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TEL AVIV, Israel \u2014\u00a0In a dusty\u00a0detention center in Israel\u2019s Negev desert, Tomas Yomani, an\u00a0asylum seeker from Eritrea in East Africa, has been biding his time for nine months while\u00a0under the watch of Israeli guards.<\/p>\n
Yomani, 30, can’t work because the nearest city is hours away. And if he misses roll call taken three times a day, he could be\u00a0deported to another African country and risk personal danger\u00a0eight years after he fled Eritrea because of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live in fear always,\u201d he told USA TODAY in a phone interview from the camp, called\u00a0Holot<\/em>, or \u201csands\u201d in Hebrew.\u00a0\u201cI left my country because I was afraid of being imprisoned, and now I am imprisoned again.\u201d<\/p>\n Thousands of African asylum seekers like Yomani face\u00a0grim\u00a0choices: Stay in Israel, where they are\u00a0safe but with limited\u00a0freedom,\u00a0or agree to Israel\u2019s relocation program that sends refugees to Rwanda or Uganda to\u00a0face more persecution and danger.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael is a democratic country.\u00a0I didn\u2019t think it should\u00a0be this way,\u201d Yomani lamented.<\/p>\n Israel’s treatment of African refugees has come under attack from local human rights groups, who say a country founded by Jewish refugees persecuted during World War II should be more understanding of the asylum seekers’ plight.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire world is dealing with millions of refugees. It\u2019s baseless for Israel, a developed country, to claim that it cannot take its part in carrying the burden,\u201d said\u00a0Dror Sadot, spokesperson for the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli human rights group. Government officials “refuse to recognize (the Africans’)\u00a0existence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Israel has granted asylum to only nine Africans refugees, one of\u00a0the lowest acceptance rates among industrialized democracies, according to Sadot.<\/p>\n The Israeli newspaper\u00a0Haaretz<\/em>\u00a0reported in October that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed\u00a0a deal with\u00a0Rwandan President Paul Kagame at\u00a0the U.N.\u00a0in September to deport African migrants from Israel to Rwanda. The alleged agreement drew a sharp rebuke from the country’s human rights groups.<\/p>\n The Israeli government\u00a0refused to comment on the report, but Netanyahu referred to the arrangement in September when he told a cabinet meeting, “In my visits to Africa and conversations with African leaders, I have created a base of countries willing to absorb these infiltrators.”<\/p>\n Israel has “the right, as in every country, to supervise our borders and remove anyone who is here illegally,” Netanyahu said. He added\u00a0that\u00a0Africans who have arrived in recent years \u201cposed a real threat to the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n African refugees who are Jewish are granted automatic asylum in Israel, as are Jews from anywhere in the world. In the past, Israel\u00a0has granted citizenship to many Jews from Ethiopia and other African countries.<\/p>\n The current African asylum seekers are overwhelmingly Muslims and Christians from Eritrea and Sudan who chose\u00a0Israel because of its geographical proximity and\u00a0reputation as a liberal democracy.<\/p>\n In addition to the several thousand\u00a0Africans living in\u00a0the desert detention center, nearly\u00a040,000 African migrants\u00a0live in Israel, but with no guarantee they can stay long term.<\/p>\n Since\u00a0they are not Jewish, they are not\u00a0citizens\u00a0and are denied access to free health care. Their children, many of whom were born in Israel, are not granted Israeli passports and must attend separate schools.\u00a0Last May, Israel required that 20%\u00a0of asylum seekers\u2019 salaries be deposited into a fund that would be released to them only if they\u00a0relocate.<\/p>\n The asylum seekers, most\u00a0escaping genocide in Sudan or repression\u00a0in Eritrea, first arrived to Israel in 2006\u00a0after crossing\u00a0Egypt’s\u00a0Sinai Desert. The influx largely\u00a0stopped when Israel completed building a high-tech fence along its\u00a0150-mile border with Egypt in 2013.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Supreme Court ruled in August that the government can legally\u00a0deport African migrants willing to relocate\u00a0to another\u00a0safe country\u00a0but could not continue to detain migrants who\u00a0refused to relocate for more than\u00a0two months.<\/p>\n In September, Netanyahu again denounced African asylum seekers as \u201cillegal infiltrators,\u201d as he posed with elderly residents of South Tel Aviv, where thousands of African migrants live. He promised to \u201creturn the area\u201d to its Israeli residents.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Channel 2 reported that Israel\u00a0has arranged for more than 2,000 African asylum seekers to resettle in Canada\u00a0and several hundred others to go to the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States\u00a0and other Western countries.<\/p>\n Helen Kidane, an asylum seeker who is director of the Eritrean Women\u2019s Community Center\u00a0in Tel Aviv, deplored efforts to force asylum seekers to leave.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they don\u2019t understand is that we\u2019re here to save our life,\u201d said\u00a0Kidane, who has a 4-year-old daughter born here. \u201cOn one hand, we can\u2019t leave here, but on the other, we\u2019ve all given up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TEL AVIV, Israel \u2014\u00a0In a dusty\u00a0detention center in Israel\u2019s Negev desert, Tomas Yomani, an\u00a0asylum seeker from Eritrea in East Africa, has been biding his time for nine months while\u00a0under the watch of Israeli guards. Yomani, 30, can’t work because the nearest city is hours away. And if he misses roll call taken three times a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.1359999999999998987476601541857235133647918701171875,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.67849999999999999200639422269887290894985198974609375,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92000000000000003996802888650563545525074005126953125,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.84999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.1999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.90000000000000002220446049250313080847263336181640625,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.270000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.020000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.4699999999999999733546474089962430298328399658203125,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/-mm-\/abc24fbd7747a50af62bd39601855788dddef857\/c=5-0-4027-3024&r=x408&c=540x405\/local\/-\/media\/2017\/11\/02\/USATODAY\/USATODAY\/636452176747510148-IMG-2824.JPG\")
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