The Michal detention facility in Hadera. Air-conditioned rooms with cable TV and a hot water urn for coffee

She crossed into Israel at the Egyptian border and worked in Tiberias for two days. Not at a brothel, but as a call-girl, sent to homes and hotel rooms on request. She has no problem talking about any of it. Now she will return to Kherson, her hometown in Ukraine. And no, she wasn't tricked. She knew exactly what she was here for.

Serving as her translator is Yelena, 27, also from Ukraine. Black-haired, business-like and sharp-eyed, she speaks fluent Hebrew. This is her third time in Israel. The first time, she worked for a year before she was picked up. The second time, she was here for a year and a half. After her second deportation, she couldn't get in through the airport so she slipped in via Egypt, like so many others. That was four years ago. She plans to return, but this time, she says "I'll do it right. I'll get married and come here properly. Not through Egypt. I don't have strength for that anymore."

Why return at all? "I love Israel," she says with a wry smile. "I'm nuts about this country. Most of all, she loves Tiberias. "It's pretty," she says. "What's in Ukraine? Nothing." Actually, say the police, there are more brothels in the Galilee and Haifa than in Tel Aviv. Business is brisker in the north.

The Michal facility sits behind the police station in Hadera, in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It is small: two low rectangular buildings, a paved courtyard and a few patches of grass. It used to be a Border Police training barracks, but stood empty until a year ago. A million shekels was invested in remodeling the complex, now surrounded by barbed wire. Looking into the courtyard are apartment buildings and one lone "build-your- own-home" villa in tinted stucco with fashionable windows. Across the street, on the barred balconies of Michal, bored detainees are dancing to trance music.

`Ladies like her'

The largest room of the facility contains seven bunk-beds. In the other nine rooms, there are either three or four - a total of 48 beds in all. When the staff offices move to the new building under construction at the edge of the compound, another 40 beds will open up. Each room has an eating corner with a table and plastic chairs, cable TV and a remodeled bathroom and shower.

The women are fed three meals a day at the police station dining hall. They also receive cigarettes (West Point), feminine hygiene products, towels and bedding. There is no wake-up or lights-out times. Twice a day they are taken out to the courtyard, which has a few benches, public phones and coin-operated beverage and cigarette machines. Three times a week, they can buy snacks from a roving vendor.

Turnover at the facility is high. It opened at the end of November 2002, and since then, some 2,200 women have stayed there, of whom 2,100 were deported. Only two tried to escape, but were caught the next day. The immigration police originally thought to use it as a detention center for mothers and children, but so far this has not been done.

The place is almost always full. Every day new detainees arrive, and nearly every day, detainees are driven to the airport to meet their flights. Their check-in is done at a special terminal run by the Immigration Police. The state pays for their tickets. The law requires their employees to purchase a ticket for them, but Police Superintendent Eli Levi, who heads the facility, says the law has no teeth.

Women usually stay at Michal for a week to 10 days, says Levi, but some stay longer because they have no papers. Some have only a forged passport or their passport has been taken away. Others were smuggled over the Egyptian border. By law, a person cannot fly without a laissez passe. So after these women are arrested, the Immigration Police seek proof of identity and ask the relevant consulates to provide them with papers.

Each consulate and its own pace of work. According to Levi, the Filipinas are out of the facility within a day or two. The ambassador of the Philippines is quick and efficient. Two weeks ago, 60 Filipina housemaids were rounded up in a special operation. Two days later, not one of them was still in Israel.

The Uzbek women hold the record for lengthy stays. Nadira, 24, has been waiting for papers for two months. She looks forward to going home and coming back to Israel with her 3-year-old daughter. Liza, 21, who was arrested in Haifa, says that when she spoke to the ambassador on the phone, he intimated that he was in no hurry to return "ladies like her" to Uzbekistan.

Attorney Nomi Levenkron of the Hotline for Migrant Workers says there have been cases of the police raiding brothels and arresting everyone except the Uzbek women because the officers know they take up a bed at the detention facility for a long time. Over the past year there has been some improvement, says Levenkron, after the U.S. published a report on the trafficking of women, which put Uzbekistan on the black list and could lead to economic sanctions.

Because of the bureaucratic hassles involved, the involvement of organizations like the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Isha L'Isha - Haifa Feminist Center, is more than welcome. Levi says his staff cooperates fully with the volunteers. Activists from these organizations pressure the foreign consulates to issue documents, bring the women items they need, encourage those who have worked in prostitution to testify, and contact aid societies in the countries to which the women are deported.

Not a jail

Since the recent attempt on the life of gangland boss Ze'ev Rosenstein, the police have stepped up their raids on brothels. In consequence, the detention facility is more crowded than usual with illegals working in prostitution. Earlier this week, for instance, 40 women were detained in the area of Tel Aviv Central Bus Station. Levi says that three-quarters of the incarcerated women at the moment are prostitutes and only a quarter of them are caretakers or maids. In the past, it was the reverse.

"From our perspective, the women here are not criminals," he says. "There are two groups: Those who came to do simple housework and are anxious to leave as soon as possible to get out of detention, and those who are victims of the sex trade. Over 90 percent of the women who worked in prostitution are the victims of traffickers. There was someone who brought them to Israel and sold them. But if you ask them, most would rather go back to the street than get on a plane and go home - that's how bad things are in the countries they come from."

Very few of these women are prepared to testify against their pimps, but those who do receive special treatment. They are released from detention until the trial - which could be a matter of many months - and put up at a hostel on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. They are completely free, and for the time being, no longer threatened with deportation. Although they receive a weekly check from the state, some of them continue to work in prostitution.

Levi acts as though he were running a girls' dormitory. While answering questions, he goes to the kitchenette on the floor near his office and prepares a pot of vegetable soup. From his desk, he asks a Russian girl who has returned from testifying at the Tel Aviv district attorney's office how it went. She jokes around and flirts with him. He's like a father figure. The disparity between the tone of the conversation and the content is unbelievable.

Two northern district police officers emerge from a nearby room after questioning a detainee. Levi asks if her statements are worth anything in a court of law. In principle, her passport is already on his desk and she could board the next plane. "Don't let her go before talking to me," says one of the officers. "Sure," says Levi. "Soup anyone?"

"We're proud of what we have here," he explains. "It's true these women are in Israel illegally. But until they're out of here, we try to be nice to them. The point is not exactly to give them a good time. But this isn't a jail. We put them up in air-conditioned rooms with cable TV and a hot water urn for coffee. We don't handcuff them except in special cases. There's no use of force. They can approach us freely."

As for the Palestinians, the Israeli establishment has invented a whole lexicon for dealing with foreign workers. Michal is a "detention center" - not a prison. Women are not arrested but "detained." They are not deported from Israel, but "removed." Levi is careful to use these terms when he speaks. "It's not just terminology," he says. "These are legal definitions. This is not a jailhouse." Facts are facts: The place is not run by the prison service, but by the police. But the "detainees" are behind bars. Levi agrees, but doesn't cave in. "No matter what, I know you're going to write `jail' when I say `detention center,' and `deported' when I say `removed.'"

A month ago, their cell phones were confiscated, the women complain. Levi explains that when they were allowed to speak freely on the phone, there were too many pimps showing up at the gate. But they come anyway, and so do lovesick clients. Apart from that, the women have no special gripes. They seem pretty apathetic. They don't even fight the deportation orders. For them, life is no picnic however you look at.

"The reason they don't complain," says Levenkron, "not about the traffickers, not about the conditions and not about being deported, is that their awareness of their rights is less than zero. They don't feel like the kind of people who have anything coming to them. They even feel a sense of relief because they're being deported instead of being thrown into jail. Other foreign workers, who haven't fallen into the clutches of traffickers, are more aware of their rights."

Yelena has moved up in the time she's been in Israel. She worked in Tiberias, Tel Aviv and a sauna in Rehovot. "In the beginning, I had a boss," she says. "Then I struck out on my own. There are some imbeciles who get NIS 20 a client, never go out on the town, work when they have their periods and say their pimp is a sweetheart just because he doesn't smack their faces in. I've made NIS 1,000 a day from 10 clients."

But next time she comes to Israel, she says, she won't be a hooker. "Everything I wanted, I've done: I bought a house in Ukraine. I have a car. My mother and sister are taken care of."