Israel’s African migrants in limbo after Netanyahu reversal

TEL AVIV: Halofom Sultan went from being jailed in his native Eritrea for opposing the oppressive government to detention in Israel, where he is seeking asylum after fleeing for his life.

So when Israel’s prime minister announced a deal with the United Nations on Monday to resettle tens of thousands of African migrants, Sultan was hopeful.

“There was a little light,” he said. But hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backtracked, cancelling the deal and casting Sultan’s future, and those of thousands of others, into uncertainty once again.

Netanyahu’s stunning reversal was just the latest twist in a policy that has careened from detentions to deportations as Israel struggles with how to deal with the migrants.

The country’s 35,000 African migrants have been at the receiving end of those decisions, and the scrapping of the UN deal means they must now wait for the next decree by Israel’s government to know their fate.

“It feels like a balloon thrown to the ocean that goes in any direction when the wind blows,” the 38-yearold Sultan said.

“All the time a new law, a new amendment, changes every time. I have no clear option or plan or vision of what will happen next.”

The migrants, along with much of Israel, watched in disbelief as Netanyahu went from proudly announcing the UN deal live on national television to shelving it hours later.

In laying out what he described as “a good agreement” that “enables us to solve this problem”, Netanyahu said Israel agreed to cancel the planned expulsion of tens of thousands of African migrants.

Instead, he said the deal called for sending half of the migrants to Western nations and allowing the rest to remain in Israel.

After an outcry from hardline members of his coalition and residents of the poor neighbourhoods in southern Tel Aviv where many of the Africans live, Netanyahu suspended the agreement.

Then, following a meeting on Tuesday with Tel Aviv residents, he nixed the deal entirely.

“After I weighed the pros and cons, I decided to cancel the agreement,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue to work determinedly to exhaust all the options at our disposal to remove the infiltrators.”

The Africans, mainly from wartorn Sudan and dictatorial Eritrea, began arriving in Israel in 2005 through its porous border with Egypt after Egyptian forces violently quashed a refugee demonstration and word spread of safety and job opportunities in Israel.

Tens of thousands crossed the desert border, often after enduring dangerous journeys, before Israel completed a barrier in 2012 that stopped the influx.

Israel has since wrestled with how to cope with those already in the country. Many took menial jobs in hotels and restaurants, and thousands settled in southern Tel Aviv, where Israeli residents began complaining of rising crime.

Hawkish Israeli politicians have labelled them infiltrators, with one calling them “a cancer” threatening the country’s Jewish character.

Israel has gone from detaining them in remote desert prisons to purportedly reaching a deal with a third country, believed to be Rwanda, to have them deported.

All the while, Israel has faced legal challenges, with the UN deal offering a potential solution to a years-long saga that has divided the country.

Critics at home and in the Jewish American community had called the earlier plan to deport the migrants to a third country unethical and a stain on Israel’s image as a refuge for Jewish migrants.

Israel considers most of the migrants to be job seekers and says it has no legal obligation to keep them. The Africans say they are asylum seekers who face renewed danger if they return home.