After two years of four indecisive elections and chaotic governance, Israel now has a new hybrid coalition in power, apparently open to softening its nationalist rhetoric and to changing policies inherited from the Netanyahu era.

During the Netanyahu era, government policy was designed to criminalize and demonize African asylum seekers, force them to leave voluntarily by making their lives as miserable as possible, and to find African countries that would accept deported asylum seekers.

The original “prevention of infiltration” law (1954) defined infiltrators as Palestinian refugees or sympathizers sent by hostile Arab states to enter Israel illegally to conduct terrorist activities and organize opposition to the Jewish state.

In 2012 and 2013, the Knesset amended the 1954 infiltration law to label and criminalize African asylum seekers as “infiltrators.” Demonization campaigns also stigmatized African asylum seekers as a cancer on Israeli society, rapists, criminals and bearers of horrible diseases. South Tel Aviv anti-migrant groups protesting the dumping of thousands of people in their neighborhoods attacked them as “occupiers.” Others asserted that the presence of African asylum seekers posed a demographic threat to Israel’s Jewish majority and Jewish identity.

To stop the rising tide of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers pouring into the country via the Sinai, Israel exercised its right as a sovereign nation to secure its border. The Netanyahu government completed the building of a 242-kilometer fence along the Sinai border in 2012. Although the fence limited illegal entry to a trickle, the government asserted that more stringent measures were needed. 

To make the lives of asylum seekers miserable and to prod them to accept voluntary deportation, the government sent adult males to prison or Holot, a detention camp in the Negev, denied them legal employment permits while taking 20% of their “illegal” wages, restricted access to health, education and other essential public services, and failed to process applications for refugee status in a fair and timely manner as required by international law.

As an incentive to leave Israel, the government offered $3,500 to those assenting to voluntary deportation to an African country. Demonization, miserable living conditions, and monetary compensation induced thousands of asylum seekers to leave. However, the refusal of African states to receive deportees sent by force thwarted government plans to forcibly deport African asylum seekers.

With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the living conditions of African asylum seekers sharply deteriorated. Most of those working lost their jobs, which were concentrated in the hard-hit hotel and restaurant sectors. Evictions, homelessness, hunger and increases in domestic violence added to their misery. Not getting vaccinated exposed them to COVID-19.

TODAY, ONE sees signs that Israel’s new hybrid government is taking modest steps to change past cruel and callous policies and practices. Asylum seekers now get vaccinated. The Health Ministry is close to adopting a plan to provide health insurance for African asylum seekers. The government appears ready to honor rather than ignore or fight a Supreme Court decision ruling ordering employers and the state to no longer withhold 20% of asylum seeker wages. Though steps in the right direction, much more needs to be done.

We can start by stop referring to African asylum seekers as illegal infiltrators. Sudanese and Eritreans who risked their lives to make it to Israel were not Palestinians, Arab sympathizers, or agents of enemy states seeking to destroy the Jewish state. There is no evidence that any have been identified as terrorists or agents of enemy states. Entering another country illegally to flee tyranny, ethnic cleansing, and involuntary servitude or looking for work does not make one a criminal.

To alleviate suffering in the African asylum seeker community, the government could offer greater access to Israeli public health, social, psychological services and schools and end efforts to discourage municipalities and private employers from hiring asylum seekers. Municipalities, civil society, and individuals could do more to include African asylum seekers when working together to provide shelters and food banks for the Israeli homeless and hungry.

Israel has granted refugee status to less than 1% of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel while acceptance rates in Western Europe and North America ranged between 50% and 90%. The 35,000 Sudanese and Eritrean men, women, and children comprise 92% of all African asylum seekers in Israel. Their shrinking numbers – down from over 60,000 in 2012 – pose no demographic threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.

To make up for the systematic denial of their refugee status requests in the past, the new government could immediately grant all asylum seekers three-year residency permits with or without granting formal refugee status. This measure would relieve asylum seekers’ anxiety and fears of being forcibly deported or imprisoned for failing to leave voluntarily. The government could follow this up by hiring more and better-trained staff to properly review applications for formal refugee status. It would also give the Knesset time to pass a comprehensive immigration law setting legal guidelines for accepting refugees and economic migrants in conformance with international law.

With a new change government in place, Israel has an opportunity to transcend ideological quarrels between Right and Left and between nationalists and universalists, concerning how to deal with African asylum seekers and go beyond meeting minimum international refugee law conditions. A more humane approach to and treatment of our African asylum seekers would reflect traditional Jewish values concerning the stranger and our own Jewish experience as many times being vulnerable strangers in many lands. Rather than regarding African asylum seekers as undesirable alien intruders to be expelled, we can see and treat them as a valued human resource to be protected and nurtured.

Just as God befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing – you too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).

The writer is an Israel-based political scientist and international development consultant specializing in African democracy, development, migration, religion and counter-terrorism issues.