Omer Easa is watching the violence roiling his native Sudan with deep trepidation. The further Sudan sinks into chaos and violence, he fears, the longer he is likely to remain an unrecognised asylum-seeker in Israel, where he has few protections.
Backers of migrants like Easa say their rights will likely come under greater threat if Israel’s government, its most right-wing ever, moves ahead on a contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary.
The plan, if it passes in its original form, could lead to legal measures that would embitter the everyday lives of the migrants and, critics say, make their stay in Israel intolerable.
“My heart is there. My head is there. It is just that my body is here,” said Easa, 31, who said he fled the war-torn region of Darfur in 2012 over concerns for his life. “We live here often thanks to the graces of the Supreme Court.”
Proponents of the legal overhaul say the migrants are a main reason the plan must move ahead.
African migrants, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, began arriving in Israel in 2005 through its porous border with Egypt. Israel initially turned a blind eye to their influx and many took up menial jobs in hotels and restaurants. But as their numbers swelled to a high of about 60,000, there was a backlash, with growing calls to expel the new arrivals. After years of attempts to push them out, they now number about 25,000, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry. Easa is one of thousands of Sudanese migrants in Israel who live a precarious existence. Israel recognises very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.