card had been obtained in Cairo and saved them from being deported back to Sudan, as the Egyptian police had threatened.
The Israeli soldiers gave the children their green military coats.
“We were afraid of the Egyptian army, not of the Israeli army,” Ahmed recalled later.
In an often reluctant ritual that has been repeated almost weekly for two years with Sudanese sneaking into Israel, Israel Defense Forces patrols gathered up the tired refugee family, placed them in an ambulance, and handed them over to the border police.
The border police sent Ahmed to Ketziot prison for violating the Infiltration Law, a 1954 statute enacted against enemy combatants.
If the experience of others before him is any precedent, Ahmed could remain incarcerated for at least a year, until Israel figures out what to do with him and the other nearly 200 imprisoned Sudanese.
Fatima and the children were sent to a battered women’s shelter in the western Galilee that has largely been taken over by Sudanese refugees whose husbands are in prison.
The failure of the United Nations to cope with the doubling of refugee applications in the past decade or to intervene to prevent the genocide in Darfur has had ripple effects throughout the world. That now includes Israel and the Jewish world.
Faced with genocidal threats from Iran and terrorist groups, a legacy of the Holocaust, and even echoes of the Exodus 3,700 years ago, Israel is torn between its commitment to universal humanitarian concerns and its own security interests.
A four-month JTA investigation into the plight of the refugees and the Israeli government’s handling of the situation found a system that even the top Israeli official adjudicating each of the cases has said often violates Israeli and international law.
The practice of arresting and indefinitely detaining Sudanese asylum- seekers on security grounds is about to be tested in the courts even as Israeli border police are showing signs of resisting the orders to arrest and detain the refugees crossing the borders.
Major international human rights figures have embraced the cause, and a handful of Knesset members and activists in Israel are pressing for a resolution of the crisis. Some of these activists in turn have strong ties to the American Jewish community, which has embraced the cause of Darfur as a top humanitarian priority.
Between 200,000 and 400,000 people have been killed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Another 2.5 million have been displaced.
Israel’s quandary is a difficult one.
“Sudanese refugees are right now considered enemy nationals since Sudan is an Islamic fundamentalist country,” explained Anat Ben Dor, the country’s leading refugee rights lawyer, who has emerged as a top advocate for the Sudanese refugees. “Yet Israel is a signatory to the International Convention on Refugees, which guarantees humane treatment and a safe haven from genocide.”
Clinic and in late February, Ben Dor filed suit against the government for its alleged treatment of three refugees.
Israel helped author the convention in the aftermath of World War II. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were routinely refused safe haven because they, like the current Sudanese, were classified as enemy nationals.
Under Israeli law, if the Sudanese are charged for violating the Law of Entry to Israel, like other nationals who sneak through the Sinai desert into Israel, then the government must review their cases every 30 days and justify their imprisonment. But since Sudanese are considered “enemy nationals,” they are charged under the harsher Infiltration Law, which has no official review mechanism, and detainees can be held indefinitely.
Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former minister of justice and human rights attorney to such well-known dissidents as Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela, has joined with the Israel Bar Association in filing supporting documents to the Israeli High Court on behalf of the Sudanese.
Forty-five Sudanese are currently in Masiyahu prison near Tel Aviv, 85 in Ketziot near the Egyptian border, and about 60 at four other prisons, according to Yonatan Berman, a human rights lawyer working on behalf of the refugees.
In addition to the 190 prisoners, another 110 Sudanese, including children, are in alternative detention, meaning crisis centers, kibbutzim or moshavim, where many of them work and live but are not free to leave the premises.
Another estimated dozen or so Sudanese men in the Sinai are partnered with Israeli women and have children, but cannot enter Israel for fear of arrest.
Sigal Rozen, 39, co-founded the Hotline for Migrant Workers with a grant from the New Israel Fund. Her tiny fourth-floor offices next door to a Tel Aviv police station are a hot spot for undocumented workers of all colors and nationalities who come knocking for assistance.
“There are people from all over the world who come to Israel,” Rozen said. “If a Turk and a Chinese come across the border with a Sudanese, only the Sudanese is imprisoned. That is discrimination.”
“The Israeli government is endeavoring to deal with this issue as humanely as possible,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. “Jewish history has made us especially sensitive to genocide. No one is being sent back to the inferno in Darfur.”
At the same time, he said, “we have to take precautions” to minimize the security risk, given where the refugees come from.
Some Israeli officials contend that beyond the immediate security concerns about individual Sudanese, the greater fear is the ripple effect of even more refugees seeking asylum in Israel.
The fault lines drawn around the refugee battle between those advocating deportation and those advocating granting asylum is “a paradox,” as one high-ranking Jewish organizational official called it.
The government preference is to deport the refugees back to Egypt n if Egypt will guarantee it will not deport them back to Sudan.
“What we do here will determine if three million will come” from Egypt or will stay there, said Yossi Edelshtein, director of the Enforcement Unit of the Immigration Police.
The three million figure is often cited by Israeli policy makers, particularly in the security services. But others dispute those figures.
“Anyone who talks about millions of Sudanese coming to Israel is scare-mongering,” said Michael Kagan, an American human rights lawyer who has worked in Israel and Egypt.
“The UN says there are only 15,000 Sudanese refugees in Egypt, and of these, how many are going to pay big money, risk their lives, and risk arrest to go over the desert to Israel?”
As to the porous border with Egypt, it is not the Sudanese whom Israel most worries about, but terrorists like Muhammed Faisal Saksak. On Jan. 29, the 21-year-old Palestinian crossed the border about 12 miles north of the resort city of Eilat and blew himself up in a small bakery, killing three.
In either a slip of the tongue or a calculated leak to remind the Knesset of the potential security risks of too liberal an asylum policy, Aharoni of the Immigration Police revealed in Knesset testimony that “it appears that one Sudanese refugee belonging to Al Qaeda was released.”
Half a dozen ministries, including the Prime Minister’s Office, would not respond to queries about the link.
The number of Sudanese seeking protection in Israel started to increase after Egyptian police killed 27 and injured several hundred Sudanese refugees protesting outside the UNHCR office in Cairo at the end of December 2005.
None of the Sudanese who have crossed into Israel in the past 18 months has been granted asylum or temporary refugee status, according to Michael Bavli, head of the UNHCR office in Israel.
This contrasts with 200 asylum-seekers from many countries, including some Sudanese, who were granted permanent asylum in Israel between 1985 and 2005. An additional 700 non-Sudanese refugees were granted temporary asylum during that time.
With each new arrival stretching the embryonic asylum system of the state, the issue of the Sudanese has been coming to a boil.
A Knesset lobby headed by Labor Party member Avishai Braverman and Likud member Gilad Erdan formed last November to push for the release of all the prisoners who have sought asylum in Israel
Its focus is having the prisoners released and then advocating for at least some being granted permanent asylum status in Israel.
“I am ashamed as a person and as a Jew,” Braverman told JTA, referring to the practice of imprisoning asylum-seekers. “We, of all people, have to know how to behave.”
In a letter sent to the Knesset lobby, Sudanese refugee Fatima briefly recounted her family’s plight:
“I beg you not to let them send us away from here ... I know that if they send us back to Egypt, we’ll go to prison and perhaps never get out,” she wrote. “We could also be sent to the Sudanese Embassy and from there back to Sudan, and that will be the end of us. We’ll die like all the others who have died there.”
Yosef Israel Abramowitz, founder of socialaction.com, moved with his family last year to Israel. JTA correspondent Dina Kraft in Israel contributed to this piece.
With two miles of bare footprints behind them, Fatima and Ahmed and their three children approached the border with Israel in the middle of a cold winter night. Snow was falling in the Sinai.
Avoid the Egyptian military patrols, they were warned by their Bedouin smugglers, whom they paid with money borrowed from Sudanese friends.
“If they catch you, you could be shot or deported back to Sudan,” the Bedouins said.
The 12-hour trip from Cairo was the last leg of a multi-year journey stretching from the violence of Darfur to Sudan’s dangerous capital Khartoum to the teeming streets of Cairo. Ahmed had been imprisoned in each city.
Israel was their last hope for what Fatima calls “a normal life” without the “fear of being sent back to Sudan.”
Two hours after dusting the sand off their dark clothing from crawling under two security fences, their 5-month-old baby’s cry pierced the silence of the frigid Negev air.
The response was an Israeli military spotlight.
“Do you know where you are?” the soldiers called out in Arabic.
“Yes,” they answered.
“Why are you here?”
“Because we were mistreated in Egypt.”
“Do you know where you are?” the soldiers called out in Arabic.
“Yes,” they answered.
“Why are you here?”
“Because we were mistreated in Egypt.”
“Who are you?”
“We are Sudanese.”
Ahmed lowered his 2-year-old son from his shoulders and held up his Sudanese passport, as well as the worn yellow card from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (the UNHCR). The card had been obtained in Cairo and saved them from being deported back to Sudan, as the Egyptian police had threatened.
The Israeli soldiers gave the children their green military coats.
“We were afraid of the Egyptian army, not of the Israeli army,” Ahmed recalled later.
In an often reluctant ritual that has been repeated almost weekly for two years with Sudanese sneaking into Israel, Israel Defense Forces patrols gathered up the tired refugee family, placed them in an ambulance, and handed them over to the border police.
The border police sent Ahmed to Ketziot prison for violating the Infiltration Law, a 1954 statute enacted against enemy combatants.
If the experience of others before him is any precedent, Ahmed could remain incarcerated for at least a year, until Israel figures out what to do with him and the other nearly 200 imprisoned Sudanese.
Fatima and the children were sent to a battered women’s shelter in the western Galilee that has largely been taken over by Sudanese refugees whose husbands are in prison.
The failure of the United Nations to cope with the doubling of refugee applications in the past decade or to intervene to prevent the genocide in Darfur has had ripple effects throughout the world. That now includes Israel and the Jewish world.
Faced with genocidal threats from Iran and terrorist groups, a legacy of the Holocaust, and even echoes of the Exodus 3,700 years ago, Israel is torn between its commitment to universal humanitarian concerns and its own security interests.
A four-month JTA investigation into the plight of the refugees and the Israeli government’s handling of the situation found a system that even the top Israeli official adjudicating each of the cases has said often violates Israeli and international law.
The practice of arresting and indefinitely detaining Sudanese asylum- seekers on security grounds is about to be tested in the courts even as Israeli border police are showing signs of resisting the orders to arrest and detain the refugees crossing the borders.
Major international human rights figures have embraced the cause, and a handful of Knesset members and activists in Israel are pressing for a resolution of the crisis. Some of these activists in turn have strong ties to the American Jewish community, which has embraced the cause of Darfur as a top humanitarian priority.
Between 200,000 and 400,000 people have been killed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Another 2.5 million have been displaced.
Israel’s quandary is a difficult one.
“Sudanese refugees are right now considered enemy nationals since Sudan is an Islamic fundamentalist country,” explained Anat Ben Dor, the country’s leading refugee rights lawyer, who has emerged as a top advocate for the Sudanese refugees. “Yet Israel is a signatory to the International Convention on Refugees, which guarantees humane treatment and a safe haven from genocide.”
Clinic and in late February, Ben Dor filed suit against the government for its alleged treatment of three refugees.
Israel helped author the convention in the aftermath of World War II. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were routinely refused safe haven because they, like the current Sudanese, were classified as enemy nationals.
Under Israeli law, if the Sudanese are charged for violating the Law of Entry to Israel, like other nationals who sneak through the Sinai desert into Israel, then the government must review their cases every 30 days and justify their imprisonment. But since Sudanese are considered “enemy nationals,” they are charged under the harsher Infiltration Law, which has no official review mechanism, and detainees can be held indefinitely.
Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former minister of justice and human rights attorney to such well-known dissidents as Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela, has joined with the Israel Bar Association in filing supporting documents to the Israeli High Court on behalf of the Sudanese.
Forty-five Sudanese are currently in Masiyahu prison near Tel Aviv, 85 in Ketziot near the Egyptian border, and about 60 at four other prisons, according to Yonatan Berman, a human rights lawyer working on behalf of the refugees.
In addition to the 190 prisoners, another 110 Sudanese, including children, are in alternative detention, meaning crisis centers, kibbutzim or moshavim, where many of them work and live but are not free to leave the premises.
Another estimated dozen or so Sudanese men in the Sinai are partnered with Israeli women and have children, but cannot enter Israel for fear of arrest.
Sigal Rozen, 39, co-founded the Hotline for Migrant Workers with a grant from the New Israel Fund. Her tiny fourth-floor offices next door to a Tel Aviv police station are a hot spot for undocumented workers of all colors and nationalities who come knocking for assistance.
“There are people from all over the world who come to Israel,” Rozen said. “If a Turk and a Chinese come across the border with a Sudanese, only the Sudanese is imprisoned. That is discrimination.”
“The Israeli government is endeavoring to deal with this issue as humanely as possible,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. “Jewish history has made us especially sensitive to genocide. No one is being sent back to the inferno in Darfur.”
At the same time, he said, “we have to take precautions” to minimize the security risk, given where the refugees come from.
Some Israeli officials contend that beyond the immediate security concerns about individual Sudanese, the greater fear is the ripple effect of even more refugees seeking asylum in Israel.
The fault lines drawn around the refugee battle between those advocating deportation and those advocating granting asylum is “a paradox,” as one high-ranking Jewish organizational official called it.
The government preference is to deport the refugees back to Egypt n if Egypt will guarantee it will not deport them back to Sudan.
“What we do here will determine if three million will come” from Egypt or will stay there, said Yossi Edelshtein, director of the Enforcement Unit of the Immigration Police.
The three million figure is often cited by Israeli policy makers, particularly in the security services. But others dispute those figures.
“Anyone who talks about millions of Sudanese coming to Israel is scare-mongering,” said Michael Kagan, an American human rights lawyer who has worked in Israel and Egypt.
“The UN says there are only 15,000 Sudanese refugees in Egypt, and of these, how many are going to pay big money, risk their lives, and risk arrest to go over the desert to Israel?”
As to the porous border with Egypt, it is not the Sudanese whom Israel most worries about, but terrorists like Muhammed Faisal Saksak. On Jan. 29, the 21-year-old Palestinian crossed the border about 12 miles north of the resort city of Eilat and blew himself up in a small bakery, killing three.
In either a slip of the tongue or a calculated leak to remind the Knesset of the potential security risks of too liberal an asylum policy, Aharoni of the Immigration Police revealed in Knesset testimony that “it appears that one Sudanese refugee belonging to Al Qaeda was released.”
Half a dozen ministries, including the Prime Minister’s Office, would not respond to queries about the link.
The number of Sudanese seeking protection in Israel started to increase after Egyptian police killed 27 and injured several hundred Sudanese refugees protesting outside the UNHCR office in Cairo at the end of December 2005.
None of the Sudanese who have crossed into Israel in the past 18 months has been granted asylum or temporary refugee status, according to Michael Bavli, head of the UNHCR office in Israel.
This contrasts with 200 asylum-seekers from many countries, including some Sudanese, who were granted permanent asylum in Israel between 1985 and 2005. An additional 700 non-Sudanese refugees were granted temporary asylum during that time.
With each new arrival stretching the embryonic asylum system of the state, the issue of the Sudanese has been coming to a boil.
A Knesset lobby headed by Labor Party member Avishai Braverman and Likud member Gilad Erdan formed last November to push for the release of all the prisoners who have sought asylum in Israel
Its focus is having the prisoners released and then advocating for at least some being granted permanent asylum status in Israel.
“I am ashamed as a person and as a Jew,” Braverman told JTA, referring to the practice of imprisoning asylum-seekers. “We, of all people, have to know how to behave.”
In a letter sent to the Knesset lobby, Sudanese refugee Fatima briefly recounted her family’s plight:
“I beg you not to let them send us away from here ... I know that if they send us back to Egypt, we’ll go to prison and perhaps never get out,” she wrote. “We could also be sent to the Sudanese Embassy and from there back to Sudan, and that will be the end of us. We’ll die like all the others who have died there.”
Yosef Israel Abramowitz, founder of socialaction.com, moved with his family last year to Israel. JTA correspondent Dina Kraft in Israel contributed to this piece.
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