South Tel Aviv residents blast move to keep African migrants in Israel

Yehuda Shlezinger, Adi Hashmonai, Yori Yalon and Israel Hayom Staff

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Days after government reverses plan to forcibly deport illegal African migrants from Israel, residents of south Tel Aviv, where most of the migrants reside, voice alarm • “How can anyone live like this?” wonders one local, who says crime has skyrocketed.

After the state notified the High Court of Justice on Tuesday that it has abandoned plans to forcibly deport African asylum seekers, residents of south Tel Aviv expressed indignation at the government’s policy reversal.

Next to the cash register at Efraim Yaakobi’s shoe store in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Shaanan there is an unopened purple calendar. The cover says: “May all your dreams come true.”

“My dream is that it will go back to be the way it was around here,” Yaakobi says. “That Israelis will walk the streets, and that things will be good for the State of Israel.”

Yaakobi, 84, has owned his shoe shop in the Neve Shaanan promenade, near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, for over 50 years. The surrounding streets and neighborhoods have vastly transformed since the majority of the tens of thousands of illegal African migrants that have entered Israel settled in the south Tel Aviv neighborhoods.

The controversial issue of illegal immigration from Africa has divided the country, particularly since the state began issuing deportation notices to the migrants in January. Supporters of deportation policy say the migrants are not fleeing persecution in their home countries but rather seeking to improve their employment conditions. In addition, the residents of south Tel Aviv argue that their personal safety has been compromised since masses of African migrants settled in the area and that the quality of life in their neighborhoods has drastically deteriorated.

Opponents of the deportation policy argue that the migrants would face danger should they be forced to return to Africa, with some even comparing the deportation to the Holocaust.

Yaakobi, meanwhile, is disappointed with the latest government decision. “This is our country, and instead of them fearing us, we fear them,” he said. “Just this morning, several of them came into the jewelry store next door, pushed the clerk, ransacked the store and fled. By the time the police arrived they were gone. How can anyone live like this?”

Yaakobi, a father of five and grandfather of 11, has lived in the area for many years and knows it well. “Before there was a promenade, it was heaven,” he recalls. “Today everything is rented out to them [African migrants] and Israelis don’t come here. They are afraid, afraid that they will rob them or beat them, and they are right. They [African migrants] loiter around here in the morning drunk and high. You can’t pass through here.”

Yair Pur, who owns a luggage store, is also fed up. “Every day, there are assaults and attempted robberies. Someone needs to take responsibility for this place.”

Dejen Mengashe, one of the migrants who received a deportation notice, now voided, told Israel Hayom that “the government has been spreading many lies over the years. When I received my deportation notice and when there was talk about an agreement with other countries [to absorb the migrants], I knew that these were lies.”

However, the neighborhood activists have no intention of sitting idly by after the state’s announcement. Haim Goren, a leader of the anti-migrant movement in south Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, told Israel Hayom that “we will shake up the country. We will stage demonstrations, protests, we will apply pressure. We will do whatever it takes to make sure decision-makers make the necessary decisions.”

Since the African migrant crisis erupted several months ago, several civilian initiatives were launched to provide a housing solution, aimed at decreasing the pressure on south Tel Aviv. To date, some 2,250 Israeli families have volunteered to temporarily host asylum seekers in their homes, with some even saying they would be willing to provide them with more permanent housing.

During the first quarter of 2018, according to Population and Immigration Authority statistics, 668 asylum seekers have left the country voluntarily.

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