Is the Refugee Crisis Spiraling Out of Control?

March 12, 2008

The refugee situation continues to spiral out of control. What started with 30 people in Tel Aviv with no place to sleep has quickly grown to 800 who need shelter. I have been impressed at how volunteers have been able to distribute food to the refugees on a budget of $0. Volunteers call food service sites, restaurants, and caterers for their surplus food at the end of the day and have had teams of drivers to pick up and distribute. As these are volunteers, there are always lapses and sometimes there is no food for a few days. Refugees with jobs and money have to share with the others.

Toilets: The city has allowed us to use a bomb shelter in the park where refugees gather. There are no restrooms, appliances, or water in or around the site. They are crammed inside this bunker, below the ground and sleep on mattresses and blankets on the cement floor. Every square inch is covered with a body at night. Often, two people share a single mattress. Outside, the city has placed 5 portable toilets. There is rarely paper but, as concerned citizens donate clothing, there is a surplus of women’s and children’s clothing. I found out the use for this clothing when I was picking up scattered clothing around the toilets. The company that rents the toilets refuses to clean them. They claim the clothing tossed in the toilets prohibits them from being cleaned. So, as passers by open the doors and urinate on the floor, the urine flows and forms a muddy puddle next to the entrance of the shelter. Only extra donated clothing blocks the stream from pouring into the bunker. 80 men from Eritrea, Darfur, and Ivory Coast live here.

Yael Dayan (Moshe Dayan’s daughter), the Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv, has been very active in helping. However, the city can only bear so much of the burden. She talked to a contact that allowed us to use an abandoned building for a few weeks on Motzkin Street that is about a one-hour walk from where most of the refugees stay. It is an upper scale neighborhood that is about two blocks from a park on the beach. We housed 100 Eritreans and 30 people from the Ivory Coast. The neighbors were doting and generous. They cooked, purchased and delivered supplies, and extended their care and concern on a daily basis. The residents felt adopted and loved. While the shelters near the Central Bus Station rarely had enough food each day, the shelter in the north always had a three to four day supply of food and water. The toilet didn’t work but they were able to carry water in the place with a bucket to flush the single toilet.

Last weekend, two buses came up from Eilat, the resort city in the Red Sea, to take 75 people with work visas to receive the minimum wage of US$5.60/hour to work in hotels. They had food and housing for them but deducted funds from their monthly salary for this. They didn’t fill the buses as several refugees either

didn’t think they paid enough or
had been working in Tel Aviv and had not received their latest paycheck. They didn’t want to forego what they had already earned.

The refugees that went to Eilat were immediately replaced by new refugees from Darfur, Eritrea, and the Ivory Coast that had just come from the border or been released from prison. The shelters were overcrowded again. New arrivals constantly stream in without notice.

Shelters are always “temporary” with the hope that refugees will find work and crowd themselves into their own apartments. There are already over 4000 African refugees that have done just that. Yet, there are the people that are in the shelters that are unable to gain work permits from the country and therefore can only gain work by working illegally if they can find work at all. This work is more risky and sparse. The government stated that only those arriving before last December 25th could have visas. Those that came afterward could not legally work although they can remain in the country under UN protection. Such protection keeps them dependant on housing and food as few places will hire illegal workers. There are even occasional cases where employers refuse to pay them for past work because they claim they didn’t know they could not legally work. There is an NGO here that helps the refugees with such cases.

We gathered volunteers and delivered the food and cooking supplies from the Motzkin shelter to the other shelters in preparation for the eviction on Monday. We knew when the last day was and Yael had committed to the owner that they would be out. The normal food volunteers had not been able to work for the past couple of days and the refugees were famished. We quickly unloaded the food and supplies before the masses or people found us and ripped the cars and vans apart to get the food.

The Motzkin refugees finally acquiesced and agreed to vacate. We gave them bus fare and they moved to the refugee park with what they could carry. Some were able to convince friends to let them stay temporarily in their apartments. The organization, African Refugee Development Center (ARDC), that attempts to manage the shelters had assured Yael that the building would be cleaned and vacated. However, the refugees could only carry a few items and the neighbors had been generous. There were dozens of mattresses and clothes that were neatly stacked inside. There were also huge carefully tied piles of unneeded clothing on the curb for the garbage men to take. There were already Israeli vagrants sifting through the items on the curb, leaving it messier than it had been. This, of course, gets blamed on the refugees.

Nearly 130 people had no place to sleep Monday night and slept in the refugee park outside of the other shelters. During the next day, they went inside and slept while those that had been inside looked for work. Yesterday morning, the worst case scenario happened. There was a fire in the basement floor of the largest shelter where all of the men lived and slept in bunk beds. The entire shelter of 260 men, women, children, and the sick had to be evacuated. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Yael had to convince the fire department to allow the residents to go back inside as they had no where else to go. The basement was now smoky and there was a food of water on the floor. Most of the men were able to wade to their bunks although many of their clothes were floating.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a meeting in Yael’s office above Rabin Square with a spectacular view of the city. I was the only non-Israeli in attendance of the 12 people there. There were a couple of older doctors that were explaining TB, AIDS, and scabies issues. Yossi Kuchic, the Chief of Staff under the Ehud Barak administration was also there. I would love to tell the details of the meeting but as I sat through the 90 minute meeting, I thought about how I need to return to the Hebrew school. I only understood about 10% of what was said. I saw Yossi writing a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to pressure him for help. It was explained to me that the strategy that I would help implement, would be as follows:

We would move anyone that did not have a place to sleep to a park next to the Hilton Hotel on the beach in the wealthy north of Tel Aviv. It seemed that a refugee problem around the Central Bus Station was old news for the media. The fact that the government was not doing anything to help them was not heard loud enough so we thought that seeing them camping out with no shelter in the back yard of the wealthy might raise some eyebrows. We marched about 100 refugees the 1 hour walk back to the Motzkin shelter where they were able to grab mattresses and blankets to walk the two blocks to the park on the beach. Many had not eaten all day and we purchased food (with the money that many of you donated) at the cheap markets near the other shelters. We also called the neighbors to bring food. They camped there and we called the media this morning to come to see the conditions of African refugees in Israel. Several reporters and photographers came today. We will see what happens next. Yael had informed the local authorities not to bother the new campers. She called me today and told me that there is a large tent being assembled that can house about 300 people in Tel Aviv. There will be toilets and water for them and they can come and go as they please. You heard it here, first. It is meant to be a temporary solution yet we know this could last for 10 or 15 years…

Randy