Israel has its own refugee dilemma, and it’s not a hit

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — It’s been obvious to me for some time that the Israeli-Arab conflict is to wider global geopolitical trends what off-Broadway is to Broadway. If you want a hint of what’s coming to a geopolitical theater near you, study this region. That certainly applies to what’s becoming the most destabilizing and morally wrenching geopolitical divide on the planet today — the divide between what I call the “World of Order” and the “World of Disorder.”

And Israel is right on the seam — which is why the last major fence Israel built was not to keep West Bank Palestinians from crossing into Israel but to keep more Africans from walking from their homes in Africa, across the Sinai Desert, into Israel.

So many new nations that were created in the last century are failing or falling apart under the stresses of population explosions, climate change, corruption, tribalism and unemployment. As these states deteriorate, they’re hemorrhaging millions of people — more refugees and migrants are on the road today than at any other time since World War II.

The Broadway versions are the vast number of migrants from failing states in Central America trying to get into the United States and from the Arab world and Africa trying to get into Europe. The off-Broadway version is playing out in Israel, to which, since 2012, roughly 60,000 Africans from Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia have trekked to find stability and a job.

Their presence poses a huge ethical dilemma for a Jewish state, a nation of refugees. Many Israelis on the right believe there is no place — culturally, religiously or financially — for these Africans. Other Israelis believe it a moral imperative to let them stay. Sound familiar?

I was curious to understand how people got here from Darfur, in Western Sudan. To answer that question, Israel’s Reut think tank got me together with Taj Haroun, 29, a Darfur refugee who traveled that path and is now one of the leaders of Israel’s Darfur community.

“I was born in Darfur in a small village, and when the war broke out there in 2003, if you didn’t run you got killed,” Haroun began. His family eventually found its way to a camp for internally displaced persons in Sudan, “but that also became too dangerous, so my mom sent me to live with her sister in Khartoum.” He was 17. In 2007, he obtained a legal Sudanese passport and made his way to Cairo.

So how did he get here? On Feb. 4, 2008, he joined a group of Darfur refugees in Cairo who had hired a Bedouin — at $300 a person — to take them across Sinai and smuggle them into Israel.

“When we got to the border there was an Egyptian fence you had to climb, a road and then an Israeli fence,” Haroun said. “He told us to run and don’t look back. So we ran into Israel, and the Egyptians were shooting at us the whole time. It was like Darfur.”

Once safely inside Israel they applied for political asylum. But he and others are in limbo: The Israeli government won’t give them asylum and permanent residency, but many Israelis don’t want to evict them. How can Israel turn them away? But how can Israel take them all? That’s what’s playing off-Broadway. And unless the World of Order comes up with a collective strategy to help stabilize the World of Disorder — not just build walls — this play will have a long, wide run.