Israel's other refugees

Today I met some refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia in down town Tel Aviv. A contact I made through a friend is a refugee advocate and he suggested I go and check it out. I first met Mr G, a Christian Eritrean man who said he left his country because of its dictatorial leader. There is extreme poverty in Eritrea and people live in fear that any dissent will be met with imprisonment or death.

I was told about his harrowing journey through Ethiopia to Sudan and then Egypt and finally Israel. Afterward I met a few other refugees from Ethiopia and another from Eritrea. Most were afraid that information about them would flow back home and their families would be persecuted. So I took pains not to photograph faces and not to ask for names. I must admit to feeling a little pornographic. Like I was invading their house (which I was!) and taking photos as though I was at a zoo. I must say that journalism, for this reason, is a morally questionable profession.

They all said they were glad to be in Israel. Although they have no rights here, cannot legally work, and live in really basic, often horrible slum conditions at least they're not persecuted like in Sudan or Egypt. Apparently Egypt is particularly hostile and racist. Refugees are known to be killed, as happened during a refugee protest in Cairo in 2005. They also face a lot of violence, hence the interest in getting into Israel. The refugee advocate who told me to come here told me last week of one story where a group of refugees literally had to run towards the Israeli border as Egyptian police chased and eventually started firing at them. A few escaped but the unlucky ones were shot in front of them. One of them was caught in a deadly game of tug-of-war as Israeli soldiers pulled his or her arms and Egypitan police pulled their legs. Eventually the Egyptian police pulled their guns on the Israeli soldiers who let go and the refugee was dragged away to be shot.

Israel is nonetheless far from an ideal final destination. The Government here is loathe to give refugees residency because they fear more people will seek refuge in Israel. There is no government refugee program either. So UNHCR and local groups are the only ones assisting the refugees. Even then UNHCR only really processes them. Unlike other, developing nations, it does not provide any humanitarian assistance in Israel. Many refugees are thrown in prison. Others are bused to a park in this down town area of Tel Aviv where they are told to get out and are forced to camp in the grass. This should come as no surprise for us in Australia. The Israeli Government is also concerned that if it accepts African refugees it will have to consider the Palestinian refugees on their own doorstep. All in all a pretty fucked up situation.

I also met an Ethiopian man who works as an IT manager during the night and during the day helps manage the refuge hostels I visited where around 300-400 people seek shelter. There isn't enough rooms so people sleep in the corridors, on the floor, anywhere they can. I took a lot of photos but I can't publish them as they may be published elsewhere. This manager bloke was a real angel of a man. He was visibly exhausted and clearly was making time out of an otherwise hectic day for me to speak to him. Yet he was as patient with my, to him I'm sure, stupid or obvious questions as he was to the many people coming up to him asking for help fixing the plumbing or some other household issue. He told me he had sunk much of his own money into keeping the refugee hostels, which were in really poor condition, afloat. As dire as the situation seemed I must admit to feeling proud to have met a man like this. I should also share another thing he said to me, quite without provocation from me. He said although the African refugees here had it bad at least there was a long term sense of hope, that slowly they will find jobs and, if not citizenship, possibly get residency like he did (according to him only 1% of refugees have obtained this thus far and in fact no new residencies have been issued in the past few years). Moreover, at least they weren't harassed and indeed the area of town I was in had a sense of community in it including local food and music stores. Indeed, it is perhaps the most interesting bit of Tel Aviv I've seen yet. I met a peace activist around here a few days earlier and it is full of poor migrants like women who look Filipino (but of course may be from other Asian countries, I do not know), Arabs and poor Jews. Anyway the hostel manager said "but the Palestinians, for them I can see no hope. They have nothing to look forward to."