More grim news for Sudan's Darfur refugees

Somalian cartoonist Abdul Arts - whose cartoons I regularly post - sends along some news items on the plight of Sudanese refugees in Israel.

Readers might recall that Abdul Arts is himself a refugee - from Somalia, living in Egypt - so he has some firsthand experience of what the Sudanese may be going through.

What's ironic about this story is that these Sudanese refugees are desperate to stay in "the Zionist entity" otherwise known as Israel. This is because in Israel they can find work to feed their families - which is not the case in the brotherly nation of Egypt, their first port of entry as they flee the Sudan. In Egypt, they say, the work doesn't pay enough and they're also discriminated against by their fellow Muslims because of their skin color.

According to this IRIN release from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has decided it can no longer keep accepting African refugees at the rate they are flooding into Israel. As IRIN reports:

According to the new [Israeli government] plan, announced on 1 July, Israel will return to Egypt "infiltrators" crossing the countries' joint border. A government communiqué said they would be "quickly" deported and indicated they would not be able to make an asylum claim in Israel.

Accordingly, the Israeli security forces have been instructed to arrest and send back all those crossing the border, and to detain those who cannot be immediately returned.

The plan, which Israel formulated together with Egypt, has sparked concern among Israelis aiding African refugees, the majority of whom are from Sudan.

In the past few months alone, reports IRIN, some 1,400 Sudanese have made their way to Israel, including some 200 from Darfur.

The refugees, according to the Hotline for Migrant Workers, are afraid of being sent back to because they believe that in the worst case Egypt will only send them back to Sudan where they often end up soon dead, and in the best case, they can only look forward to being mistreated:

"We are not asking for anything, just our basic refugee rights, and maybe a little help from the state," said Nader, who added that she was originally from Juba and who arrived in Israel a few days earlier after being smuggled over the border. His seven-month-old daughter, asleep on his shoulder, had just been seen by a doctor.

Another refugee said she fled Egypt after being mistreated there. "Life is impossible for Sudanese like me in Cairo," one refugee was reported as saying, adding that she had been discriminated against for being dark skinned. Her husband said he could not find enough work in Egypt to be able to support the family.

The Associated Press (via ABC News) earlier profiled a 24-year-old Sudanese refugee from Darfur who had found work picking avocados on a kibbutz in Israel:

He said he fled five years ago to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, where the government imprisoned him for allegedly conspiring against it. After his release, he bribed his way into neighboring Egypt, and was arrested in Cairo. Once free again, he fled eastward with five others who paid a Bedouin to smuggle them into Israel. They feared police would shoot them.

"Then, thank God, we entered Israel and they welcomed us," he said.

At least temporarily. Israel has accepted refugees for decades, but the Sudanese pose a problem. Israeli law denies asylum to anyone from an "enemy" state, such as Sudan, and imprisons them until a third country gives them asylum.

Picked up by border guards, Ibrahim found himself back in jail.

As the AP reports, because many people in Israel still remember those who perished in the Holocaust because no nation would grant the Jews desperate to flee Nazi Germany refuge, many work on behalf of the African refugees in Israel.

As the AP report continued:

After a year in Israeli prisons, Ibrahim was moved in March to Yad Hannah, a kibbutz of 300 people which has taken in 36 Sudanese. They earn about $37 a day for farm work and shop and cook for themselves, but are still considered prisoners and cannot leave without written permission.

Ibrahim said he still feels isolated, because he speaks only Arabic and can't communicate with his kibbutz employers. But he does feel safe.

"Israel is nice," he said. "No one will hit you in the street or yell at you. I had to come all this way before I could find someone to treat me this way."

Oh the ironies of life. Who would have imagined that it would be the enemy Zionist state that would a Muslim refugee's first choice for refuge. Not to mention that these refugees have to flee to Israel from a state that is being run by Islamists.