Category: Writing

Articles by Mya Guarnieri

Could a new regime in Syria be good for the Golan Heights?

by adminin Middle East, Writing

IRIN, August 21, 2012

While conflict rages just kilometers away in Syria, the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights remains quiet. But there are signs that the 17-month old conflict has touched the areas’ Arab residents. In Majdal Shams, the area’s largest Arab village, blood-red graffiti reads: “Stop killing the Syrian people.”

When the conflict in Syria began last year, the Golan Heights was still largely supportive of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing thousands of Syrians in the fight against the rebels. Now, locals say it’s about a 50-50 split. But while the Druze communities become increasingly divided over the conflict in their homeland, they say they are determined to stay united in the face of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. And some Arab residents feel that a change in Syria’s government could put the Golan back on the national and regional agenda.

Israel captured the Golan Heights during 1967 war, then unilaterally annexed the territory in 1981, a move that remains unrecognized by the international community and condemned by the UN. (Israel says it needs a presence in the Golan Heights to protect itself, arguing that UN Resolution 242, adopted after the 1967 war, recognizes Israel’s need for “secure” boundaries and does not require Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories. This interpretation is also disputed.)

Al-Marsad Arab Centre for Human Rights in the occupied Golan area reports that Israeli settlers receive five times the amount of water that the area’s Syrian farmers do. Land has been expropriated for Israeli settlements, and Arab residents pay more taxes to Israel than their Israeli counterparts while receiving fewer services.

Yet the Golan Heights “was not on the Syrian agenda for years,” according to Eyal Zisser, a professor in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Middle Eastern and African History and the author of four books about Syria and al-Assad. “Maybe a new regime in Damascus that will be more pro-Western will be ready to challenge Israel [and its occupation of] the Golan for real peace, something al-Assad did not dare to do,” he told IRIN.

Salman Fakhr Aldin, a coordinator at Al-Marsad, says a new government in Syria “whose primary concern is not the repression of its people” will not give up on either the Golan Heights or the occupied Palestinian territories.

But if Syrian rebels succeed in overthrowing al-Assad, they will face many challenges, analysts say, and confrontation with Israel may not be top of their priority list.

The Arab residents of the Golan, most of whom belong to the Druze faith, still consider themselves Syrian. In the past, loyalty to Syria was often expressed by supporting al-Assad. Along with Syrian flags, residents carried framed pictures of al-Assad at protests against the Israeli occupation.

But Fakhr Aldin points out that not everyone carried those photos. He says he was always against al-Assad.

He says he opposes the Syrian leader for the same reasons that he opposes the Israeli occupation of the Golan and the Palestinian territories: “For me, [the central Syrian city of] Homs is like Gaza… People are demanding their basic human rights,” he says, “the right to live in honor, freedom and democracy. Who can say no?”

But like many locals, Fakhr Aldin is against Western intervention in Syria.

Some of the area’s regime supporters say it is less about al-Assad himself and more about concerns that an Islamist government – which some Druze fear would further oppress their minority group – could rise in his place.

Others warn against reducing the conflict to religious and sectarian differences, pointing out that minority groups, including the Druze, are participating in the rebellion, just as minorities are supporting al-Assad. “If it was just Alawites supporting al-Assad,” one Golan resident observed, “he wouldn’t still be in power.”

The Golan’s divided communities are trying to stay quiet about their opinions to keep peace in the area.

Still, protests against al-Assad have led to small skirmishes here in Majdal Shams. Several weeks ago, al-Assad supporters clashed with those supporting the rebellion. The two sides initially threw eggs at each other, which escalated into stone throwing. Village elders separated the groups and suggested that those who support the rebellion take their Friday protest elsewhere for a week so that the two sides could cool off.

A prominent member of the community, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has a number of close relatives in Syria, said: “In some houses, fathers aren’t speaking to sons and brothers aren’t talking to each other,” because they disagree about the conflict in Syria. But he denied media reports that locals who support the rebels were facing ostracism.

Beyond inflaming differences among the Golan’s residents, a new regime in Damascus could introduce several risk factors for the Golan – and for Israel.

“Under al-Assad, there was a strong regime [in Syria],” Zisser explains. “The fall of his regime may lead to the spread of chaos… Some terrorist groups, mainly al-Qaeda, might look for new adventures once al-Assad is not there.”

Zisser likens a possible power vacuum in Syria to that in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power, militants have attacked pipelines carrying gas from Egypt to Israel. On two occasions, they have also breached Israel’s border with Egypt. Last summer’s cross-border attack left eight Israelis dead.

But locals are less concerned about attacks on the Golan or the possibility that fighting in Syria could spill over the border. What they are troubled by is the possibility of an Israeli strike on Syria’s ally, Iran – and the regional war that could provoke.

A restaurant owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told IRIN that some locals are stocking up on non-perishable goods and water in case fighting breaks out. “We have seen so much fighting here,” he said with a sigh.

Even if such a war could result in the Golan being returned to Syria, he remarked: “We want the occupation to end. But violence is not our way.”

Palestinians step again towards nationhood

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, August 18, 2012

A year after their bid for statehood flopped in the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation is again planning to seek an upgrade in UN status. On Sep. 27, the PLO will approach the UN General Assembly in hopes of becoming a non-member observer state. If their bid is successful, the Palestinians will be eligible to join various UN agencies and will also be able to bring allegations of Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court.

Responding to news of the Palestinians’ upcoming UN bid, Israeli Knesset Member (MK) Danny Danon said that Israel should unilaterally annex Israeli-controlled Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank and includes more than 200 Israeli settlements and outposts.

The idea of an annexation seems to be gaining currency. Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, promoted a Knesset bill calling for such a move. MK Uri Ariel has called for the application of Israeli civil law to Area C – a move that analysts say would amount to a de facto annexation.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Ariel’s proposal has garnered the support of “more than half” of Likud’s parliamentary representatives. And last month a number of Likud MKs participated in a conference organized around annexing not just Area C but the whole of the West Bank.

Despite the fact that Knesset Members are active in the drive towards an annexation, government spokesman Mark Regev has said that talk of an Israeli annexation of Area C is “ludicrous.”

Whatever the end goal, the Israel government continues to establish “facts on the ground” in Area C. According to the Israeli non-governmental organisation Peace Now, 2011 saw a 20 percent increase in West Bank settlement construction with work beginning on more than 1,850 new units. This year, Israel has approved over 1,400 new housing units in settlements – suggesting that 2012 will be a record-breaking year of settlement growth – and the number of West Bank settlers has risen by 4.5 percent.

As the state facilitates the transfer of Jewish Israelis to Area C with one hand, it uses the other to push the indigenous Palestinian residents out. Between January and June of 2012, the UN reports, Israel destroyed 384 Palestinian and Bedouin homes and structures in East Jerusalem and Area C. According to the UN, this led to the “forced displacement” of 615 Palestinians and Bedouins, more than half of who are children.

The UN notes that 2012 has seen a “significant increase” in both demolitions and displacements, “On average, 103 people have been displaced every month in 2012, compared to 91 in 2011, 51 in 2010, 52 in 2009 and 26 in 2008.”

Both the state and Israeli settlers are increasingly using “lawfare” against the Palestinian population in Area C – deeming Palestinian structures and villages that often pre-date the Israeli occupation itself as “illegal” and, therefore, subject to demolition.

According to Tamar Feldman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there are more than 14 Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills that are caught up in legal battles – waged by the state and right-wing organizations like Regavim – to hang on to their land.

The Palestinian villages of Zanuta and Susya, which are both under threat of imminent demolition, are two situations in which Regavim revived frozen demolition orders by petitioning the court, essentially forcing judges to rule on the cases. There are also the 12 villages in Firing Zone 918. If the state has its way, 1,500 Palestinians will be expelled from the area.

The state has no plans to relocate the families or to compensate them for taking their land.

Speaking to IPS, Feldman comments, “The Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills area have a lot of (Israeli-declared) firing zones and nature reserves that have restrictions on entry and residency. Most of the firing zones are not really being used for live fire training and (Zone 918) has not been used for live ammunition training. In fact, it has been used very little in the last 15 years.”

She calls the state’s sudden claim that it needs to use the area for military exercises, “very strange.”

The firing zones and nature reserves that dot Area C – as well as the demolitions, lopsided allocation of resources, and restrictions on freedom of movement – all function together to block Palestinian growth or drive Palestinians out altogether by making life unbearable. Is it a matter of grabbing more land or is it about creating a Jewish demographic majority on that land? Either way, both are crucial issues to annexation.

Feldman adds that the state’s expropriation of Palestinian land to create firing zones and nature reserves is “very problematic from an international law point of view. You’re not supposed to use an area within the occupied territory for any general purpose that serves you.”

But the recent Levy Commission report denies that Israel is occupying the West Bank. While the committee recommended that the government legalise all settlements and outposts, some observers say the Levy report constitutes an attempt to lay the legal groundwork for an Israeli annexation.

Jeff Halper, co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, tells IPS, “A lot of the settlements are built on private Palestinian land. And the Supreme Court isn’t letting (the state) expropriate the land. An annexation would mean that it all becomes Israeli land…it cuts through that Gordian knot of legal hassle and the issue of criticism of the settlements…”

“If Israel annexes Area C,” Halper continues, “the world will complain for a day…after the yelling and screaming, it will be normalised.”

Despite the fact that Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981 – and faced no real repercussions from the international community for either move – some analysts say that Israel won’t take Area C.

Neve Gordon, author of Israel’s Occupation, says Israel is too worried about “demographic concerns” to annex Area C and that “the political cost is considered too high…at this point, Israel is happy with a de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank without legally annexing the region as a whole.”

Is greater food security in the OPT an illusion?

by adminin Middle East, Writing

IRIN, August 2, 2012

At a glance, the latest data on post-assistance food security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) last week – seems to warrant optimism.

2011 was the second straight year in which the number of those living in food insecurity declined in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). In the Gaza Strip, the percentage dropped from 60 in 2009 to 44 in 2011; in the West Bank, food insecurity rates have decreased 5 percent in the same two-year period to 17 percent.

But, as UNRWA itself admits, a deeper look into the numbers is less encouraging.

In the West Bank, Palestinians who live in refugee camps have actually experienced a rise in food insecurity – from 25 percent in 2009 to 29 percent in 2011. One quarter of Palestinian households in Israeli-controlled Area C are food insecure – 8 percent more than the West Bank average. Herders’ families in Area C are in a precarious situation, with 34 percent suffering from food insecurity.

And while food insecurity stands at just under 30 percent in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip combined, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in May 2012 that 50 percent of infants and children under two in oPt have iron deficiency anaemia. According to the same WHO report, malnutrition and stunting in children under five “is not improving” and could actually be “deteriorating”.

The Second Intifada saw dramatic changes in Palestinians’ eating habits. Israeli-imposed movement restrictions on both people and goods strangled the economy; Palestinians’ inability to access farmland due to Israeli prohibitions and the separation barrier led to reduced agricultural output. Under these pressures, Palestinians increasingly came to rely on cereals, pulses, potatoes, vegetable oil and sugar rather than more costly and more nutritious foods like protein-rich fish and meat, fresh fruits and vegetables.

In 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada, FAO reported that meals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip often consisted of just tea and bread. Despite these dire circumstances, FAO did not recommend increased food aid. Instead, the organization stated that the most pressing issue, economic access – or the ability to buy food – must be addressed. In the short term, that meant job creation; in the long term, it meant investment in agriculture.

Yet, almost a decade later, critics say that most aid organizations remain focused on temporary, short-term solutions rather than the underlying problems.

Haneen Ghazawneh, a researcher at the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah, said international aid was still “going [more] to emergency assistance and food aid and less to development projects,” contributing to “the decline in agriculture”.

Ghazawneh also takes issue with the latest food security data.

“When we talk about economic access [to food] that means having permanent jobs,” she explained. “My worry about these recent reports is that they exclude East Jerusalem, [where] people have very limited [work opportunities]. It’s Area C.”

She also said the apparent gains in Areas A and B may be illusory.

In the West Bank, many of those who are food secure are on the Palestinian Authority (PA) payroll, said Ghazawneh. But much of the PA’s funding comes from foreign aid, leaving employees vulnerable to changes in the political climate and the global economy – as was the case in July, when the PA could pay only half of employees’ salaries.

“We’re talking about the workers who are the most secure, who have permanent jobs, and they are uncertain,” she said. “The situation is not sustainable at all.”

As many Palestinians have increasingly embraced a culture of consumption and debt, some have bought houses and cars they cannot afford. If salaries suddenly stop coming and people fall behind on their loan payments, the banks could have problems. And this, perhaps, could fuel a larger financial crisis that would impact food security.

Israel’s forgotten deportees

by adminin Migrant workers, Writing

The Daily Beast, July 3, 2012

While Israel’s current campaign to deport some 700-1500 South Sudanese asylum seekers made headlines around the world, the mainstream media has neglected another ongoing expulsion.

Since March of 2011, the state has been arresting and deporting the Israeli-born children of migrant laborers along with their parents. In the past 16 months, over 90 families have been expelled. Many arrived on state-issued work visas and lost their legal status due to a policy that forbade foreign workers from having and keeping babies in the country—a policy that was struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court in April 2011.

Without a peep from the international media.

Israel’s expulsion of migrant families bears many similarities to that of African refugees. Politicians call both groups a threat to the Jewish character of the state. And human rights groups have decried the deportations as a breach of Israel’s obligations as a signatory to various international conventions.

The deportation of some 1200 children was first announced in July of 2009, the same time that Israel began enforcing the hitherto unenforced Gedera-Hadera policy, which bound African migrants by Gedera in the south and Hadera in the north, forbidding them from living in the center of the country. A public outcry led to the cancellation of Gedera-Hadera; the expulsion of the children was postponed.

As the state lacks a cohesive policy regarding non-Jewish immigration, a special committee convened to decide which kids would be allowed to stay and which would have to go.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has advocated for their deportation, saying that these non-Jewish children are “liable to damage the state’s Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation.” He makes the same claims about African asylum seekers, calling them a challenge to the “Zionist dream.”

In August of 2010, Israel announced the criteria for naturalization of migrant workers’ children: They must have been enrolled in the state school system during the previous academic year; they must be registered for first grade or higher; they must have been in Israel for at least 5 consecutive years; they must have been born here or arrived before the age of 13; they must speak fluent Hebrew; and their parents must have arrived on a valid work visa.

This granting of permanent residency that, later, would make the children eligible for citizenship, occured in a one-time window, just like the “one-time” window opened in 2005 for the children of undocumented foreign workers. In 2010, human rights groups estimated that the new criteria would lead to the naturalization of some 700-800 kids; the remaining 400-500 would face deportation.

Critics called the criteria arbitrary and said that many children who were Israeli in every way—minus Jewish parents—would fall through the cracks. The United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF) called the decision a “gross violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which Israel is a signatory to.

According to Ministry of Interior spokeswoman Sabine Hadad, 701 families filed for naturalization under the 2010 criteria. 183 requests were rejected; 257 families got legal status.

But, today—almost two years after they filed their paperwork—261 families are still waiting for an answer. And many that seemed to meet the criteria have found themselves shut out.

Rotem Ilan, a co-founder of the grassroots organization Israeli Children, tells Open Zion: “The Ministry of Interior is coming up with every excuse to deport as many as possible… Children who have finished [high school]—rejected. Kids who have one parent with a work visa—rejected. Children who were referred by the Jerusalem municipality to Christian schools in [Israeli-occupied] East Jerusalem—rejected.”

Another example: Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old Israeli-born grandson, M., since he was a toddler. His father died; his mother, who abandoned him, has since returned to the Philippines. Robles raised him like her own son.

The two live in a small apartment in Tel Aviv, where they celebrate the Jewish holidays.  There are two flags—one Filipino, the other Israeli—in their entryway. A calendar of Israeli soldiers stands on a bookcase. Like many other children of migrants, M. dreams of serving in the army.

Robles applied for naturalization on her grandson’s behalf in 2005 and 2010. While M. met all the criteria both times, the applications were rejected on the grounds that Robles has temporary, not permanent, guardianship of her grandson. M. faces imminent expulsion to the Philippines, a country he has never visited.

Ilan adds that many children facing deportation are like M.—they are older kids who were “born, raised, and educated all of their lives in Israel. Hebrew is, of course, their mother tongue and they grew up here like every other kid in the country.”

Just over a year ago, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the mechanism that made many of the families illegal to begin with—a state policy that stripped migrants their legal status if they had a baby in Israel. After giving birth, migrant women had three months to send their infant to their home country, essentially forcing mothers to choose between their visa and their child.

Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy was a violation of Israel’s own labor laws. But just yesterday, Israeli authorities arrested a six-year-old girl whose mother lost her work visa due to this policy. The two will be deported to the Philippines.

South Tel Aviv land grab

by adminin Israel, Writing

Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2, 2012

It was a winter morning in 1982. Shimon Yehoshua, 21, had finished three years’ mandatory military service a week before. He’d arrived at his home—two rooms shared with his parents and nine brothers and sisters—in time to catch the last flames of Hanukkah.

Shimon lived in the Kfar Shalem neighborhood in the poor south of Tel Aviv. Before the 1948 war, Kfar Shalem was a Palestinian village, Salame. After the fighting was over the new state of Israel confiscated it and put mizrachim (Jews from Arab countries) in the homes, effectively turning them into public housing. By the 1970s, however, it was kicking those same families out to make way for more profitable projects like high rises.

When the police arrived to evict the Yehoshua family in December 1981, Shimon and a younger brother took to the roof in protest. Shimon was a handsome young man with dark, wavy hair, high cheekbones and a square chin. He wore jeans and a plaid jacket too thin to protect him from the cold. He was unarmed, save for some empty beer bottles.

Word of the standoff quickly spread through the neighborhood. Locals rushed to the scene. Zacharia Terem, now 81, was among them. In Hebrew thick with a Yemeni accent, Terem recounted the incident: “The police came. Shimon got on the roof. And they killed him.” Terem raised his arm, his hand jerked as though he was firing a gun.  “The officer was close—five, six meters away. He shot him twice. Once in the head and once in the shoulder. If you want to disable someone, you shoot them in leg. You don’t kill them.”

Thirty years on, Terem is still rattled by the incident. He paused, shook his head and rested his hand on his heart. He told me that in 1982 he was a technician at the phone company; he was also a founding member of the neighborhood committee formed to address the community’s needs. The state neglected mizrachi in south Tel Aviv and the area was plagued with crime, violence and drugs.

He recalled how Shimon lay still on the roof, his younger brother standing behind his body, gripping an empty bottle, as Terem confronted the police officer. “‘You’re a real hero!’“ he shouted, wagging his finger in the air. “‘A hero!’” The man who killed Shimon was never prosecuted.

***

Terem and his wife have lived in the same home in Kfar Shalem since they came to Israel from Yemen in 1949. They raised six kids in this house, which had no electricity and no running water when they arrived. Terem took to working the land: jasmine, mango, orange, palm and gat trees blanket the dunamand a half he calls his own.

Today, several generations of his family live in the small homes scattered along the edges of the lot. As Terem and I chatted, a grandson dropped by. He kissed the mezuzah on the doorpost as he entered and welcomed me in Arabic,ahlan wa sahlan. A great granddaughter—a tiny, smiling girl with curly hair—scooted by on a tricycle. It’s quiet here. The skyline is low and the wind sweeps in from the sea. Kfar Shalem is far enough out of the city to feel like an escape, close enough to feel like part of Tel Aviv. There are wide, green spaces. Property taxes are relatively low.

It’s prime real estate. And the state now wants to expel the Terem family—without compensation—so it can turn the property over to developers. Yudit Ilany is a legal coordinator at Darna, the Popular Committee for Housing Rights in Jaffa. According to Ilany, 800-900 families face eviction from public housing throughout Israel. Many live in Kfar Shalem and Jaffa (historically Arab, now a part of the Tel Aviv municipality); most are mizrachi or Palestinian—two of society’s weakest socioeconomic groups.

While a few do have the means to buy their homes from the government, Ilany says, the state refuses to sell to them. Darna is fighting two such cases in court. Both houses are in Jaffa, which is undergoing gentrification; the state intends to auction the properties to the highest bidder.

With the municipality’s blessing, developers have plans for other south Tel Aviv neighborhoods, Shapira and Neve Shaanan. But this is nothing new. Savvy investors first swooped in to the area during the British mandate.

***

Architect and historian Sharon Rotbard explains that the Shapira neighborhood was founded by a speculator of the same name. In 1881, at the age of 14, Shapira left his native Lithuania for Detroit, Michigan. There, he made a small fortune in real estate. In his 40s, he brought this money to Palestine and started buying and developing land.

It wasn’t just Shapira. According to Rotbard, what is now called south Tel Aviv was the “wild south from the real estate point of view. It was absolutely capitalist.” Shapira, Neve Shaanan and the surrounding areas were the “Hebrew neighborhoods of Jaffa,” Rotbard says. “Yes, they were Jews… but they were also part of Jaffa… [and they] also had connections with the [Palestinian] locals.”

While some of the early residents were Zionists who had come for ideological reasons, more had fled the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Others were economic refugees. Here, they put a foot on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. When they wrenched themselves up, they headed north to Tel Aviv. “Since the 1920s, [these neighborhoods] have had waves of immigration,” Rotbard says. The first was Eastern European; the next brought Jews from Salonika [Greece], Bulgaria, and Turkey. The 1930s saw an influx ofBukhari from Central Asia.

But these groups moved on and today’s veteran residents of Shapira and Neve Shaanan are mostly Bukhari and Russians who arrived in the 1990s. In recent years, Jewish settlers from the West Bank have migrated to south Tel Aviv and Jaffa. The phenomenon is an attempt to push Israeli society further to the right.

“There is a lot of power here that wants [the neighborhood] to be just for the Jews,” Rotbard said: “When I [moved to Shapira] in 2000, there were many [undocumented] Palestinian workers here from the West Bank [and Gaza]. They were here just like the Sudanese and Eritrean live here today.”

***

Since 2005, Shapira, Neve Shanan and HaTikva have become home to a large population of African refugees. They enter Israel via the porous southern border with Egypt. After they are arrested and held in prison, Israeli authorities dump the refugees in south Tel Aviv’s poor neighborhoods. Today, tens of thousands live in the area between the Central Bus Station and Kfar Shalem. Countrywide, they number 60,000.

For the most part, Israel does not process their requests for asylum: as Kfar Shalem residents are quick to point out, recognizing African refugees could open the door to Palestinian refugees. And while the state issues the asylum seekers visas, it calls them “illegal infiltrators” and does not allow them to work. So they scrape by on odd jobs and crowd into inexpensive apartments, sleeping as many as 20 to one room. Some refugees live in south Tel Aviv’s parks.

Rather than addressing the issue, state officials began campaigning against the asylum seekers. In October 2009, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Africans bring “a profusion of diseases” to the country. In July 2010, 25 south Tel Aviv rabbis issued a letter forbidding Jews from renting to “infiltrators” and undocumented migrant workers. That same month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Africans a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country.”

Soon thereafter, south Tel Aviv residents—mizrachim, Russians and settlers alike—started protesting against the refugees, calling on the state to deport them. Knesset members have joined these demonstrations, suddenly remembering the long-neglected locals.

In May, one such protest turned into a race riot after Member of Knesset Miri Regev, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, likened asylum seekers to “cancer in our body.” Some Jewish Israelis broke the windows of African-owned businesses, looted, and attacked refugees on the street. Incidents of violence are ongoing.

***

Although the protests are xenophobic and dangerous, the demonstrators accurately point out that they are a weak group that can’t handle the influx of another needy population. They are also correct when they say that the government doesn’t do anything to help.

Some critics say that the state is going beyond neglect. According to Ilany and City Councilman Aharon Maduel, the government is using this latest wave of immigrants to push the older ones out, intentionally fanning the flames in south Tel Aviv to serve developers’ interests—the same interests that pushed Yehoshua onto the roof.

Maduel is a member of the opposition party, Ir LeKulanu (A city for all of us). The son of Yemeni immigrants, he was born and raised in Kfar Shalem. Today, he lives there under the threat of eviction. Maduel says that it’s no accident that the refugees ended up in Shapira, Neve Shanan, and other south Tel Aviv neighborhoods. There is very little public housing in these neighborhoods, so the state cannot evict residents outright. Instead, the government must find creative ways to deliver the land to developers.

“How do you turn [south Tel Aviv] into an area for the rich?” Maduel says. “First of all, you weaken the area… forcing the people who have enough money to run… Only the weakest stay; the value of their houses goes down drastically; and the [investors] come and purchase, purchase, purchase….”

Ilany points out that in the same period that the refugees arrived, the government issued over 75,000 new work visas to non-Jewish migrant laborers. Though their numbers are greater than the refugees, politicians don’t call them a threat to the character of the state. Critics also say that the government points a finger at the refugees to divert attention from its treatment of the neighborhoods. It’s not just evictions. South Tel Aviv’s schools are weak and services are few. In Kiryat Shalom, for example, the municipality refuses locals’ requests for a library. And while wealthy north Tel Aviv has numerous sports and swimming facilities, Kfar Shalem’s 45,000 residents have just one small gym and a pool that is only open in the summer.

Maduel says it all boils down to discrimination against mizrachim. If the population was a different color, he says, they wouldn’t be struggling to hang on to their homes. And, maybe, Shimon Yehoshua wouldn’t have died defending his.

Fwr Vwls 4 Futr Englsh?

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Tablet, June 19, 2012

I’m used to seeing abbreviations on Twitter, Gchat, and SMS. But I was surprised recently when an editor closed an email with “Rgds.”

The “s” on the end helped me guess that it wasn’t short for “Rigid” or “Raged,” or so I hoped. Given the context, I assumed he meant “Regards.”

But I wondered how such a word ended up in a business letter? Did it mean that Twitter-ese is making its way into formal, written correspondence? And “Rgds”—a string of consonants, vowels inferred—reminded me a bit of Hebrew. While a dot system helps Israeli children learn vowels, the dots eventually come off, like training wheels, and adults read and write without them.

Might Twitter and SMS push vowels out of English? Could the language end up looking more Semitic than Germanic?

While text messages limit users to 160 or 320 characters, according to Dr. Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University and the author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, the average SMS spans only 20 to 40 characters. So brevity isn’t forced upon us, it’s more a matter of “how much we want to type.”

And typing has gotten easier with the iPhone and other devices that have full keypads; auto complete helps, too.

Abbreviations are a way “to show that you’re hip, you’re in the know, you’re cool,” Baron says. They’re not necessary. Nor are they new. They’ve been popular for at least 1000 years.

“There were abbreviations…out the wazoo,” Baron explains. “Because if you’re writing on parchment and you’re copying manuscripts [by hand], you would like to save sheep hides and you’d like to save your efforts.”

The advent of the printing press didn’t change this. Instead it standardized some abbreviations. Still people—out of either laziness or ingenuity, whichever you prefer—kept shortening words. As is the case today, vowels were often the thing to go.

Baron offers an example from the eighteenth century, when gentlemen closed written correspondence with “Yr hm srv,” short for “Your humble servant.”

Acronyms have also been trendy throughout history. In the 1930s and 1940s, Baron says, friends signed letters with B.F.F.—best friends forever.

I’m surprised to hear this. I remember B.F.F. from my pre-teen days, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was everywhere: on the notes we passed in class; in the saccharin sentences we scribbled into each other’s notebooks; on the heart-shaped pendants that best friends wore.

Was it really 60 years old?

“We do tend to reinvent the wheel sometimes,” Baron says. “But, absolutely, [B.F.F.] existed decades before this.”

And, by the way, btw didn’t spring from chat, Twitter, or SMS. Nor did b/c for because or b/w for between. All are, Baron says, “way old.”

According to Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College and the author of Language and Ethnicity, there is a chance that such common abbreviations could make their way into the language.

In that scenario, “the word because becomes ‘bec’ because people are used to [using b/c],” Fought says, adding, “I’ve had students tell me that they hear people saying L.O.L. aloud,” pronouncing the acronym for laugh out loud like the word loll.

This phenomenon is common in the Philippines where abbreviations are embraced (a little too enthusiastically some say). For example, a Filipino who has grown up in America, or who has an American parent, is called a “Fil-am.” Overseas Filipino workers are referred to by their acronym: O.F.Ws. In my experience, saying “migrant workers” or “foreign workers” elicits weird looks and gentle corrections.

The national language of the Philippines, Tagalog, is a mixed bag. Although it’s a Malayo-Polynesian language, it has borrowed extensively from Spanish and English. Chinese immigrants also made a contribution to Tagalog; Sanskrit and Arabic have left fingerprints on the language, as well.

English is similarly open. Fought explains, “It’s like this mutt language, like the dog you pick up from the shelter that’s a little bit of this and that. “We’ve got Latin roots, Greek roots, French German, Scandinavian borrowings. English will borrow from any language.”

There are loan words from Hindi, Native American languages, and Spanish, to name a few.

“We’ll just take anything,” Fought says.

Which is exactly why we won’t end up taking the Hebrew system.

“There’s too much going on,” Fought remarks, offering the example of rbt. Is it rebate, a descendant of Old French? Or robot, on loan from Czech?

Because English is so chaotic, many English-speakers have a hard time learning to spell. And they seem to drift, naturally, towards what looks more like the Semitic system.

Baron explains, “What we do know about children learning to write English is that if they are allowed to spell however they wish… [they] leave out the vowels. In English, figuring out which vowel to put is tough. The consonants are generally much easier to figure out.”

But vowels are here to stay.

“Vowels are not our friends,” Baron says. “But, nonetheless, we have lived with them in English for a long time.”

Fought agrees. However, she adds, we could see the vowels fall out of languages that have simpler spelling systems. She muses, “It could work for Spanish where they only have five vowels.”

Hiding in fear, nowhere to run for Israel’s South Sudanese

by adminin Israel, Writing

Agence France-Presse (AFP), June 13, 2012

Abraham Alu, a 35-year-old asylum seeker from South Sudan, hasn’t left his apartment in south Tel Aviv for five days. He has run out of money and food. But he is too scared of the immigration police to venture further than the courtyard.

Alu used to sell plastic work boots on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare in south Tel Aviv but he stopped last Thursday, immediately after an Israeli court effectively ruled to deport South Sudanese nationals.

Although the state promised to give the South Sudanese community a week to leave of their own free will, police started rounding them up just three days after the ruling.

Rights groups put the number of those affected at around 700 men, women and children, while Israeli officials claim there are more than twice that number.

In the past, Alu shared his small, one-room apartment with 12 other men. But, as many South Sudanese have stopped working for fear of being caught by the police, the number has swelled to 20.

There aren’t enough mats to go around. Skinny men rest on the dirty, threadbare carpets.

“Sometimes we’re sitting two days without food. We drink water and tea. That’s enough,” says Alu, his hands shaking as he takes a sip from a paper cup. Some refugees have taken to eating pigeons.

Alu was seven when he saw his parents killed by militiamen. He fled his village alone, eventually making his way to Cairo. There, Alu joined a 2005 sit-in outside of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, protesting conditions refugees faced in Egypt.

When police raided the camp, 27 Africans were killed, including a toddler.

Alu ran again, arriving in Israel in early 2006. Now he has “lost all hope.”

A friend of his who returned to South Sudan after the country gained independence last summer was killed in the fighting that has broken out on the border.

“North Sudan is bombing civilian areas,” Alu says. “We (South Sudanese) are just looking for help.”

Alu does not know if anyone from his family is alive or where they are. He says he has nothing to return to in South Sudan and fears for his life.

William Chol, a 32-year-old father of four, fled South Sudan alone when he was 13. In north Sudan, he worked as a domestic helper. His employer did not let him out of the house and did not pay him. Chol says it was like “slavery.”

Chol escaped to Egypt in 2002. In 2009, he came to Israel with his wife and their young children.

Although the immigration police are out in full force, Chol stands on the now-quiet walkway where Alu used to sell shoes. Chol says that he won’t hide.

“Hide for what? I’m not a criminal.”

He points out that, like other South Sudanese, he has a visa. This visa, however, does not include permission to work.

In the wake of anti-African violence in south Tel Aviv and the imminent threat of deportation, Chol’s children are no longer attending school. He says they faced harassment from Israeli kids, some of whom, he claims, threw stones at them.

He says it feels like the community is “having a war with Israel.”

He’s tired of fighting and is outside, he says, because he wants to be arrested.

Like Alu, Emanuel Kel Bol Yok, 52, stopped working when he heard about the court’s decision. His family is running out of food, he says. He couldn’t make rent this month. “In two days, three days, we will be in the street.”

While he is scared of being deported, Bol Yok went to the police on Tuesday to beg them to allow his children to finish the school year. He has five children, ranging in age from two to 18; three attend public schools.

Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers says the sweeping round-ups had further frightened a community which was already struggling with the rising tide of public hostility towards them.

“There is a lot of fear in the community. Two sisters — one in the first grade, the other in sixth grade — were arrested yesterday.” Along with their parents, the girls were taken to prison.

In schools in south Tel Aviv, many of the children are asylum seekers from Eritrea and north Sudan, she explains.

“It’s very difficult to explain to these kids that they are safe (while South Sudanese children) are being arrested.”

The deportation is impacting other African migrant workers, as well.

Justina Cobbina is a 41-year-old migrant worker from Ghana. Her husband, who is also from Ghana, was picked up by immigration police on Sunday; she hasn’t heard from him since.

Empress, their nine-year-old daughter, was born in Israel. In fluent Hebrew, she admits she is scared: “This morning, I cried.”

A number of asylum seekers’ families have also been split up as police arrest the South Sudanese partner but allow their spouses from elsewhere to stay.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has expressed his intention to deport all Africans, however, warning that the 60,000 who reside in Israel will bring an “end to the Zionist dream.”

Africans fear more violence in Israel

by adminin African refugees, Writing

Inter Press Service, June 11, 2012

It’s Saturday night in south Tel Aviv. Amine Zegata, a 36-year-old refugee from Eritrea, is reopening the small bar he owns in the HaTikva neighborhood. The pub was closed after Jewish Israelis smashed his windows and the bottles within during the race riots two weeks back. But Zegata has been assaulted twice since then. Violence against African refugees is continuing.

On the evening of 23 May, a number of Jewish Israelis gathered in south Tel Aviv to protest the presence of Africans in their neighborhood. Members of Israel’s parliament, theKnesset, gave inflammatory speeches at the rally. Miri Regev, a member of Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, declared that Africans are a “cancer” in Israel’s body. Michael Ben Ari from the far-right National Union party claimed that Africans are rapists, and said the “time for talk is over.”

Mobs responded to such speeches by chasing and beating asylum-seekers, vandalizing African-owned stores, and breaking the windshield of a car carrying African men.

Zegata said that the violence “isn’t over.” After assaulting him twice following the riots, local Israelis have warned him to stop repairing his bar, and threatened to crack his head open.

Locals have already cracked the new glass storefront Zegata put in to replace the one that was smashed. Zegata said he is less worried about his business than about his safety. “The glass, this isn’t a problem,” he said in fluent Hebrew, pointing to the cracks. “If they break the glass, I can switch it, I can buy a new one. But life, you can’t buy.”

Sigal Rozen of the Israeli organization Hotline for Migrant Workers said it was impossible to know how many Africans have faced intimidation and assaults in the wake of the race riots. Some asylum-seekers have been coming daily to the organization with complaints about violence, but Rozen says most refugees who have been harassed or attacked by Jewish Israelis do not approach migrant support groups or the police for help.

Rozen offered the example of a refugee stabbed by Jewish Israelis in south Tel Aviv. Rozen ran into the man as she was visiting Levinsky park in south Tel Aviv where many homeless asylum-seekers gather. The man took his shirt off to show her fresh stitches on his stomach. “He said, ‘this is what they did to me in HaTikva neighborhood.’”

As Zegata and Rozen both point out, violence against African refugees is not new. Four months before the race riots, Zegata was beaten up by a group of Jewish Israeli teenagers. He was hospitalized briefly.

Numerous other attacks have taken place. A particularly brutal incident came last year when some African girls were jumped by a group of Jewish Israeli youth. The teenagers shouted racial slurs at the girls, who are Israeli-born daughters of Nigerian migrant workers. One of the attackers was armed with a knife. One girl needed medical treatment for her injuries.

Some Africans in south Tel Aviv say they face constant harassment from Jewish Israeli residents. Zegata opened his bar eight months ago and has had trouble for six months. Several months ago, he also had problems at home. After returning from work late one night, someone opened the window and dropped lit matches into his apartment.

Abraham Alu is a 35-year-old refugee from South Sudan who sells plastic shoes on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood. Locals approach him nearly every day, telling him to “go home.”

Alu is frightened and feels that he and other Africans need to leave Israel for their own safety. But, he said, “There’s nowhere to go.”

Alu fled Sudan when he was seven after he saw his mother and father murdered by militiamen. He eventually ended up in Egypt where refugees are not permitted to work legally. In 2005, Alu was one of the 3,000 African asylum-seekers who spent three months camped out in front of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices in Cairo to protest their treatment.

The demonstrators also called on the UNHCR to help them move to other countries. Egyptian police attacked the protest with water cannons and batons, leading to the death of more than twenty Africans, including a four-year-old girl. Fearing for his life, Alu headed to Israel.

Israel is home to approximately 60,000 African asylum-seekers, 85 percent of them from Eritrea and Sudan. These men, women and children get group protection against deportation, and Israel gives visas to the refugees. Although they remain in the state legally, the state does not allow the refugees to work.

African asylum-seekers take odd jobs and crowd into cheap apartments in poor neighborhoods, including south Tel Aviv. Those who cannot scrape together the money for rent live in parks.

Knesset members have participated in anti-African protests like the one that led to violence last month since the demonstrations began in 2010. Most of the Knesset members who have joined in are from the far-right. But Miri Regev belongs to Likud, a mainstream party led by Netanyahu, a popular prime minister who enjoys high approval ratings from the Israeli public.

While Regev faced sharp criticism for inciting violence against African refugees, government officials have long used inflammatory language. Speaking to Army Radio in 2009, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that asylum-seekers bring “a profusion of diseases” to the country. In 2010, Netanyahu remarked that Africans pose “a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character” of Israel.

 

Israel bans mother from visiting daughters, deports families

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, May 31, 2012

Hundreds of thousands of families — from Palestinians to Southeast Asian migrant workers to African refugees — struggle under Israeli policies that seek to limit the number of non-Jews within Israel and in the areas it occupies.

Sitting in the living room of her home in East Amman, Jordan, Sabah Othman flips through the photos of her two daughters’ weddings. “I love all of my children,” she said, in Arabic. “But my girls are my best friends.”

Due to Israeli policies, however, Othman’s relationship with her daughters now takes place on the phone.

Othman’s daughters live with their Palestinian husbands in Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Because Othman’s husband is from Hebron, all of Othman’s Jordanian-born children hold West Bank identification cards and can enter the West Bank without a visa.

But Othman holds only a Jordanian passport, so she must apply to the Israeli consulate in Amman to enter the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In the past three years, she has applied six times and has been rejected four times. The two times Othman received a visa, she was permitted to visit for two weeks.

Most tourists get a three-month visa issued on the border.

Israeli officials have admitted that the state has no security claim against Othman, who is a mother of five and a grandmother of eight. Numerous inquiries at the Ministry of Interior, the Israeli consulate in Amman, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that Othman’s visa requests were denied due to questions about her “migration intentions.”

Othman denied that she intended to leave her husband, sons and grandchildren in Amman and migrate to Shuafat Refugee Camp. But Israel’s concerns that she would do so point to the state’s obsession with demographics and maintaining a Jewish majority.

Sam Bahour of the Ramallah-based organization Right to Enter explained that, under Israeli law, West Bank ID holders can help first degree relatives secure residency in the West Bank. In practice, however, things are not so simple.

Bahour, who was born and raised in the United States, married a West Bank Palestinian in 1994 and immediately applied for an ID. “The Palestinian Authority wasn’t even here yet [and the Israelis] refused to deal with it.”

Since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, Israel has purged more than 150,000 Palestinian residents from the population registry and has ignored hundreds of thousands of requests like Bahour’s for family unification. Between 2000 and 2005 alone Israel received 120,000 such applications. The requests were simply not processed.

A survey conducted in 2005, on behalf of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, estimated that more than 640,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had a parent, sibling, child, or spouse who was unregistered.

Because Israel controls the population registry for the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority cannot help.

“The PA is just the mailman,” Bahour says, explaining that Palestinians submit their applications to the PA, which delivers them to Israel and then distributes the Israelis’ answers.

After 15 years of living in the West Bank, Bahour received an ID in 2009. His was one of the 33,000 applications Israel processed to reward the PA for taking part in “peace talks” — turning the human right to family into a political card.

Bahour believes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their family members reflects a “policy of fragmentation” designed to pressure the population into emigrating.

Othman’s daughter, Amira Dana, has begun to look for work abroad. She hopes to move to a place where her family members can visit her whenever they like.

Dana mourns the important life moments she has been unable to share with her mother, like the births of her three children.

“I really wanted her there next to me. I didn’t want anyone there except her,” Dana said. But Israel denied Othman entry.

Inside present-day Israel, migrant workers’ children and African asylum seekers bear the brunt of Israel’s demographic war.

The state ignores African refugees’ requests for asylum. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called them a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and even though Sudanese and Eritrean citizens cannot be deported to their home countries, Israel does not provide them with work visas.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio recently, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “Jobs will root them here.” As a result, many of Israel’s approximately 45,000 African asylum seekers are unemployed and homeless.

Mimi Hylameshesh, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, cleans houses for a living. She makes just enough to rent a small apartment in south Tel Aviv and to send her daughter to daycare. While Hylameshesh manages to feed her child, she does not always have the money to buy food for herself.

In another attempt to preserve its Jewish majority, the state is in the process of deporting hundreds of families of migrant workers, including Israeli-born children. Until now, all of the children who have been expelled have been aged four and under. But members of the organization Israeli Children explain that older kids could be arrested and expelled during the upcoming summer break.

Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old grandson since 1999, when his father died and his mother abandoned him. The boy was born here, attends public school in Tel Aviv, celebrates the Jewish holidays, and speaks fluent Hebrew.

Despite the fact that he met all of the criteria for “naturalization” in both 2005 and 2010 — when Israel opened “one-time” windows for the children of undocumented migrant workers — his applications were denied. He faces expulsion to the Philippines, his parents’ home country, a place he has never visited.

Rose Fabianas, 32, and her six-year-old daughter, Danielle, also face imminent deportation to the Philippines.

Fabianas sits on a park bench in south Tel Aviv, watching her daughter play on the swings with friends. She calls to Danielle and the girl darts over. Danielle talks, shyly, about her life in Israel, where she was born. Her favorite subject is mathematics, she said in fluent Hebrew, and her favourite holiday is Purim.

Fabianas remarked that Danielle used to live in constant fear of the immigration police. When someone knocked on the door, Danielle would beg her mother not to answer. “But now she says, ‘Ima [mom], I’m already big, they’re not going to take me’ … She’s very settled.”

Growing tensions between locals and migrants

by adminin Israel, Writing

IRIN, May 17, 2012

Blessing Akachukneu was already looking for a new place to live when her south Tel Aviv apartment, which doubles as a day-care centre, was firebombed in April. Her Israeli neighbours, she explained, had complained to the landlord about the noise from the day-care centre and she had been asked to leave. Otherwise, she had not had any problems in Shapira neighbourhood.

So Akachukneu was shocked when Molotov cocktails were thrown at her flat. Four other apartments – all home to African asylum-seekers – were targeted in the attack. Haim Mula, a 20-year-old Israeli man Shapira residents call “quiet” and “religious”, was arrested in connection with the incident. Police believe the attacks were racially motivated; Mula had been detained recently for throwing eggs at a Sudanese refugee.

A week later, two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the south Tel Aviv apartment of Nigerian workers.

But this was not the first time the African community was singled out for violence. In January 2011, a burning tyre was thrown into the Ashdod apartment of five Sudanese refugees. Two of the men were hospitalized. On the same night, three teenagers – Israeli-born daughters of African migrants – were beaten up by a group of Jewish youth. One of the attackers was armed with a knife; another allegedly shouted racial slurs at the girls.

“I’m afraid that something like this will happen again,” Akachukneu told IRIN.

The incidents point to escalating tensions between Jewish Israelis and the country’s roughly 45,000 African asylum-seekers. Human rights groups say 85 percent of these men, women, and children are refugees from Eritrea and Sudan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called African asylum-seekers “infiltrators” who are a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country”. Speaking to IRIN, Ministry of Interior spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said most of the country’s “infiltrators” are work migrants who do not meet the definition of a refugee.

The country’s laws define an “infiltrator” as anyone who enters Israel other than through an official border crossing, but according to Amnesty International, the term “infiltrators” is inappropriate because it carries connotations of threats and criminality, and fuels xenophobia and discrimination against asylum-seekers and migrants.

Human rights groups also point out that the government does not process requests for asylum. But in what seems to be a nod to the dangerous circumstances they face in their home countries, Israel is not currently deporting Eritrean or Sudanese citizens.

While they are allowed to stay, Israel does not give these asylum-seekers work visas. Most take odd jobs. In historically poor south Tel Aviv, they can find relatively cheap housing. They tend to live in cramped conditions, sometimes as many as eight to a room. Those that cannot find enough work to pay rent, end up sleeping in parks.

Locals say crime has risen as the African community has grown. They also say the increased demand for housing has driven prices up in the area. Some accuse the asylum-seekers of stealing much-needed jobs.

In the past two years, Jewish Israelis have held a number of protests against the presence of Africans in south Tel Aviv and have called on the state to deport the “infiltrators”. While the demonstrations have a decidedly xenophobic feel, the protesters accurately point out that the government is doing nothing about the social problems that come with the Africans’ unemployment and homelessness – a concern shared by human rights groups.

But while recent incidents suggest more violence could be on the horizon, south Tel Aviv’s refugees say they are most concerned with making a living.

Tekne Micaele, 38, fled Eritrea after doing 10 years’ national service without pay. Like most of the asylum-seekers in Israel, he walked here, crossing the southern border with Egypt on foot. The journey is hazardous with many of the asylum-seekers often held by gangs until their relatives pay a ransom.

For the past year and a half, Micaele has lived in a south Tel Aviv park. He gets food from an Israeli grassroots organization which offers refugees a meal a day. While no one has threatened him physically or verbally, Micaele’s biggest problem is the fact that he does not have a work visa.

In early 2010, Israeli authorities announced they would crack down on employers who hired undocumented workers, hitting them with steep fines. The state also conducted a media blitz warning of the consequences of hiring illegal labourers. Two years later, it seems that the campaign has had some effect – Micaele and other asylum-seekers report that potential employers usually ask to see a visa and are reluctant to hire them without one.

Micaele sums up his situation: “No work, no house, nothing.”

Another asylum-seeker, Mimi Hylameshesh, 28, has a job cleaning houses, but struggles to make ends meet. On a good month, she makes just over 2,000 NIS (US$523). Rent costs her 1,500 NIS and she pays 600 NIS to send her three-and-a-half-year old daughter to an unlicensed day-care centre.

Hylameshesh and her husband escaped national service and fled Eritrea four years ago. Her husband went on to Libya and then to Europe. Arriving in Israel alone with an eight-month-old daughter, Hylameshesh, spent a year in prison, where she was held without charge, before coming to south Tel Aviv.

Under a new law passed in January, anyone who enters Israel illegally – including Sudanese and Eritreans – can be detained for up to three years, even if there is no intention of deporting them. In some cases, this time period can be extended, even indefinitely. Amnesty International criticized the law arguing that automatic and prolonged detention violates international law and standards.

Hylameshesh’s husband currently lives in Switzerland but does not send Hylameshesh money. “It is hard for me,” she says, adding that there is always enough food for her child, but not always enough for her.