Batsai, 13, from Venezuela lived in Israel from age 3 and has had to leave with her parents. She is now a stranger in a land she doesn't know. (Photo by Alex Levac)

Over the past year, many of N.'s friends have left, some born in Israel, like N., and others, like Fernando, came here at the age of 3 or 4 years with their parents, foreign workers from South America. They speak Hebrew very well, and only basic Spanish, and most read only Hebrew.

In most of the churches frequented by foreign workers special classes were set up for learning religion and language. N. use to go to those classes, until they were canceled, after almost all his classmates left. Los del Mondo, the evangelical church in south Tel Aviv, where N.'s parents pray, used to resound with the voices of children and babies. Now the place is quiet. Too quiet, say the adults who once complained of the noise.

N. and younger brother are the only children there now. They sit quietly in one of the corners of the almost empty sanctuary. Sometimes N.'s brother dozes off. Among the children who no longer come to the church is Batsai, a 13-year-old girl from Venezuela, who came to Israel with her parents at age 3.

During the Immigration Authority's operation she left with her parents, who were afraid of exposing her to the horrors of being sought out and deported. Since then she has telephoned her friends, sometimes tearfully, to tell them how hard it is for her. It is hard for her to get used to her country, school, to a language in which she is not fluent.

Only a small number of children left Israel during the operation - the authority counted only 277. A similar number of children left after their parents tired of life in fear of being arrested and deported. Sources at Mesila (the Hebrew acronym for Center for Assistance and Information for the Foreign Community) estimate that 20 percent of the children of foreign workers in Tel Aviv, about 500 children, have left.

Although Mesila has no data on the exact number of children among the foreign workers, but its estimates are accepted by all the other organizations and authorities. This means that there are another 2,000 children in the Tel Aviv area and Mesila figures there a similar number scattered throughout the country, mainly in Jerusalem, Haifa and Be'er Sheva.

Living in fear

No organization or authority gathers data on the numbers of children of foreign workers, and certainly not about those who have left, but Mesila has partial data that indicates the scope of the departures. In 2003, for example, 60 children of were registered at two municipal kindergartens in the courtyard of the Bialik school, kindergartens that almost exclusively served the children of foreign workers. This year registration fell to 45. Enrollment in the improvised kindergartens in private homes has declined even more.

"Last year," says Edna Alter-Dambo, Mesila's director, "35 women participated in our nursery and kindergarten school teachers training course and we knew there were 40 such classes with about 15 children each, for a total of 600 children. This year only 7 women have registered for the course and there are about 15 active classes, which means 225 children."

It is uncertain whether all the others have left. Some families keep their children at home out of fear. One foreign worker from Nigeria related that since witnessing the arrest of a friend after he brought his daughter to kindergarten, he has stopped sending his children to classes. There are currently several families in which the father does not work, for fear of being arrested, and if there are small children, he takes care of them.

Other parents take their children with them to work. "I know it is not good for the child," says P., from Bolivia, "but to be left without a father is even worse." P. considered registering for voluntary departure, mainly due to the Immigration Authority's posters declaring its intention to arrest and deport whole families.

That, however, has not been done so far, and it is doubtful whether it is possible from a legal standpoint, but P. has already learned to believe in the worst. Now he is happy he did not register. He figures that since the operation is over and the threats were not realized, it will be much harder to deport families with children.

"It will always be possible to make our lives difficult," he says. "They can take away the man and leave the woman alone with the children. That is really hard, but here at least the children have school and medical care, even when there is no money to pay. In by country, there are 5-year-olds who go to work instead of to school."

M., an 11-year-old girl from Nigeria whose mother remained here after her father was deported, says that many of her friends have left since the beginning of the school year. "Now I have no one to play with or to do homework with," she says. "After school I just sit at home and wait for my mother."

Alter-Dambo says that whereas Mesila once served mainly as a source of information, today people come mainly for assistance, and the organization's resources, which were never great, are constantly shrinking.

"We used to be able to recruit the community's help," explains Alter-Dambo. "Today the community is collapsing or does not exist, and there is no one to turn to. We see teens wandering the streets, as is happening to the second generation of immigrants, and there is no one to care for them."

In the past two months five babies have been abandoned at the police station in Holon.

"That would not have happened before," continues Alter-Dambo. "It is happening now because all the [support] systems have collapsed and now a single parent mother has nowhere to turn. She is helpless. We tend to forget the reality they came from and why they are insistent on staying here. This problem is not unique to Israel, but rather we are part of the global problem of migrant workers and in other places around the world better and more humane solutions were found for coping with the problem."

No provisions

"Humane solutions?" wonders Rami Adot of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). "No procedures have yet been established for deciding whether to grant visas when there are humanitarian circumstances that justify this, and there are families for whom deportation to their countries of origin will cause their children irreversible harm and possibly even death."

Adot is referring to children born with AIDS, congenital defects or other diseases that require blood transfusions or operations. PHR recently filed a petition with the Immigration Authority requesting that the Interior Ministry be ordered to provide visas, even temporary ones, to five such families. The petition was rejected for technical reasons and Adot says that soon five separate petitions will be filed.

All the children in these families were born in Israel. Interior Ministry spokesperson Tova Elinson told Haaretz in response that the ministry has no committee to discuss the children of foreign workers who are sick and that the ministerial committee, headed by Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, will discuss the status of the children of foreign workers, "including this issue."

"There must be an escape hatch for exceptional cases," says Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, chairman of the National Council for the Child. "It is not true that Israel will be flooded with refugees and migrants if families with a sick child are allowed to stay here for humanitarian reasons."

Kadman says that even healthy children pay a heavy price for the arrests and deportations. Children who wait in fear every night for a knock on the door, not knowing when they will be deported, feel terrible; unwanted, with a lack of belonging and a lot of fears."

N., however, says that he does feel he belongs here. He prays every night for peace in Israel and for the welfare of the Israel Defense Force soldiers. His private prayer is to be allowed to enlist in the IDF.

"I am Israeli an all Israelis serve in the army," he explains. In the meantime he leaves in fear of being deported and seldom goes out to play with his friends. He as already witnessed arrests, seen men being led away in handcuffs, heard their wives and children crying. He also knows there will soon be a few more empty seats in the classrooms of Municipal School 6, where he is a student.

"It is sad when a very good friend leaves," he says.