Israel releases 51 Darfur refugees

October 19, 2007 (KETZIOT, Israel) — Israel on Thursday released 51 Darfur asylum seekers from a prison compound in the Negev desert to allow them to work on collective farms in the Jewish state.

The group was being held at a centre on the Ketziot prison compound, said an AFP correspondent who witnessed their release.

The asylum seekers have been granted temporary residency permits and will live and work on kibbutzim, as have other Sudanese refugees for months.

Last month, the government decided to grant residency to around 500 Darfur refugees after months of public debate, but Israel says it would expel all other Africans who had entered illegally from Egypt.

It is not clear what exact legal status Darfur refugees will be granted, although Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit has said he supported naturalizing the Darfur refugees who have crossed into Israel with about 3,000 other Africans.

A four-year civil war in Darfur has killed at least 200,000 people and displaced two million others. Khartoum says only 9,000 died in the conflict.

Many in Israel argue that the Jewish state — founded in part as a refuge for the victims of the Nazi Holocaust — has a moral obligation to offer sanctuary to those fleeing what some have described as a genocide in Darfur.

But in Israel there are also more than 1,000 other Sudanese refugees, along with 700 from Eritrea and 600 from the Ivory Coast, according to the UN.

(AFP)