Opinion Columnist
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TEL
AVIV — It’s been obvious to me for some time that the Israeli-Arab
conflict is to wider global geopolitical trends what Off Broadway is to
Broadway. If you want a hint of what’s coming to a geopolitical theater
near you, study this region. You can see it all here in miniature. That
certainly applies to what’s becoming the most destabilizing and morally
wrenching geopolitical divide on the planet today — the divide between
what I call the “World of Order” and the “World of Disorder.”
And
Israel is right on the seam — which is why the last major fence Israel
built was not to keep West Bank Palestinians from crossing into Israel
but to keep more Africans from walking from their homes in Africa,
across the Sinai Desert, into Israel.
So
many new nations that were created in the last century are failing or
falling apart under the stresses of population explosions, climate
change, corruption, tribalism and unemployment. As these states
deteriorate, they’re hemorrhaging millions of people — more refugees and
migrants are on the road today than at any other time since World War
II — people trying to get out of the violent and unstable World of
Disorder and into the World of Order.
The
Broadway versions are the vast number of migrants from failing states
in Central America trying to get into the U.S. and from the Arab world
and Africa trying to get into Europe. The Off Broadway version is
playing out in Israel, to which, since 2012, roughly 60,000 Africans
from Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia have trekked — not to find kosher food,
Al Aqsa Mosque or the Via Dolorosa, but stability and a job.
Their
presence poses a huge ethical dilemma for a Jewish state, a nation of
refugees. Many Israelis on the right believe there is no place —
culturally, religiously or financially — for these Africans. Other
Israelis believe it a moral imperative to let them stay. Sound familiar?
Israel
has persuaded about 20,000 of the Africans who came to take $3,500 and
one-way air tickets back to an African state, but about 40,000 are still
here — where their kids are growing up speaking Hebrew. Israel is the
only home they know: Israel’s “Dreamers.”
Most
of the African refugees live in low-rent districts, like South Tel
Aviv, where, if you walk the streets today, you’ll hear enough African
languages spoken and see enough women in colorful African dresses to
make you wonder if you’re in Khartoum, not the Jewish state.
I
was curious to understand how people got here from Darfur, in Western
Sudan. To answer that question, Israel’s Reut think tank got me together
with Taj Haroun, 29, a Darfur refugee who traveled that path and is now
one of the leaders of Israel’s Darfur community.
“I
was born in Darfur in a small village, and when the war broke out there
in 2003, if you didn’t run you got killed,” Haroun began. His family
eventually found its way to a camp for internally displaced persons in
Sudan, “but that also became too dangerous, so my mom sent me to live
with her sister in Khartoum to be safe.” Haroun said his mom had to sell
the family’s dishes to get the money for him to travel. He was 17 at
the time. In 2007, he obtained a legal Sudanese passport and made his
way to Cairo.
After
getting into Egypt on a tourist visa, he overstayed, slipping out of
Cairo and working in the countryside as a guard. He eventually
registered at a church school to advance his education. “I wanted to
have a future,” he said.
It was around
this time, Haroun recalled, “I heard about Dafuris who had gone to
Israel and were safe and protected and were not being deported back to
Sudan. When I heard that I said, ‘That is my place.’” Did he know
anything about Israel? “Only that it was safe,” Haroun said.
So
how did he get here? On Feb. 4, 2008, he explained, he joined a group
of Darfur refugees in Cairo who had hired a Bedouin — at $300 a person —
to take them across Sinai and smuggle them into Israel. He actually
didn’t have the $300, but because the six others could pay, “the Bedouin
took me for free,” said Haroun. “We first got in a car in Cairo that
took us to a farm near Ismailia.”
After
10 days there, he added, the Bedouin came with a truck with sand in the
back, he dug a hole in it and put his passengers in it, covered it with
a tarp, and that way got them past the Egyptian Army checkpoints and
nearer the border.
“Then they put us
in a pickup and tied us together because they were driving very fast,”
Haroun continued. “When we got to the border there was an Egyptian fence
you had to climb, a road and then an Israeli fence. He told us to run
and don’t look back. So we ran into Israel, and the Egyptians were
shooting at us the whole time. It was like Darfur.”
Once
safely inside Israel they were picked up by an Israeli Army patrol,
transferred to Tel Aviv, linked up with the Darfuri community there and
applied for political asylum. But he and others are in limbo: The
Israeli government won’t give them asylum and permanent residency, but
many Israelis don’t want to evict them.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked out a deal with the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees that would have enabled 16,250 of these
African migrants in Israel to be resettled in “developed” Western
countries and a similar number to be given temporary residency in
Israel.
But
after some of his right-wing Likud party colleagues boisterously
objected to any Africans staying, Netanyahu panicked, canceled the deal
and then — crazily and despicably — blamed the New Israel Fund, a small
liberal, U.S.-based group that supports social programs in Israel, for
scuttling the deal.
Because he spoke
Arabic, Haroun quickly picked up Hebrew and worked in manual labor jobs,
but every two months has to renew his temporary visa while the
government looks for new ways to get him and other Darfuris to leave.
While
in this limbo, Haroun earned a B.A. and an M.A. in political science
and communications from Israeli universities, with his tuition paid by a
New York-based philanthropist, Joey Low, himself the son of
Holocaust-era refugees, an investor in Israel and an opponent of forced
deportations. “You can’t do something like this in the name of Jews and
Israel,” Low told The Times of Israel.
“The
Israeli people are super welcoming,” said Haroun. “I have been invited
for Shabbat dinners and the weddings of friends. They are giving us
opportunities and fighting for our rights. But the government is working
hard to push us out.”
Haroun said he
and his friends are trying to explain to Israel’s government and
business community what an asset they could be: “Israel has a lot of
companies working all over Africa. We could be their ambassadors and
representatives.” Why not? They speak Hebrew, know Israel and know
Africa. “We are normal people,” he added, “with dreams like everybody
else’s dreams — to have your family safe and be able to contribute to
your society.”
What Haroun’s story
underscores in miniature is the excruciating moral dilemma that
countries in the World of Order are going to be facing in the coming
years, because this World of Disorder will continue to widen, and the
old clear-cut distinctions — between people seeking political asylum
from tyranny, employment or escape from environmental disasters — are
over. They’ll be jumbled as economic and climate stresses combine with
tribalism to create civil strife in more and more countries, making more
and more people desperate to get to any island of order.
How
can Israel turn them away? But how can Israel take them all, which will
only invite more, and the supply is now endless? That’s what’s playing
Off Broadway. And unless the World of Order comes up with a collective
strategy to help stabilize the World of Disorder — not just build walls —
this play will have a long, wide run.
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