It s a vexing question for any country what to do when a floodof people seeking asylum lands inside your country by extra-legalmeans? More Related to this Story African migrants targeted in Israeli arson attack Anti-immigrant protesters chant 'deport the Sudanese' in Tel Avivstreets In Israel, a flood of seemingly Biblical proportions has led tougly race riots by infuriated citizens and to legislation thatthreatens lengthy prison terms to anyone who assists"infiltrators." Early Monday morning, unknown attackersset fire in Jerusalem to an apartment housing Eritrean migrants. Noone was killed, but spray painted on the wall was "get out ofthe neighbourhood." Historically, many countries, Canada included, have gone toconsiderable lengths to prevent vehicles carrying refugees fromlanding in the first place. Last year, Italy and France pushed formilitary action against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as much toward off flotillas of refugees as to protect the Libyan people fromthe violence of their dictator. As a country whose raison d etre is to establish a safe homelandfor the Jewish people, Israel is painfully aware of how boatloadsof Jews escaping Nazism in Europe were turned away by countries inthe West. So when tens of thousands of people fleeing violence and poverty incountries of Northeast Africa find their way to Israel, mostly byinfiltrating across the desert frontier from Sinai, Israelis face adilemma.
Do they admit the asylum-seekers and consider each one scase, even though they arrived illegally? Does it matter that manyarrived by paying Bedouin smugglers hefty sums to transport themand that many have reportedly been abused and some even killed? Or do they deport them, even though may suffer by being returned?Do they lock them up? There are some 60,000 illegal African immigrants in Israel,officials say; most have arrived in the past few years. Themajority, about 35,000, are from Eritrea and Sudan and have beengiven collective protection from expulsion by the Israeligovernment. In the case of Eritreans, the United Nations hasdeclared they must not be returned to their native country as theirlives will be endangered by the current dictatorial regime. In thecase of Sudanese, Israel realized that if they were returned toSudan, a declared enemy of Israel, the people could be consideredtraitors and be imprisoned or executed. Most of these people have been given renewable permits to live inIsrael but have not been given the right to work nor the benefit ofany social services other than schooling for their children.
These are the people who crowd together in cheap housing in SouthTel Aviv, Eilat and Beersheva, many of them working illegally,usually in restaurants and hotels. The Benjamin Netanyahugovernment made it clear it will not enforce the ban on working,knowing the people have no other way to survive. Along with them are another 25,000 Africans from countries such asEthiopia and South Sudan, countries with which Israel hasdiplomatic relations and whose lives would not likely be at risk ifreturned. These people too have sought asylum and Israel has, todate, assigned few case officers to consider their claims.
Many,but far from a majority, have been placed in holding tanks insouthern-most Israel. The rest also can be found in the tenementsof South Tel Aviv and elsewhere. And that s where Israel s cultural crisis is most acute. Israeliswho encounter the visible minority spilling into local parks andcrowding round the bus station have become restive, uncomfortableboth with the migrants restlessness and their not being Jews.With few exceptions, Israel offers legal status only to Jews and tothose, such as Arabs, who lived (or whose ancestors lived) inIsrael when the state was born.
At a time of economic stress and with great demands being made onthe country s housing and health facilities, can Israel afford theaddition of so many needy people, especially since they re notJews, people demand. After months of unease this gathering tinder was set alightrecently when a young Jewish woman was raped in Tel Aviv, allegedlyby a group of African refugees. Riots erupted in the neighbourhood,which had seen a large increase in the African population, andIsraelis demanded the asylum-seekers be removed. What followed was the spread of demonstrations and violent protestsagainst all African infiltrators, with participants often joinedand egged on by right-wing politicians.
"The Sudanese are a cancer in our body," Likud member ofparliament Miri Regev told a veritable mob of hundreds of Tel Avivprotesters recently. "We will do everything to send them backwhere they came from." The outcry against such a damning statement, reminiscent of Nazidenunciation of Jews, provoked Ms. Regev to apologize, but not tothe Africans whom she attacked but to cancer patients who mighthave taken umbrage and to Holocaust survivors who may have feltaggrieved at the comparison. Ms.
Regev s and other politicians rhetoric that night hadimmediate effect. The crowd proceeded to smash windows and lootstores; they beat up Sudanese people they encountered, threwfirecrackers at police horses and chased activists and journalists. "The people want to expel the Sudanese," they shouted. By way of trying to explain the public s growing concerns overAfrican migrants, some Israeli media quoted an unnamed policeofficial saying "asylum-seekers are involved in some 40 percent of the crimes committed in the Tel Aviv area." The notionwent viral.
Days later, Gilad Natan of the Knesset's Research and InformationCenter had checked the statistics. Less than 1 per cent of criminalfiles opened by police in Tel Aviv in 2010 were against Africans.And, last year, nationwide, slightly more than half of 1 per centof criminal court cases or extensions of remand were againstforeigners of any description. The damage was done, however, and the reverberations still arebeing felt. On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered that thedeportation of the 25,000 asylum seekers from Ethiopia and SouthSudan be expedited and that holding facilities for the 35,000 otherAfrican migrants currently in South Tel Aviv and elsewhere be builtin the Negev desert as quickly as possible. Also on Sunday, members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs committeetoured the border with Israel to see the progress made inconstructing a massive barrier from the Mediterranean to the RedSea.
It will not be sufficient commented Arieh Eldad, a member ofthe very right wing National Union party. "As long as the IDF[Israel Defence Force] does not receive new instructions to shootwhoever goes near the fence, infiltrators will continue to enterIsrael," he said. I am an expert from Textile Finishing Machinery, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as rotary washing line , milk glass mug.
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