Israel's refugee disgrace
Treatment of Sudanese refugees violates international law, democratic norms
Throughout history many people have sought refuge or asylum in Israel. Displaced people (non Jews) have arrived from countries such as Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Bosnia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and more. Until the present time only 86 individuals have received official refugee status from the Government of Israel and the UNHCR (United Nation High Commission on Refugees.)
In 1951, as a response to the plight of displaced peoples during and after WWII, the International Convention for the Protection of Refugees was written. In 1956 the State of Israel ratified it, and helped to put pressure on other nations to sign the Convention as well, most likely due to the horrors of the Holocaust and the ramifications on Jewish refugees.
Although the world repeats “never again” as its mantra, genocide and ethnic cleansing are still a method of warfare practiced in different regions of the world, and have been utilized regularly since the convention was introduced. An example of the use of these practices is the conflict in Darfur, Sudan.
Victims that are able to escape seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Egypt and Israel. Today there are approximately 300 Sudanese, amongst them 35 children, within the borders of Israel. Most of them escaped Egypt and have entered Israel illegally through the Sinai desert. Those who survive the journey are smuggled through the Israel-Egypt border along with drugs, weapons and human traffic (mostly women for the Israeli sex trade.)
As of today, out of the 300 refugees who have arrived in Israel, about 200 of the Sudanese are imprisoned indefinitely in "Ktziot" and "Maasiyahu" prisons. This can be considered an improvement because in 2004 many of them were held incommunicado conditions in army bases.
The large majority of them have not undergone trial and some have been detained for over two years. There are speculations regarding the exact reason for imprisoning the refugees - one of the motivations might be in order to deter other Sudanese from arriving to Israel. It is prohibited to hold people whose infiltration to Israel has no security background in army detention facilities.
'Chaos prevails in Israel policy'
The last article of the 1951 UN Convention calls for enacting legislation to guarantee refugees rights in the countries where they end up. Israel currently has no laws regarding refugees. The only legal references in Israel that relate to infiltrators in the “entrance into Israel” law; those violating it are punished after being tried in an Israel Defense Force court, not a civilian court. The second reference is the “Regulations Regarding the Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Israel”, which in practice is a mixed procedure that lays further responsibility on the UNHCR instead of the Israeli government.
According to the Convention, refugee status is not something that is supposed to be granted by the government; one is either are a refugee or is not. This is to be determined after the individual’s case has been proven accurate and that there is persecution taking place in the present, or there is a risk for persecution in the future.
Under certain circumstances, a government can give “blanket protection” to a group of people escaping a civil war. This was the case with the Liberian refugees in Israel. Blanket protection is given to a group when there is no access to the specific case history of the people concerned (for example when there are no diplomatic relations with the country i.e. Sudan,) or when there are too many cases and no human resources to investigate each claim individually.
In April 2006 the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Refugee Rights Program, two Israeli non-governmental organizations, submitted a petition to the Supreme Court. The petition addressed a situation where refugees were detained under the “Law to Prevent Infiltration” and were not granted the right to judicial review. Actual release from imprisonment can only be granted by the Ministry of Defense once the people in question are arrested and detained.
On August 7th 2006, the Court agreed to release four Sudanese detainees who were transferred to a Kibbutz as an alternative to being held in prison. The removal of detainees from prison and their transfer to alternative locations is gaining popularity, yet the exact numbers of those in Kibbutzim or in shelters are not yet known (there is an estimation of 80 people in recent months.) Those in detention centers are not allowed to leave the premise since they are under the direct responsibility of their hosts who have taken an obligation not to allow them to leave. Furthermore, they have no money, health insurance or identification documents which make it both dangerous and unfeasible for them to wander around the country.
Ruth Sinai, a Haaretz journalist who meets and interviews the prisoners regularly has documented their personal stories. All the cases are similar; after entering Israel, the first thing the refugees want is to be caught and turn themselves in. They want to be handed over to the UN Representatives. They don’t realize that it will lead to imprisonment. “These stories demonstrate the chaos that prevails in Israel’s policy towards Sudanese refugees who flee harassment and unemployment in Egypt”.
International law violated
According to Orit Friedman, spokeswoman of the Israeli Immigration Authority, “the immigration police don’t want to deal with them since they cannot be deported to Sudan, so it has asked the IDF to return them to Egypt the minute they cross the border but the IDF says the Egyptians aren’t willing to take them.” Friedman’s description reflects the lack of a centralized and authoritative body to deal with the refugees, and once they are within Israeli borders, someone has to deal with them. The question is who and how?
To stress the Israeli government’s embarrassment over the issue, on November 1st 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a press release stating that “Israel has donated an undisclosed sum to the UNHCR to aid refugees from the massacre in Darfur. At Israel’s encouragement, the amount has been matched by donations from several American Jewish organizations. Israel continues to see much importance in this activity, which comes as a response to true human distress and it driven by basic Jewish values”.
The obvious fear of the government and of Israeli citizens is a major influx of Non-Jewish refugees into the country. An estimation of the actual numbers was presented by Michael Kagan, an American human rights lawyer who has worked in Egypt and in Israel: “Anyone who talks about millions of Sudanese coming to Israel is scaremongering. In any case, we are not talking about all Sudanese. We are talking about refugees. The UN says there are only 15,000 Sudanese refugees in Egypt (out of the 2.5 million Sudanese refugees around the globe,) and out of those, how many are going to pay big money, risk their lives, and risk arrest to go over the desert to Israel?
One thing to be taken into consideration when discussing the absorption of Sudanese refugees into Israeli society is that unlike the Palestinian refugees (within the Right of Return framework) who have strong national, religious and cultural sentiments to the country, the Sudanese have not arrived to Israel as their final destination of choice.
They are intensely involved in a battle of identity and self-determination intimately connected with Sudan, and most likely are aspiring to return to their lives and families as opposed to staying in a country where the language, culture and mentality are foreign. They are refugees but not stateless people.
It is the government’s duty to find a solution for those who are within its borders. This should be done by acknowledging their existence, taking responsibility by making a commitment to improve the living conditions of the refugees, and most importantly, releasing all detainees from prison. Keeping them in detention is a harsh violation of international law and is undemocratic in essence.
