JERUSALEM
Tel Aviv is quite a lively place, but as one moves to the southern part of the Israeli city, a cruel and dangerous scene emerges.
Levinsky Park and surrounding neighborhoods are home to Eritrean and Sudanese refugees who fled their homelands to escape poverty and conflict, with the hope of finding a new place to call home.
They pile up around Tel Aviv's main bus station, awaiting their fate, as Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, last week, approved the deportation of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to Uganda and Rwanda, despite objections from human rights organizations.
Ahmad, 22, an Eritrean refugee who did not want his full name disclosed because he was “afraid of Israeli police,” spoke of the challenges he faced and said Israel did not grant him any rights.
“I was expecting a better life when I came here, but it did not happen,” Ahmad told The Anadolu Agency, adding that refugees were deprived of health insurance and the right to receive education.
“I have a son with me here,” he said. “I would go to my homeland if there was peace there, but there is not.”
Mahmoud, a 50-year-old Sudanese refugee who did not want his real name used for security concerns, said he was arrested just after he arrived to Israel 10 years ago.
Mahmoud said he was jailed for two years and was always being talked into signing "a document that proved his consent to go back to his homeland." He was later released along with 50 others from Sudan.
“We are now in an open-air prison,” he said. “Every day, I have to return to the Holot detention center before 8:30 p.m.”
Mahmoud said he was stalled for years without being granted citizenship and was now told to return to his country.
“If they (Israeli officials) told me that it would be like that, I would seek shelter in another country, where human rights are considered,” Mahmoud said. “We are not granted the right to live in Israel.”
Disregard of international law
Oskar Olivier, spokesperson for the Tel Aviv-based African Refugees Development Center, said Israel's policies regarding African refugees contradicted its own laws and international conventions.
"Israel's status in regards to refugees is not shiny," said Olivier, adding that jailing refugees was contrary to international law as it was not a crime to seek shelter in a country.
Using the case of a Sudanese refugee as an example, the spokesperson said: “Israel sent Sadiq al-Sadiq to Ethiopia, which did not accept him and wanted to send him to Sudan. Sadiq rejected to go to Sudan due to life-threatening concerns and stayed at the airport for nine days. Later, he was sent back to Israel and jailed.”
This example shows that asylum seekers, who Israel wants to send to third countries, might face the risk of being sent back to their home countries, which could pose a threat to their lives, Olivier said.
Human Rights Watch released a report in 2014 that accused Israel of forcing thousands of African refugees to leave the country. According to the report, thousands of African refugees began to flock to Israel in 2006.
“The politicians are spreading violence and hatred by provoking the society against the refugees,” Olivier said. “There are politicians who claim the refugees are a cancer in the state's body.”
“Especially, far-right politicians are doing that,” he added.
