Sudanese migrants in Israel are watching the fighting roiling their nation with trepidation.
Omer Easa from Sudan poses for a portrait inside the offices of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a rights group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, April 30, 2023."My heart is there. My head is there. It is just that my body is here," said Easa, 31, a political dissident who fled the war-torn region of Darfur in 2012."We live here often thanks to the graces of the Supreme Court." – Omer Easa is watching the violence roiling his native Sudan with deep trepidation.
Israel initially turned a blind eye to their influx and many took up menial jobs in hotels and restaurants. But as their numbers swelled to a high of about 60,000, there was a backlash, with growing calls to expel the new arrivals. After years of attempts to push them out, they now number about 25,000, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry.
Israel's African migrants say they are asylum-seekers who fled for their lives and face danger if they return. Those from Sudan see the renewed conflict at home as another reminder of why they cannot go back and why their status should be settled, especially at a time of uncertainty over the future of Israel’s judicial system.
The Supreme Court has also blocked some of those efforts, striking down some anti-migrant laws deemed unconstitutional, including those dealing with their detention and their salaries. Those rulings have made the migrant issue a rallying cry for supporters of the legal overhaul, who say the court has overstepped in its rulings., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the migrant issue as an example in which “the court intervened unjustly.
The migrants’ presence has long divided the country. Their supporters say Israel, a country founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust and built up by Jewish refugees, should welcome those seeking asylum.
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Sudan migrants in Israel worry over future, fighting at homeSudanese migrants in Israel are watching the fighting roiling their nation with trepidation. They fear that the further Sudan sinks into chaos and violence, the longer they are likely to remain unrecognized asylum seekers in a country that has granted them few protections. Their backers say migrants’ rights in Israel will come under even greater threat if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu' s government moves ahead on its contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary. That proposal could threaten the Sudanese migrants' stay in Israel and open the door to legal steps that would embitter their lives.
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