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

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

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.

Jordan to strip citizenship from Abbas, other Palestinian officials

Batya Jerenberg

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) with Jordanian King Abdullah. (Issam Rimawi/FLASH90

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is among those set to lose their Jordanian passports.

Some of the most senior and well-known leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are set to lose their Jordanian citizenship, according to a Jerusalem Post report quoting the London-based Raialyoum newspaper on Wednesday.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas and long-time PA negotiators Saeb Erekat and Abu Ala are three of the approximately 30 senior PA and Fatah officials and their families who are going to lose their citizenship rights, which they had requested – and received – many years ago.

The report added that those stripped of citizenship would also only be given temporary visitors’ visas when they entered Jordan again in the future. It gave no explanation as to why King Abdullah II decided to make this move now.

It has been known for years that these senior officials had Jordanian citizenship, although the fact did not sit well with many in Amman or the PA. It seemed especially egregious in 2011, when the Hashemite Kingdom decided to revoke the citizenship of tens of thousands of Palestinians in response to those same leaders who wanted them to stop giving out Jordanian citizenship so that the people would “consolidate their Palestinian identity,” as reported in the press at the time.

In an editorial, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi publication criticized those Palestinian leaders harshly.

“This is shameful for them because they and their families should be proud of their Palestinian citizenship,” the paper wrote. “If they don’t believe in their own citizenship and are not proud of it, this means that they are not loyal to the Palestinian Authority and don’t deserve to speak on its behalf.”

That same year, a Jordanian lawyer, Anis F. Kassim revealed in an interview with a pro-Palestinian website that according to the Jordanian citizenship law, “it is possible to revoke the citizenship of a Jordanian citizen who is in the civil service of a foreign authority or government.” However, there are several rounds of decision-making, and the citizen has the right of appeal, all of which, he said, were “completely ignored when the citizenship of a Jordanian of Palestinian origin is revoked.”

The most well-known revocation of Palestinian Arabs’ citizenship was in 1988, when King Hussein officially surrendered Jordan’s claim to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. Jordan had illegally annexed the area in 1950 and granted citizenship to all its permanent Arab residents. Twenty-one years after losing the territory to Israel in 1967’s Six Day War, Hussein recognized the PLO’s claim to the region as part of a so-called “State of Palestine,” and in that move stripped over 100,00 Arab inhabitants of any claim to Jordanian nationality.

The Spielberg Jewish Film Archive – Campus in Jerusalem

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