They are “a cancer in our body”, and “a threat to the social fabric of society … national security [and the] identity and existence [of the] Jewish and democratic state”. As “infiltrators”, they should be “encourage[d] … to leave” and “lock[ed] … up to make their lives miserable”.
Is this an off-the-record rant of some junior Israeli official? Not quite. These are the words of Israeli Parliamentarian Miri Regev, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and of the current and former Israeli Interior Ministers Eli Yishai and Gideon Saar. And they are not talking about some threat posed by extremists sneaking into Israel to install a caliphate.
Instead, the target of these public diatribes – described by the UN refugee agency as “xenophobic statements made by … public officials who … stigmatise asylum seekers” – is about 51,000 Eritreans and Sudanese. These people fled widespread abuses in their home countries and sought protection in Israel before the Israeli authorities effectively sealed off the border with Egypt in late 2012.
Human rights concerns
The Israeli authorities know that they can’t deport Eritreans and Sudanese to their home countries because of serious human rights concerns in both countries, not to mention that Sudan’s relations with Israel are so bad that it considers people who flee there to be criminals.
Yet the authorities have done everything they can to make their lives so unbearable that they leave, despite great risk to their well-being. And it’s working. Since January 2013 – six months after Israel introduced an unlawful policy of indefinitely detaining as many “infiltrators” as possible to coerce them into leaving – almost 7,000 people, mostly Sudanese, have buckled under the pressure and returned home.
Another 44,000 Eritreans and Sudanese in Israel’s cities live in constant fear of receiving orders to report to a remote desert detention centre near the Egyptian border where, the authorities say, they will be confined until they also agree to leave the country.
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