Darfur Finds Peace in the Middle East

This summer, while attending a conference in Jerusalem, I couldn’t help but notice a fellow participant repeatedly leave the room to take urgent calls on her cell phone. In speaking with her over lunch that day, I learned that she worked for the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the rights of undocumented migrant workers and refugees in Israel. As a land of immigrants, Israel is continuously absorbing foreigners from all reaches of the globe—traditionally Eastern and Western Europe, but more recently Thailand, the Philippines and, on that day, Sudan. Of pressing concern were the 50 African refugees—most of them reportedly from the war-torn region of Darfur in Sudan—who were barred entry into Israel from Egypt.

Tensions ran high during the weeks that followed, as human-rights groups and concerned citizens vehemently opposed Israel’s refusal to take in these people in need. But by the first week of September, Israel made an about-face, and announced that it would grant citizenship—and all associated benefits—to several hundred refugees from the Darfur region. This case study serves as a prime example of the type of real-time diplomacy and policy adjustments that could and should be implemented in order to appropriately respond to refugees in immediate need.

So how did this burgeoning debate begin in the first place? Given the nation’s history, as well as that of the Jewish people as a whole, one would assume that Israel would have compassion for those escaping genocide. However, due to reasons of national security and political imperatives, Israel denies asylum to any person coming from an “enemy state.” Sudan’s Muslim government has maintained historical and ongoing hostility toward Israel.

Therefore, instead of being allowed into Israel, Darfurians were either detained or forced across the border back into Egypt. While Israeli government officials told Reuters that they had received commitments from Egypt promising that refugees therein would not be forced to return to Sudan, other eyewitnesses, including members of the Israeli military, reported seeing Egyptian security officers bludgeoning several refugees to death. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into the killing of 28 Sudanese protesters in Cairo. Israel seemed to be caught between foregoing its right to safe and secure borders and sending already vulnerable and traumatized people to a fate not much better than that which they were escaping.

The issue was compounded by the controversy over whether Israel’s practice of selecting out refugees from enemy states is legal in the first place. Known as “Section Six,” the exclusion of enemy nationals has no basis in any Israeli legislation, and is found only in unofficial administrative instructions issued by the Ministry of Justice. Section Six appears to be antithetical to the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) and the 1951 Refugee Convention—both of which Israel has ratified. The Convention specifically prohibits states from applying “enemy nationals” rules to refugees fleeing persecution and obligates them to protect civilians “without discrimination as to ... country of origin.”

Israel’s exclusionary policy posed a challenge for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and thus a compromise was struck: the U.N. would agree to resettling enemy nationals in exchange for Israel’s setting up its own asylum system. But the UNHCR acknowledged this as a “one-off solution” and stated that it could not “endorse this systematic resettlement of refugees from so-called ‘enemy countries’ in Israel.”

But come September, the Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said that he would work with the U.N. to establish a quota for granting Israeli citizenship to Darfurian refugees, recognizing the humanitarian and moral imperative and the realistic constraints of a small country to absorb any group en masse. Some activists are still concerned that this ad-hoc response will fall subject to the whims of the times.

Despite these minor shortcomings, Israel’s move in this matter can be held up as a model for other nations struggling politically about taking action to serve refugees in need. Working together with the U.N. and responding to the call for action, Israel will now provide Darfurians with the safety and refuge that they need and are afforded by international law. If Israel—a country preoccupied by ongoing strife with Palestinians and other hostile neighbors—can amend its policies to do the right thing, other nations should take heed and follow suit when faced with a similar humanitarian challenge.

The author is a student in the Mailman School of Public Health and the Graduate School of Business.