Calls for Israel to grant illegal Darfuri migrants refugee status

December 6, 2014 (KHARTOUM) – The chairman of Israel’s Yesh Atid party and the outgoing finance minister Yair Lapid said that Israel must recognise Darfuris who entered the country illegally as refugees.

“We must treat these people as Holocaust survivors. On the other hand, Eritrean labor migrants, who constitute the majority of those who infiltrated into the country, should be treated as illegal immigrants,” Lapid said on his Facebook page, according to Haaretz newspaper.

The Jewish state has not granted refugee status to any Darfuris, although many of them have requested asylum and have yet to receive a denial or approval.

Israel says the reason it has not expelled Sudanese citizens, including Darfuris, is that it has no diplomatic relations with Sudan, rather than out of any concern for their wellbeing.

According to Haaretz, Lapid declared last week that his party would support an amendment to the anti-infiltration law if it maintains same provisions approved by the government and Knesset in its first reading.

The amendment approves the continued operation of the Holot detention facility, limiting remand there to one year and eight months.

The facility currently holds 2,200 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan, 70% of whom are from the Darfur region.

An asylum seeker from Darfur who has been held for over six months at Holot appealed to Yair Lapid on his Facebook page on Friday.

“My name is Mutasim Ali, an asylum seeker from Darfur, Western Sudan. I’ve been in Israel since 2009. I requested asylum in 2010 but there has been no decision in my case since then. I’m but one case out of thousands of Africans who have been living in Israel for several years. I ask you to vote against the bill since I cannot go back there now. So why am I in jail even though I’m from Darfur? It’s a waste of money – the government is out of touch. The government is seriously infringing on our rights, as well as those of the residents of southern Tel Aviv, since it is so out of touch,” he wrote. There has been no reply yet to Ali’s appeal.

Israel has granted refugee status to just over 200 applicants since the country was founded in 1948. From 2009 and 2012, when the government took over the assessment of asylum claims from the UN, only 20 claims were approved from the 10,800 submitted. In 2013, Israel examined just 250 out of 1,800 asylum requests and approved none, according to Haaretz.

(ST)