Israel was among the founding signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention, having gained independence in 1948 as a homeland for a people who had spent centuries stateless and, in the wake of the Holocaust, had nowhere else to go. Yet today, more than 30,000 asylum seekers, including roughly 8,000 children, live within its borders with no path to permanent residency.
The country's asylum approval rate hovers around 1%, among the lowest in the Western world. Refugees from Sudan, fleeing the Darfur genocide, and from Eritrea, fleeing forced military conscription and severe repression, have been forced to build lives on the margins. What challenges have they faced, and how do their children, for whom Hebrew is their first language, and Israel the only home they've ever known, think about their future in a country that has closed off any path to permanence?
Journalist Theia Chatelle profiles several families living in Tel Aviv and Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, to paint a picture of both their resilience and the many challenges they face building lives in Israel, the "nation of refugees.” Her project traces how the country's asylum policy, dysfunctional at best and actively hostile at worst, continues to fail those it is meant to protect. The story is published in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the world's oldest Jewish news wire.
