To date, more than 1,400 of the 2,000 African migrants being held in Israeli detention facilities have filed requests for asylum. Until two weeks ago, the state hadn’t responded to a single one.
Since then it has rejected every claim it has processed.
(Israel begins sweeping rejection of Eritrean asylum claims)
Leonard Fein offered some statistics back in May:
In recent years, there have been 4,322 applications for refugee status; according to Physicians for Human Rights, three have been processed and approved. (The figures are murky. A different report estimates between 35,000 and 38,000 asylum seekers, the vast majority of whom, knowing how slim are the odds that they will actually be processed, let alone approved as “legitimate” refugees, have not applied for asylum. Of those who have applied, less than one percent have been processed and accepted as refugees.)
To be fair, I’m not sure if “less than one percent” is par for the course. Perhaps most of the asylum seekers genuinely don’t have compelling stories, or can’t avail themselves of the proof necessary to make their case. On the other hand, Israel’s government may have more pragmatic reasons for denying asylum, such as trying to prevent another source of racial tension in the region by admitting large numbers of African migrants into Israel. This, of course, creates its own set of problems (namely, the use of race as a determinative factor in asylum petitions rather than actual danger to the applicant’s life). Nonetheless, the situation of African migrants in Israel remains a sticky issue.
