It seems that this particular battle in the fight for Israel to apply any lesson whatsoever from its much-touted heritage as the country of refugees has come to an end. After admitting the asylum-seekers were already on Israeli territory (the fence to which they clung was built several meters east of the actual border), and after getting a three-day breather from the Supreme Court (loathe as ever to force the state to abide by international law), the state proposed the starved, parched twenty people on the border a compromise. The women (one of whom had reportedly miscarried a few days back and was still not offered medical attention) and a 14-years-old boy will be taken into Israel. The 17 men will be handed over to Egyptian troops; at best, one might hope, they’ll be detained in Egypt. At worse, which is what Israeli reports are hinting at, they’ll be sent back to Eritrea – the one country in the world ranked under North Korea for press freedom, and by all respectable accounts the worst dictatorship on the African continent. As blogger Elisabeth Tsurkov (@elizrael) wrote on Facebook as the news broke out, it’s hard not to be awed by the self-sacrifice of the Eritrean men, who after all they have been to, agreed to be sucked into the vortex of imprisonment and possibly torture and death, simply to allow the two women and the teenager to be rescue. How petty and small the “western”, “enlightened,” “advanced” Israeli state with its vain proclamations of “never again” seems in comparison to the nobleness of these seventeen men.

Let there be no mistake – for Israel there was much more in stake in this affair than human lives (although establishing the exact worth of non-Jewish lives in the eyes of Interior Minister Eli Yishai is perhaps more of a matter for microbiologists than for political analysts). The state was already forced to admit in the court that the border fence, built with more fanfare than a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard inauguration ritual, was set within Israeli territory, removed from the actual borderline, and therefore, legally, completely worthless; the asylum seekers might well have been claiming their asylum in the centre of Tel Aviv. Establishing this fact in the public consciousness had to be avoided at all costs, and letting in and detaining three more Africans, under a preposterous flag of “humanitarian concern” (after starving the same people for six days) was probably deemed a reasonable price to pay to avoid this debacle, so long as the rest could be blackmailed to crawl away and die elsewhere. The army has also told the press (which it allowed nowhere near the group) that after not managing to communicate with the refugees enough to establish their medical situation, the soldiers suddenly found a common language and were relieved to learn the men “had come to Israel to look for work” and “made no mention of being persecuted in their country.” Considering only this morning the IDF was caught lying about having transferred food to the refugees, I’ll chance a libel suit and voice my disbelief that any such conversation took place.

This particular battle was won, overwhelmingly, by the state (although relentless public pressure on stage and behind the scenes did save three human lives, and there is every reason for those who pitched in to take pride in that). The stage is now set for the next group already making its way across the desert. Will they be chased away by tear gas? Intercepted, as reported last month, by IDF jeeps intruding deep into Sinai to hand them over to Egyptian troops? Raped and tortured to death by the mafiosi smugglers of Sinai? My only hope is that next time, it won’t take five days for us to learn of the next such group, and that we won’t bother with appeals and op-eds and court petitions. Priority from now one will be to establish contact with such groups before they are cordoned off by the IDF, to find out whether they claim asylum, and to offer them medical help if required. Legal tussle against the state can be postponed till later.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks on the decision to have 3 refugees enter and hand the rest to the Egyptian army:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 6 September 2012), commented on the solution that was achieved in the framework of which the infiltrators who had been next to the border fence between Israel and Egypt went back the way they came and two women and the child entered Israel. “It is important that everyone understand that Israel is no longer a destination for infiltrators. We are determined to stop the flood of infiltrators that has been here. We built this fence and it has already lowered the number of infiltrators by 90%. We will intensify steps against those who employ illegal infiltrators and we will continue the effort to return infiltrators to their countries of origin,” the Prime Minister said.

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Just been informed by sources that three of the refugees – two women and a boy – were allowed in, the rest turned towards Egypt. This seems to be corroborated by an Haaretz newflash. Don’t know how this deal was reached, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an attempt by the government to avoid an HCJ decision on Sunday. On this note, it is worth mentioning that once more, as in the case of the Palestinian huger strikers, the court takes it own sweet time when it comes to the lives of non-Jews: it decided not to reach a decision today, but to delay it until Sunday. While the refugees waited in the heat, with no food.

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 In the end it all comes down to people who make decisions. Somewhere in the IDF, or in the government, there is a person or persons, who think that Eritrean asylum seekers who are stuck in the middle of the desert between two fences should get water and protection from the sun – but not food or medical care. Imagine a human being sitting in an office, most likely air conditioned as summer is still blazing pretty strong in our parts, thinking: “hm, well, no human can go long without water, but if we give them that they’ll probably make it without food for… donno, maybe two weeks, no problem, right? Ya, let’s do that.”

And the thing is – it wouldn’t even be the first discussion of the kind in IDF offices. Earlier today the Supreme Court ruled that the army must disclose its “red lines” document, which entails military plans to define just how many calories per day a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip might need in order to live, and translate those figures into just how many truckloads of food should be allowed in the strip to prevent people from dying of hunger. This policy was put together during the harsher levels of the siege on Gaza. Later policy papers ruled what kinds of products are to be considered necessary for human survival (rice) and what is to be considered luxury (pasta).

These are actual human beings making these decisions. They go to work in the morning, come back home to their families in the evening, and perhaps even think they’re giving service to society. Isn’t that simply horrid?

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