Seeking asylum in the Promised Land

03 December 2014

Developed countries around the world are trying to deter asylum seekers from accessing protection under international refugee law.

The United States returns Cubans seeking refuge by boat and Central American children travelling by land. The European Union’s border agency Frontex conducts pushback operations on the high seas while Italy detains asylum seekers in Lampedusa. Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy includes push backs, mandatory detention and offshore processing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Israel is no exception. A spike in asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan arriving across the Sinai Desert in recent years has given rise to Israeli deterrence measures, including detention and possibly involuntary return. The 65,000 African asylum seekers, who entered Israel between 2006 and 2013 have been labelled ‘infiltrators’ posing an existential threat to the Israeli state by the government.

And yet Israel is a state with refugeehood in its roots, from the time of the Exodus story when the Israelites were persecuted in Egypt and delivered to freedom, with the instruction that they were to welcome strangers. Indeed Israeli refugee advocates have encouraged a change of policy on the basis of Jewish exile in Egypt as recorded in the Torah. The 1951 Refugee Convention, the cornerstone of international refugee law, was adopted primarily to provide for the protection of Jewish refugees throughout Europe following the Second World War. Israel took part in the drafting of the Convention and became a signatory in 1954.

The surge in asylum seeker numbers poses significant policy challenges to Jerusalem. On the one hand, as a Jewish state Israel provides protection and indeed citizenship to Jews and anyone of Jewish descent seeking it. On the other hand, Israel is a western-style democracy with the rule of law and international obligations to abide by – obligations that are being violated with respect to African asylum seekers.

Demographics are important to Israel. As a Jewish state, Israel is sensitive to the balance between Jews and non-Jews entering the country. Jewish immigration is seen to strengthen national identity and conversely, non-Jewish migrants to dilute it. Notwithstanding, the 2012 claim by Binyamin Netanyahu that around 60,000 non-Jewish asylum seekers 'threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity' seems far fetched.

Israeli asylum policy since 2007 has been characterised by deterrence not respect for refugees. In 2012, a five-metre high steel fence was built along much of the 240-kilometre Israel-Egypt border to ‘prevent unauthorised infiltration.’

INTERNATIONAL

Seeking asylum in the Promised Land

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