Sinai

Palestinians wait to cross the Rafah Border Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, January 29, 2019. (Activestills/Mohammed Zaanoun)

Feeling less than human: The hell of crossing into Gaza

My Palestinian ID means I’m one of few able to enter the besieged Gaza Strip. But the journey via Egypt requires submitting to days of arbitrary humiliation.

By Hebh Jamal August 26, 2022

Najana Kombi, the refugee neighborhood where many Eritrean asylum seekers who came from Israel live. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Pushed out by Israel, asylum seekers find only limbo in Uganda

+972 Magazine joins Meretz MKs Mossi Raz and Michal Rozin in Rwanda and Uganda to find out what happens to the asylum seekers Israel is deporting there. After meeting humanitarian organizations, parliamentarians, and refugees, one thing becomes clear: Most are forced to continue their quest for safety and security elsewhere.

By Oren Ziv February 27, 2018

African asylum seekers take part at a protest against the "Deposit Law" in Tel Aviv on June 10, 2017. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Israel to deliver asylum seekers to the hands of human smugglers

Even as it invokes the Holocaust at every turn, Israel is feeding the people who most need its protection to a brutal human smuggling industry. In doing so, it becomes an active player in the worst migration crisis since the Jewish people’s near-extinction. Exactly one decade ago, liberal Israelis were boasting of their government’s treatment of…

By Noa Yachot December 29, 2017

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Secretary of State John Kerry waves goodbye. (File photo by State Dept.)

After Kerry, only BDS may save the two-state solution

Not even Ben-Gurion would be able to rally the political support necessary to displace masses of settlers as long as there is no price to be paid for the occupation. So how much longer can liberal Zionists sit and watch the status quo remain static? If instead of trying to persuade Israel to change, two-state…

By Larry Derfner May 19, 2014

African asylum seekers show scars caused by torture from human smugglers in the Sinai desert, February 11, 2013. (Photo by Activestills.org)

What the bones remember: Israeli doctors talk torture

How can signs of deliberate physical injury be detected years after they were caused? What are the physical and psychological ramifications of torture for its victims? How can we cope with the moral dilemmas raised by treating captives and prisoners? Physicians who attended the first workshop in Israel devoted to locating and treating torture victims…

By +972 Magazine April 1, 2014

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (US Gov't Work)

His finest hours: On Sharon’s murderous legacy

From the Qibya massacre, to Sabra and Shatila and the dirty tricks, lies and deceptions that made the West Bank settlements what they are today, Ariel Sharon has caused unimaginable damage to Israel, its army, morality, and political life. (Translated by Sol Salbe) On Saturday night, as soon as Ariel Sharon’s death became known, our hyperactive education…

By Yossi Gurvitz January 13, 2014

Eritrean refugee Zabib Sultan gives testimony, May 23, 2013 (Social TV)

WATCH: Eritrean refugee’s shocking personal testimony

Zabib Sultan, an asylum seeker from Eritrea who heads the Eritrean Women’s Community Center, shares a shocking testimony about her and other women’s experiences on their way to Israel. She gave her testimony during a meeting organized by Amnesty International and the ASAF NGO on May 23, 2013.

By Social TV May 31, 2013

Saharonim (photo: Laissez Passer)

Abducted from Sudan, tortured in Sinai: Mother and child languish in Israeli jail

After facing brutal treatment at the hands of Sinai smugglers, an Eritrean mother and her baby daughter – who did not intend to go to Israel – have found themselves victim to Israeli policy, despite not having done a thing to deserve such a fate. By Anat Ben-Dor There are things one can do only when…

By Laissez Passer October 1, 2012

Isayas Teklebrhan at a demonstration in Saharonim, August 31, 2012 (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills)

Eritrean activist: Asylum seekers plea for safety, compassion

Last week, asylum seekers and their Israeli supporters traveled south to the Saharonim prison near the Egyptian border, where thousands of asylum seekers are held. The prison is presently under expansion to hold thousands more – new Israeli legislation, coming amidst a package of moves to put pressure on refugees and asylum seekers, now enables…

By +972 Magazine September 7, 2012

Solidarity protest with prisoner Khader Adnan, Ofer prison in the West Bank, February 2012 (photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills.org)

Palestinian prisoners, Eritrean refugees: On the outskirts of Israeli law

In the case of the refugees trapped on the Israeli border, as in the matter of hunger striking prisoner Khader Adnan, Israel’s highest court wriggled out of a decision, escaping the shackles of democracy and international law that are supposed to guide its work. Last February, a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail was on the…

By Noa Yachot September 7, 2012

Ketsiot Prison (Yonatan Berman)

A scorching desert jail for asylum seekers, with no way out

While Eritrean asylum seekers cannot be deported due to the risk they would face upon return, the new Prevention of Infiltration Law enables Israel to keep them in prison indefinitely. New arrivals, most having faced rape and torture en route to Israel, are presently being held in a prison in the desert, and nobody knows…

By Laissez Passer August 14, 2012

Lethal Sinai attack is connected to the Gaza blockade

The lethal attack on an Egyptian military outpost, in an attempted incursion into Israel, is another reminder of the terrorist infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula. This infrastructure was built in part on the basis of the Gaza-Egypt-Israel smuggling industry, which is fueled by the massive restrictions on movement and trade imposed on the Strip by…

By Roi Maor August 5, 2012

The tragedy and threat of African refugees in Israel

With at least 60,000 now in the country and 2,000 to 3,000 more coming every month, African refugees, for all the trauma they have been through, are unassimilable in this country. The first in a three-part series. On Friday, with the headlines screaming of Eritreans raping a 15-year-old Israeli girl, I went with a photographer friend to the Hatikva neighborhood in…

By Larry Derfner May 20, 2012