| The bubbles in Eilat's demographic brew recently regard the toil of foreign asylum seekers in the city and the trouble that many community leaders feel their presence causes. In contrast, human rights groups oppose government efforts to oust them. The Ministry of Interior, however, has decided to expel some 2,000 refugees from Sudan and Eritrea from Eilat and prohibit them from working if they do not hold work permits.
The local community leaders wishing to be rid of the African refugees claim that they constitute a nuisance, a burden on the system, and that many do not work and some of them are involved in crime. Most people would say that's true of any given subpopulation in the city, but of course when it's ‘someone else' and not ‘one of us', the problem appears more acute. For some, a different skin colour might exacerbate such perceptions. As might the fact that the Sudanese speak Arabic. Although there are probably as many Christians among them as Muslims, maybe even more. One trio of Sudanese men I approached to ask permission to photograph told me, after mentioning the hardships that brought them here and their upset at now having been fired from their jobs at hotels due to political decrees, that they're afraid and upset but are remaining upbeat because they believe that ‘the Lord will provide' and keep them safe and fed.
A whole ideological debate could be opened on the matter of (non-)Jewishness, which is the true crux of the issue for many - the fear that the absorption (or birth) of too many non-Jews in Israel will outnumber the Jewish majority required for this country to remain a Jewish state. The ever present fear, based on history throughout all different periods and geographical locations, that the Jews could again become an oppressed minority under someone else's rule. The fear that by being too generous, the guests will take over the house and the hosts will end up homeless and dependent on the generosity - often historically absent - of strangers. Hence instead, in pre-emptive self-defense, we try to find the fine line between being humane and compassionate and remembering when it was we who sought asylum, and being ‘suckers' or self-defeating or even suicidal, as some might consider it.
On a more practical plane, the hotel owners are one sector that would like to keep the refugees around, as many of them work in the hotels and help make up for the employee shortage resulting from the foreign worker ban in 2007. On the other hand, the Population and Immigration Registry of the Ministry of the Interior claims that preventing the refugees from working will open up jobs for Israelis, including discharged soldiers who receive a grant after a certain period of employment in Eilati hotels. The hotel owners say that if the municipality or government insists on removing the African asylum seekers, then foreign worker allocations should be given instead. Implication: In either case it won't be Israelis holding these jobs.
This is another part of the ‘toil and trouble' regarding the issue: does removal of the refugees mean more jobs for Israelis, or just more jobs for foreign workers whose presence was more legally or intentionally obtained but are still equally foreign? Do the hotels plan to fill the spots with foreign workers rather than Israelis because the former are more economically practical for them, or because it genuinely is impossible to find Israelis to do certain jobs due to pay and/or image?
The asylum seekers have a history already in Eilat, as hotels started employing them about two years ago at the request of human rights groups and municipal and government bodies who wanted to disperse them throughout the country instead of having them all concentrated in the Tel Aviv area. Others have come more recently by infiltrating the border from Egypt directly into Eilat. Now the hotels have had to start giving ‘their' refugees dismissal notices. The new ban on their living in Eilat makes it hard for them to find legal housing, so without housing and without work, they are now seeking alternative places to live.
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But other cities don't want them either. On the other hand, the state cannot deport them because they have UN protection as asylum seekers. Meanwhile, even a schoolchild can tell you what happens to people who end up with no homes and no jobs and feel themselves unwanted and oppressed. That's when the complaints of criminal behaviour will genuinely start being justified. Some would say that's also when the claims become valid that the Jews have too quickly forgotten when they were the homeless, jobless, and oppressed under other people's regimes, being raped and tortured and murdered for no greater crime than simply existing and trying to find asylum in any place possible and under any conditions, just to stay alive.
Human rights groups are vehemently opposed to the ban on working or housing for the asylum seekers. These people have already lost their families and loved ones, their homes, their jobs, and everything they knew. People awaiting asylum-seeker status from the UN cannot be legally deported, nor presumably can they safely leave and go back home of their own accord or they probably would have done. So they are stuck in a place where they are unpopular to begin with as uninvited guests. Adding the prohibition on them to work "contravenes international and Israeli law on impairing basic human rights, and prevents healthy and industrious people from having the possibility of earning their own livelihood," as some of the human rights groups said in a joint statement about the decision.
There is argument among Eilatis about the ‘burden' the refugees purportedly constitute as well. The two main claims I've heard by opponents of the refugee's presence in Eilat seem to regard schooling and health. The Sudanese children have their own school at Kibbutz Eilot, and some of the staff and aides are volunteers from various backgrounds. The children are not integrated into classrooms in Eilati schools to put an even greater burden on a system already stretched thin. Not only that, but some of them are spending the money given them on bettering themselves, learning English, educating themselves, working to acquire the skill-set that the more developed countries require. Regarding health, the refugees have reputedly all been through the Israeli health system and there is not a situation, as some seem to fear, that they are walking around spreading disease like a dog shakes off water. A third claim I've heard bandied about is that not all the refugees genuinely are refugees, but rather opportunists who sought to better their lot by making their way to Israel via Egypt as a way stop. On this matter I do not have solid information to confirm or refute that claim.
[This photo courtesy of eilatredc]
The Sudanese here have learned Hebrew amazingly quickly and many have integrated themselves into society with an ease admirable for anyone, and the more so for people who have gone through such traumas and hardships in their own country and been ‘dropped' into a culture so different than their own. Several weeks ago I had occasion to accompany a friend to a charity event. In the midst of it some very black-skinned people came in who moved easily amongst the organisers and attendees, spoke Hebrew with everyone, had donated some items themselves, and at the end all pitched in and helped clear things away alongside the organisers and regulars. These people, who had been refugees and strangers only a year ago, were now a comfortable and even giving part of the community that took them in. ‘They' had become ‘us', at least in that microcosm of Israeli society.
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