Are there 20,000 or 20,000,000 refugees in Israel?

There is growing support in the Knesset for a controversial government bill that aims to prevent asylum seekers from entering via the Israeli-Egyptian border. But human rights groups charge that this support stems from false information from the Israel Defense Forces.

The bill, which has passed its first reading, states that anyone who enters Israel without a permit, including refugees, will be subject to immediate expulsion or imprisonment. The human rights organizations say this violates Israel's commitments under the international Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Two weeks ago, the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers toured the southern border, led by Brig. Gen. Harel Knafo, a senior officer in the IDF Southern Command. The tour was preparation for today's committee discussion on the bill.

But the statement the committee issued afterward included what human rights groups charged was false data. Moreover, when one such group, the Hotline for Migrant Workers, asked permission to attend today's meeting to present what it said were the true figures, it was turned down. The reason? Since the asylum seekers in question were not in Israel, they were none of the organization's business.

The hotline's workers said they were shocked by this decision. "Since the Committee on Foreign Workers was established, there has not been a meeting to which human rights organizations were not invited," said one. "Apparently, they are afraid to hear our data: that there are not 1 million migrants waiting to enter, and that this figure is not based on real information, just hatred of foreigners."

The committee statement had claimed that "a million migrant workers from Africa are in the process of being 'absorbed' in Sinai and are waiting to infiltrate into Israel."

Bill Van Oswald, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, also insisted that this was nonsense. There are 750,000 Sudanese - the largest group of asylum seekers - in Egypt, he said, but most have been there for years and have no desire to leave.

"Almost all the migrants who came to Israel are people who requested asylum at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo, waited for years for their situation to improve, and lost hope," he said. "Today, there are around 20,000 people in this situation, and they are the relevant ones. Certainly not 1 million."

An information bulletin issued by the UNHCR office in Cairo in September said there were 41,423 asylum seekers in Egypt at that time, including 22,689 from Sudan and 1,638 from Eritrea. Of these, it said, around 10,000 have not contacted the office in recent years, which implies that they probably have moved to Israel.

Human rights groups also took issue with the Knesset committee's assertion that "only a small and marginal fraction of the migrants that infiltrate are refugees." Since the state has not bothered to consider the applications of a single Sudanese or Eritrean asylum seeker in recent years, they said, it has no way of knowing whether this is true.

Sudanese applicants are not considered because Sudan is formally at war with Israel, so Israel has no legal obligation to accept Sudanese refugees. Eritrean applicants are being ignored because Israel fears that recognizing them as refugees would endanger its diplomatic ties with Eritrea. While these are not the only African countries whose nationals have entered Israel, both are noted for abusing their citizens, so their nationals might well meet the criteria for recognition as refugees.

According to UNHCR's annual report for 2008, which is based on information submitted by member states, Israel had 9,137 officially recognized refugees within its borders as of the end of that year and 4,631 asylum seekers whose applications were still under consideration.

MK Yaakov Katz (National Union), who chairs the Committee on Foreign Workers, is currently abroad, but his aide said the committee statement was based on IDF data, and "if someone says the numbers are different, we'll accept that."

Regarding the exclusion of human rights groups from today's meeting, he explained, "We aren't discussing workers in Israel, but those across the border who are interested in entering illegally."

However, he added, the numbers are not really important, as "we can't approve the absorption of even 20,000 people."

The IDF said in response: "The committee examining the problem of foreign workers conducted a tour two weeks ago of the southern border of the State of Israel. The committee received precise, reliable figures on [asylum seekers'] infiltration in recent years, and on potential trends in the future."