Post date: Jun 17, 2012 2:57:33 PM
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (JUNE 17, 2012) (REUTERS) - Israel launched a high-profile deportation drive against African migrants on Sunday (June 17) with an airlift of South Sudanese people whose government said they would be welcomed back as economic assets.
Tens of South Sudanese migrants taken to Israeli airport ahead of planned deportation. South Sudanese official tells Reuters in an exclusive interview that returnees will have many opportunities in their homeland.
The planned weekly repatriation flights from Tel Aviv to Juba have been played up by the Israeli government amid uncertainty as to how it might deal with much greater migrant influxes from Sudan, a hostile country, and war-ravaged Eritrea.
Hastened by street protests, some violent, against some 60,000 African migrants in the Jewish state that sees them as a threat to public order and demographics, the government seized on the South Sudanese, whose de facto refugee status was rescinded by an Israeli court this month given their fledgling country's relative stability.
"We have already said we are leaving, and that is it. We don't want anything from this country. We said thank you very much to the country. For five years we have been here, we never said anything, we never created a mess. We need to go. Tell me why should children be sitting in jail up until now? They want to leave," said an unnamed South Sudanese woman at the meeting point in Tel Aviv's central bus station. Buses from Tel Aviv and the southern Israeli cities of Arad and Eilat carried the 120 to 150 first deportees to Israel's national air port.
The decision was supported by Juba. Formally independent from Sudan since last July, the African country received clandestine Israeli help for decades prior and counts on wider investment in its struggling agriculture and oil sectors.
"South Sudan and Israel, I am telling you, we consider ourselves brothers and sisters," Clement T. Dominic, the South Sudanese official overseeing the airlifts set to begin on Sunday night, told Reuters in an interview. "The situation is good (at) home, and that is why we are encouraging the people to return back," he said.
Dominic put the number of South Sudanese in Israel at 700, less than half the 1,500 figure given by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government - a discrepancy that may be due to administrative confusion over those who arrived before Juba's independence.
According to Dominic, most of the migrants would leave voluntarily, encouraged by the free transport and Israeli handouts of 1000 euros per adult and 300 euros per child, which he described as a "good package".
"There is a lot of potential in South Sudan, and some of these people, I think, they got skills in here in Israel, in hotel industries, in small business, and when they get back home they are definitely going to contribute to the development of the new nation. There are a lot of opportunities, defiantly people with skills they will be getting a job," said Dominic, whose title is under-secretary of the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry.
The first flight was scheduled to leave Israel at 12 PM local (2100GMT) and land in Juba. Dominic said the airlifts would be completed by next month. Hundreds of Sudanese have previously been repatriated in similar flights from Israel.
Despite claims on oil reserves that have attracted Chinese interest, South Sudan remains plagued by border disputes with the north, and its 8.6 million population of mostly rural cattle herders and farmers endure some of the world's worse health and education levels.
William Tall of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Israel had assured his agency that South Sudanese who resist repatriation would be heard out by humanitarian authorities. Dominic predicted only a small number of such applications, citing 10 South Sudanese who had taken up studies in Israel, and another 6 who had married locals.
Israel, whose population of 7.8 million already suffers ethnic strains, has been slow to extend official asylum to the Africans. It disputes U.N. assessments about how many of them should be considered refugees rather than migrant workers.
Israeli organisation ASSAF, Aid Organization For Refugees And Asylum Seekers In Israel, disputed the South Sudanese claim of peaceful conditions for the migrants return.
"The South Sudanese community says and said reportedly in the past months, it is dangerous in South Sudan, we are afraid. We have no where to return to, war is raging in South Sudan, the humanitarian situation is very grave. We have seen people who packed tents to take with them, who took basic survival means because they know there will be no one there to accept them. They know they have just been thrown to the dogs," Orit Marom, public activity co-ordinator for ASSAF told Reuters in Tel Aviv.