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| By Mijal Grinberg | "Haaretz", May 09, 2007 |
IDF leaves 37 refugees stranded in downtown Be'er Sheva
Dozens of refugees from Darfur who infiltrated Israel during the past week and have been held in Israel Defense Forces bases were yesterday taken to the Southern District Police headquarters in Be'er Sheva. The police refused to take custody of the refugees and they were left in the street as welfare and military authorities scrambled to find a solution for them. Eventually they were transferred to a military housing facility in the city. Media reports of the refugees prompted the prime minister's adviser for social and welfare affairs, Vered Sued, to intervene. It was decided that Be'er Sheva's welfare authority would take care of the Sudanese families in a few days. The remaining refugees will be held by the police as illegal aliens. The reserve soldiers who had brought the refugees to the police headquarters drove off, leaving the refugees - men, women and children - in the street, surrounded by the media. They were accompanied by Eytan Schwartz, spokesperson of CARD - The Committee for Advancement of Refugees of Darfur - and Attorney Yonatan Berman, from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who are trying to find a solution to the problem. A Southern District Police spokesman said that the bus transporting the refugees was sent back to IDF Southern Command because "police deal with criminals, and this isn't the case." Over the past year, nearly 300 Sudanese have infiltrated Israel. Some of them survived the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, carried out by Arab militias who are supported by the Muslim government in Khartoum. The survivors fled first to Egypt, but suffered from harassment and economic distress there, so they fled to Israel. The IDF has been capturing the refugees on the border and sometimes keeping them on military bases for weeks. On numerous other occasions the IDF brought the refugees to Be'er Sheva and abandoned them there. Two months ago the IDF abandoned a Sudanese mother and her five children in Be'er Sheva after they underwent a medical examination at Soroka Medical Center. Two weeks ago the army expelled six Sudanese refugees who had infiltrated Israel. The Immigration Police cannot handle the refugees because they come from enemy states and cannot be sent back there. Thus there is no authority to look after them. "How come Israel sends millions to refugees in Chad but cannot spare a single shekel for those who come to Israel?" asked Schwartz. "Olmert, of all people, who owes his birth to the refuge his parents found in China, should understand the importance of this issue," he said. One of the refugees - a 20-year-old Christian - said that prior to infiltrating Israel he had spent four years in Egypt. "I left Israel because the situation there was difficult, I had no security. It is hard to live there as a Christian," he said. Flora arrived with her husband and two children, seven-month-old Abu and two-year-old Christina. "They are treating us well in Israel," she said yesterday. In 2005 Flora, a Christian, and her family fled Sudan for Egypt, where she says they were badly treated and beaten by the security forces. The face of one of the young refugees bears stitches, a result of the beating he received by the Egyptian forces. Flora and her husband did not know much about Israel, but decided to take the risk to come here anyway.
