[LETTER FROM TEL AVIV]
Ablel was born and raised in Eritrea, but he knew he needed to leave. One of the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing a repressive dictatorship and ongoing economic crisis, Ablel managed to cross the northern border, past the Eritrean soldiers who jail anyone they capture. He made it through all of Sudan, only to be caught in Egypt by a tribe of Bedouins. They held him captive and forced him to collect several thousand U.S. dollars for his safe release. The price of freedom varies from victim to victim, but the alternative to paying the ransom is all too clear. Torture is routine, rape not uncommon. Organ theft and death, par for the course.
But Ablel, like others, knew that the Bedouins were an inevitable part of his escape from Eritrea. After paying his ransom, he was taken into the Sinai, near the border with Israel. No other nation in the region is much of a refugee draw, and so Israel, by a fluke of geography, has become a destination for Eritreans, Sudanese, Ethiopians and other Africans.
Ablel, though, did not quite reach the Promised Land. He was intercepted by the Egyptian military and imprisoned for a year. His saga continued when he managed to reach a friend who contacted the Ethiopian embassy on his behalf. Upon gaining his freedom, Ablel ventured back south to Ethiopia, where he was allowed to live in a refugee camp. After three months, Ablel returned to Sudan and lived in another camp for ten more months. “There was not enough food there,” he said, claiming the camp workers gave priority to the Sudanese. Eritreans were second-class refugees in an already desperate situation. Ablel worked in the garden on the camp grounds, and one day made a run for it. He was captured again by the Bedouins, who took him once again to the Sinai.
He was one of 16 Eritreans captured, and the only one who spoke any Arabic in addition to the Eritrean language Tigrinya. He became the communicator and de facto representative of the group. Unfortunately for him, there was a woman among them. “They tried to force me to fuck her,” he explained to me in broken English. He refused, and one of the Bedouins began to beat him. Ablel raised his hands in defense and took repeated blows to the arm, but could not strike back; other Bedouins were watching, guns in hand. “I asked my people what to do, and they said fall down, and they can’t do anything after you’re on the ground. But he took a knife and beat me. Then he left me afterward, because I didn’t move nothing.” Ablel was left on the ground, bleeding profusely and in need of medical care.
The Bedouins now demanded payment of $15,000, and Ablel needed medicine. But Ablel’s luck stayed with him. “I had a friend in Europe help me. I told him if I don’t take medicine I could die.” The friend collected the necessary money and Ablel managed to cross the border into Israel. Now he works at a jeans factory in a suburb just south of Tel Aviv. His knife wound healed, but he bears a large scar on his upper left arm, a reminder of his journey.
I also spoke with two of Ablel’s friends, Sami and Haile. The three of them are all Christians in their early twenties who journeyed from Eritrea to Israel through Bedouin territory. There is very little love among them for the Bedouins of northern Africa, most of whom seem to fit better in One Thousand and One Arabian Nights than they do in the 21st century. The Eritreans paint them as voracious barbarians, kidnapping any travelers, including Europeans, and holding them for ransom. They collect their captives in large camps, imposing their capricious will on their victims. They do not hesitate to maim, rape, or set fire to their captives. “They are like crocodiles,” Ablel tells me. “They eat everything.” I asked them what the Bedouins could possibly buy with the ransom money they collect. Sami merely shrugged. “Drugs, weapons.”
Ablel’s story is more or less typical of Eritrean migrants. Haile was luckier. He had little trouble with the Bedouins and has an uncle in Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat, who helped finance the journey. Others are not so fortunate. One man walks around the streets of southern Tel Aviv with a bullet in his head, a reminder of his tribulations escaping the war-torn Horn of Africa. And even he could be considered relatively lucky; Haile can name three acquaintances of his who had their kidneys taken by the Bedouins before they were left for dead in the Sinai.
Once a textile worker in Eritrea, Haile now works eight to ten hours a day as an assistant chef in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, cooking rice and chicken. He used to be a dishwasher, but moved up the ladder after a kind Israeli showed him how to help in the kitchen. Despite paying rent high enough to cause mass protests, he manages to sock away some money every month and send it home to his family in Eritrea. In the meantime, his life consists mostly of working, eating, and sleeping.
“It’s very hard for Eritreans here. You can’t have a life here,” he told me. “You work like a donkey.” When asked how they are doing, though, Sami and his friends are far more likely to respond with an ironic “Baruch Hashem.” They picked up the greeting, Hebrew for “Thank God,” from the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
So why did they come to Tel Aviv? The answer is one all too familiar to most Israelis: there was no choice. In Hebrew, ein brera. Many, if not most, are economic immigrants seeking better opportunities, but others desert military posts or escape immediate persecution. Staying in Eritrea or Egypt is not much of an option. In some cases, runaways head to other destinations, but are kidnapped by Bedouin tribesmen and released in the Sinai desert, with no way out but Israel. And so immigrants who survive the journey through northern Africa must hit the ground running, navigating the nuances of a society with which they have no connection.
How long does Haile plan to stay in Tel Aviv? Until he can find a better option. “Norway,” Haile tells me with a smile. Norway, where one of his friends lives well with much more government support. Ablel wants to move to Canada. He’s already begun filling out the paperwork. For the time being, though, Haile, Ablel, and their friends are grounded in Israel. Armed with only a high school education, they work in restaurants and retail stores. And they are in good company.
The numbers are high. An estimated 60,000 Africans have crossed into Israel since 2006, the majority from Eritrea. Their legal statuses vary. Hundreds of immigrants remain in a detention facility in the Negev Desert near the border with Egypt. Most Eritreans are technically classified as asylum seekers. Countless others from the region are officially off the books, with no government record of them at all. Many others, frequently Ethiopian job seekers, pretend to be Eritrean in order to be legally classified as asylum seekers.
The center of this drama is southern Tel Aviv, a relatively poor part of the city which has become the de facto capital of African migrants. The city is a tease — it comes so tantalizingly close to being part of Europe or the United States. Sitting in a bustling, air conditioned coffee shop, sipping on a cappuccino and listening to Jay-Z rap about Brooklyn, it’s very easy to forget that Damascus is not quite 150 miles away and Cairo is barely 250 miles in the other direction. It’s easy to forget the slaughter, repression, and dictatorship taking place in neighboring nations. It’s easy to forget the asylum seekers washing the dishes in the coffee shop kitchen.
But Florentin is somewhat different. A neighborhood in the southern part of the city, Florentin has long been noted for its unkempt nature and quasi-beatnik vibe. It’s a neighborhood in a constant state of flux, with young people moving in for several years before moving out to settle down. Many Eritrean and Sudanese migrants have settled either here or in adjacent communities. And while the influx of immigrants has changed the face of the neighborhood, its character, to some extent, remains untouched. And that character has a lot to do with drugs.
I met a man named Gil, who has lived in the neighborhood for two decades, making him about as much of a mainstay as anyone. Before ten minutes had elapsed, several drug addicts walked past us, one of whom stopped to chat with Gil. A frail, hollow woman, she was introduced to drugs by her ex-boyfriend, who left her high and dry when she became addicted. After she left, Gil pointed across Washington Street to another housing complex. “That building has a drug dealer.” He pointed to the next one. “That one does, too. And that one, and that one. That’s the only building with no drug dealers,” he told me, pointing to the last complex on the block. “It’s abandoned.”
Many of Israel’s African immigrants never experiment with drugs. Many others do. And their story becomes intractably tangled with that of Florentin, perched precariously between the glamour of northern Tel Aviv and the historically Arab Jaffa, a future and a past. Very few people live here as long as Gil, a man who moved his four-year-old daughter into a different school simply so her friends in kindergarten will still be around when she finishes middle school. But they all shape Tel Aviv’s story, for good or bad.
The immigrants certainly bring to the neighborhood their fair share of troubles. The crime rate has risen significantly, especially thefts of cell phones and bicycles. In June, a Sudanese migrant stabbed six passersby, including three Israelis, with a large knife before being subdued by onlookers. One witness was quoted by the Jerusalem Post saying, “We see this violence all the time here, but usually it’s between them [Africans]; it’s not directed at us [Israelis].” Some blame the availability of alcohol. Others simply blame the African migrants. Regardless, the problems associated with the immigrants are very real. Nearly everyone agrees that the status quo is unsustainable, a political reality that might as well be the motto of the Middle East.
The sheer scope of emigration from Africa is wide enough to prompt Danny Danon, Israel’s far-right Deputy Minister of Defense, to declare, “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.” Israel has pursued various policies to deal with the influx. A fence has been built along the border between Israel and Egypt, and some migrants have been offered financial rewards for leaving voluntarily. Deportation, though, is not necessarily an option. Under international law, a nation cannot deport an asylum seeker if their lives would be in danger. This certainly applies to Eritrea, a nation whose leader is sometimes compared to Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Admiral General Aladeen, the protagonist of The Dictator.
However, Israel is beginning to deport South Sudanese migrants back to their homeland, a move prompted by the creation of the new nation of South Sudan. Furthermore, a more far-reaching plan to deal with the influx involves deporting many to an undisclosed east African country, which would absorb them in exchange for military aid. Israel would not be alone in instituting this type of deportation policy; Australia recently announced a hard-line policy deporting all asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, ostensibly in an effort to undermine the smuggling of refugees by third parties.
In the meantime, migrants remain in Israel, making a living as best they can. For many Israeli residents of Tel Aviv, though, the Africans can blend into the white noise of the city. One evening, I wandered into a coffee shop to escape the summer heat. I ordered an espresso and sat in the back, sipping my drink, checking Buzzfeed, and watching the New Yorkers to my left chat about their careers. A song by Israeli hip hop band Hadag Nahash was ending, replaced by the omnipresent Jay-Z. Instead of treated we get tricked, instead of kisses we get kicked. It’s a hard knock life…
On my way back, I ran into Haile and asked how he was. He smiled wryly. “Baruch Hashem.”
Image credits: Jacob Drucker/HPR (Photo of Washington Street), Haaretz (Photo of Levinsky Park)