M. and her two children in their Tel Aviv flat. (Photo by Guy Reivitz)

"We decided to join the operation, because we saw that we would not be left alone here, and we thought it would be better to leave in an organized fashion," he says.

G. said that a police officer took down the couple's details. However, when he told the officer that his family would not be able to leave by the appointed date due to the advanced stage of his wife's pregnancy, the registration was halted. G., who until that moment had thought the authorities would be satisfied with anyone who was willing to register to leave, was unpleasantly surprised to discover that the authority had no power to extend his stay here beyond end of the operation, and that he would have to apply to the Interior Ministry. He applied, and the ministry clerk told him that the ministry is not involved in the operation, therefore, he should apply to the Immigration Authority. The Hotline for Migrant Workers received the same circular reasoning when its staff, which thought there must be some misunderstanding, applied to the authorities on G.'s behalf.

G. continued preparing for the birth of his child and the family's departure, but without calm that others felt due to their registration. Two weeks ago, G. was arrested by the Immigration Police and taken to the Renaissance jail in Nazareth.

"It happened in the morning, after he left the house for work," says L., G.'s wife, who telephoned him throughout the day when he was not at home due to fears that he would be arrested, leaving just prior to giving birth. And that is exactly what happened.

"He told me on the telephone that he had been arrested and was being taken to Nazareth," she says. "I asked him, `What am I to do now?' and he said, `There's nothing I can do'." Two days after G.'s arrest, while he was still in jail, the couple's second child, a son, was born (their daughter is in Ghana, the couple's native country).

At the prison, G. discovered that he was not the only one to register with the operation and subsequently be rejected, since he could not meet its timetable. A., a Nigerian whose son suffers from sickle cell anemia, an incurable congenital blood disease, was also incarcerated.

"Ever since he was little, he was weaker than the other children because of his anemia," M., A.'s wife, says about her son. "Every little bump would cause swelling and bruising, and very often he suffered from acute stomachaches. The staff at the hematology clinic and at the emergency room at Ichilov hospital know us."

A letter sent from Ichilov's hematology clinic to the Immigration Authority stated that "the boy receives frequent transfusions and has been hospitalized a number of times with pneumonia. At the age of five, it will be decided whether to remove his spleen, depending on his condition." The boy will turn five at the end of January, and his father asked to register for voluntary departure with the right to leave right after the January evaluation, or the operation, if that is what will be decided. His request was denied, and he, like G., was sent to the Interior Ministry and back to the Immigration Authority.

A.'s arrest has been very hard on his wife. "The boy needs more supervision," M. says. "If he falls and is hurt at kindergarten, I am called in. Sometimes in the middle of the day he is in pain and I have to drop everything and go to him. I practically can't work like that. When my husband was at home, at least there was someone who could stay with our little daughter when I had to take [my son] to the emergency room at night. Now, if something happens, I will have to wake her and take her with us."

About a week after A. was arrested, the family's meager savings ran out, and now there is nothing left. "I have to ask friends to help us so that I have food for my children. And at the beginning of the month, if I do not have money for the rent, my children and I will be in the street." M. comes from Uyo, a mid-sized city in Nigeria, where the level of health services is lower than that in larger cities, and there will be absolutely no possibility of conducting the operation there should the boy require one.

"I'm afraid for the boy, but I cannot keep on begging," she says. "Is there no mercy here - at least for the boy, if not for me?"

Father arrested, son born

The Hotline for Migrant Workers realized at some point that this was a widespread phenomenon. "Dozens of families applied to us with all sorts of reason why they could not leave Israel exactly at the appointed time, and asked for extensions of a few weeks," Sigal Rosen, director of the hotline, says. "They were all dismissed out of hand or sent to the Interior Ministry."

Among the applicants were a women with a high-risk pregnancy who needed total rest and was not allowed to embark on long journeys; a couple whose baby daughter suffered a severe asthma attack and whose doctor said the asthma life-threatening; and dozens of other families in which the mother was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and could not fly at the time set by immigration authorities. These families are preparing to leave but are in constant fear of arrest.

"The operation was coordinated with the Interior Ministry for only two months," an Immigration Authority clerk told the hotline's representative. "Every irregular permit beyond the project's period is under Interior Ministry authority."

A number of family heads who applied to the ministry said that the clerks refused not only to see them, but also to make appointments for a later date and to write a note explaining the grounds for the refusal. Some applicants had requested the explanatory note with the hope that there had been a misunderstanding, and that someone who understood Hebrew could explain it to them.

The Hotline for Migrant Workers asked immigration authorities not to arrest the foreigners until after the conclusion of the Interior Ministry strike so that what appeared to be a misunderstanding could be clarified.

"Delaying enforcement [of the law] in the case of foreign workers who registered for voluntary departure was coordinated with the Interior Ministry and the Population Registry and applied only to those who registered and committed to leave within a specified period," Commander Ziva Agami, head of the Immigration Authority's anti-crime unit, says.

This is far from being precise. At meetings held in several churches prior to the operation, the authority specifically stated that if those encountering any problem whatsoever should contact the authority, and each case would be examined individually. A few dozen families have been granted extensions based on humanitarian reasons, such as medical treatments that cannot be stopped until they are completed or the serious illness of a family member.

The Immigration Authority recently reached a special agreement with members of one of the churches allowing them to register for voluntary departure but to leave only at the end of November, one month after the deadline.

"I went to register based on only what I had heard in church, that they would help us," L. says in despair. "What else could I do? No airline would let me on a plane in my ninth month." L.'s baby, born two days after her husband's arrest, was released from the hospital a week later. In the past, L. certainly would have been surrounded by friends who would help her during the first few days after the birth, but due to the voluntary departure operation and other operations, such as house searches, many members of her community have left the country.

"I don't even have anyone with whom I can leave the baby when I want to go out to buy food," L says. "I have become very weak, both from the birth and before. I worry so much; it's hard to sleep and hard to eat. I have to be very careful when I lift the baby, because sometimes I get dizzy and I don't see a thing. I'm afraid of fainting in the middle of the street."

Waiting for an operation

Both M. and A. were convinced to register based on promises they had heard at one of the church meetings. A. even went back and forth from the Holon police station where he had registered to the Interior Ministry in efforts to clarify the issue.

"Each time he showed the letter from the clinic and explained how dangerous it was for our boy to travel to Nigeria right now, and each time he was sent away," M, says. "After he was arrested, I went there and pleaded. I said we had wanted to register; I said that my son is waiting for major surgery. No one would listen. If they didn't intend to listen to us from the outset and did not intend to help, why did they say what they said at the churches? If I had known they wanted a certain number of people and that they really didn't care, I would not have let my husband go to plead with them."

A. was offered release on NIS 15,000 bail in consideration of the situation. "If I had a sum like that, I would have applied for a visa to Britain or the United States where for sure they would not have abandoned my child," M. says bitterly. Following a hearing, the bail was lowered to NIS 3,000, which is valid until the end of January.

However, should her son require the spleen operation, M. believes things will be so easy. "We will probably have to run around again and plead," she says.

The Interior Ministry's spokesman said that the voluntary departure operation was conducted and executed solely by the Immigration Authority, which was responsible for the registration and follow-up. In the case of A., the spokesman said the ministry took the boy's medical condition and the doctor's request into consideration, and released the father until the end of January.

The Immigration Authority spokesman, Superintendent Rafi Yaffe, said that even though, at the outset of the operation, everyone was invited to register and was guaranteed that exceptional cases would be examined, "right at the very beginning it turned out that dozens of families registered and presented personal problems and medical problems, and a decision was made by the senior command that anyone who could not meet the departure date should not register. We told anyone who could not meet the criteria not to register. We are not taking on each person as a project to assist him to leave the country."

The spokesman said the authority did not believe it was necessary to publicize that issue as widely as the operation itself. "Don't worry about them," he says. "They pass around information, and they knew very well.

"The Immigration Authority presented itself as being merciful and considerate in giving those who committed to leaving a respite," says Rosen. "The way it treated those who could not leave within a month, by the exact date it had set, reveals its true face. The authority's heads are dispassionate to the suffering of women whose husbands have been arrested and are abandoned on the eve of giving birth with no one to support them and no means of livelihood."