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“A Land Made of Paper”: A Status Report on Refugees in Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n December 2024<\/p>\n \n Some 73,000 refugees reside legally in Israel. About 60,000 of them are covered under group protection due to the state’s decision not to deport them back to their home countries. Of these adult refugees and their children, about 24,000 are from Eritrea, 23,000 from Ukraine, 7,000 from Sudan, 8,000 from Ethiopia, and about 400 from Congo. Most have submitted individual applications for asylum (except for Ukrainian refugees because the state does not allow them to submit individual applications). Another approximately 12,000 asylum seekers from other countries who do not have group protection have submitted individual asylum applications that have not yet been decided upon, and they are protected from deportation.<\/p>\n However, the asylum system in Israel is not functional. To date, asylum status has only been granted to a few applicants. Their path to obtaining refugee status is blocked, while the group protection applied to them grants them virtually no rights. This means that tens of thousands of refugees and their children remain in Israel for many years with no social support network, state health insurance, or access to basic services and almost no chance for social and economic integration.<\/p>\n The refugees from Ukraine have been suffering from the current policy for “only” two and a half years, while the refugees from Africa and their children have been in this situation for almost twenty. The damages of this policy accumulate and increase exponentially. After almost two decades of living with no regulated status or without rights, the refugees and their children are facing extremely difficult economic, physical, and emotional conditions.<\/p>\n How We Got Here: The Failure of the Asylum System<\/strong><\/p>\n Less than 0.1% of the refugees in Israel have been granted official recognition<\/a>. Of the total number of asylum applications awaiting a decision, 17,041 (about 70%) have been awaiting a decision for over three years. These figures should alarm anyone who cares about democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance. Even asylum systems in other democratic countries that are considered dysfunctional recognize a significantly higher percentage of refugees than Israel does. For example, in 2023, 46% of those who applied for asylum status in the European Union received protection under refugee status<\/a>. The length of time that applications await a decision in Israel is unusual. According to European directives<\/a>, EU countries should decide on asylum applications within six months.<\/p>\n The failure of the Israeli asylum system becomes even more evident given that the asylum seekers in Israel awaiting decisions on their applications fled from Eritrea, Sudan, Russia, Ethiopia, Belarus, and now Ukraine (the latter, as mentioned, are prohibited from submitting asylum applications in Israel). In other democratic countries, asylum seekers from these six countries have the highest rates of recognition as refugees. The rate of recognition of Eritreans as refugees has consistently been one of the highest in the world for many years. In Europe, seekers from Eritrea, Ukraine, and Syria now have the highest rate of recognition, at over 80%.<\/a> However, in Israel, only a few Eritreans and no Ukrainians have been recognized as refugees. Several thousand Sudanese received temporary status (a residence Visa), following legal proceedings that forced the government to issue decisions. They were not granted this status because their asylum applications were examined, but the opposite \u2013 because the state refused to fulfill its duty and did not examine them.<\/p>\n These deliberate omissions and the policy behind them are also reflected in the Population Authority\u2019s repeated admission that since the establishment of the unit for examining asylum applications in 2009, it prioritizes reviewing applications that would be easy to reject and does not examine the applications<\/a> of asylum seekers who are in Israel under collective protection. From the perspective of senior Population Authority officials, there is no point in examining asylum applications of people who cannot be deported.<\/p>\n Over the years, international and state agencies including the State Comptroller and courts of various levels up to the Supreme Court have severely criticized this failure to process asylum applications. According to a 2018 State Comptroller’s report, the Deputy Attorney General warned, in 2017, that “there is a real legal difficulty in maintaining the pace of processing asylum applications, especially for asylum seekers from Eritrea and Darfur.”<\/p>\n In March 2023, the subsequent State Comptroller and the Deputy State Attorney recommended to the Interior Ministry that Eritreans residing in Israel be granted social rights in light of the lack of a decision on their asylum applications and the legal difficulties that arise from this. The government\u2019s gatekeepers are aware that Israel\u2019s asylum policy does not meet legal requirements. However, to date, this awareness has not led to a change in policy. This year marks the 15th year of the failure of Israel\u2019s asylum system.<\/p>\n The Destructiveness of Patchwork Policies: The Case of Health Insurance Regulations <\/strong><\/p>\n The refusal to grant asylum on the one hand and the policy of non-deportation on the other hand have led to an unusual result. Refugees, mainly from Africa, have been in Israel for many years, legally with a Visa that gives them almost no rights beyond the right to stay. Ukrainian refugees have only the tourist visas with which they entered Israel and have since been given blanket (not individual) extensions every few months.<\/p>\n Section 2(a)(5) of the Entry into Israel Law, according to its simple wording, allows the Minister of the Interior to grant a temporary visa to anyone who is about to leave Israel or be deported. The sin here is twofold. First, the so-called \u201c2a5 visa\u201d is not listed in the Entry into Israel Regulations, which specify the types of visas that the Ministry of the Interior grants. Second, the 2a5 Via allows someone about to be deported to stay in Israel temporarily but without rights, and this is obviously inappropriate for those who have been protected from deportation for many years. The 2a5 visa is essentially the first \u201cpatch\u201d that has forced the state to add more and more patches to its sleeves, for two decades.<\/p>\n Thus, after almost two decades of legal residence in Israel, refugees still do not have access to adequate health services. This is one of the important examples of the waste and damage resulting from this patchwork policy. The need to provide access to health services reflects the state’s legal obligations and simple self-interest. Providing adequate ongoing health services in the community saves resources for the state by protecting the public\u2019s health, preventing medical conditions from deteriorating and becoming more complicated, and not incurring huge unpayable debts to hospitals. Meetings were held, documents were written, senior officials of the medical community in Israel issued warnings, inter-ministerial committees were established, and petitions were signed. This year, national health insurance regulations were enacted that do not improve refugees’ access to health services; \u00a0in certain aspects, they even worsen the situation. Gaps are left in the government\u2019s patchwork policies, through which refugees and their children can fall into dire situations.<\/p>\n First, the new regulations apply only to Eritreans, Sudanese, and Ukrainians. Many refugees and their children, who are protected from deportation (such as Congolese and Ethiopians), were left out of the regulations. Additionally, asylum seekers from other nationalities are still awaiting a decision on their applications. Recently, the state has claimed that Ethiopians were not officially protected from deportation but were simply never deported.<\/p>\n Excluding them from the regulations stems from this claim, which any reasonable person understands to be internally contradictory. These health insurance regulations make it apparent that there are people who are officially protected from deportation (Eritreans, Sudanese, and Ukrainians), people who are protected from deportation because they have been ignored (Congolese), and those who are not deported because their lives are in danger in their country of origin, yet they are not legally protected from deportation (Ethiopians).<\/p>\n There are no laws or official procedures that regulate issuing collective protection against deportation, procedures for applying for such protection and for granting or withdrawing this protection, or the rights it includes. Protection is granted or withdrawn, declared partial, or modified, in an ad hoc way, unregulated, and without examining the overall picture. The results of this patchwork are clear: people (especially women and children) fall through the holes between the patches.<\/p>\n Further, the new regulations do not apply to 18-60-year-olds who are supposed to receive insurance for foreign workers via their employers. However, due to governmental policy, the jobs available to refugees are mostly unstable, part-time jobs, with low wages and often exploitative conditions. Refugees with 2A5 visas and Ukrainians with tourist visas can be employed according to the Population Authority, but they do not have official work visas. Their access to higher education is limited (through, among other things, higher tuition than residents pay). Their access to \u201cregulated\u201d professions that require licensing is blocked. They cannot get jobs that require a driver’s license, filing an income tax report, a long-term visa, or having done military service.\u00a0 Refugees have almost no access to long-term and stable employment other than the cleaning jobs in which most of them are engaged. Many of them do not have consistent healthcare insurance through their employers. This employer insurance is only relevant while the person is working, and it does not cover preexisting medical conditions. It is not an adequate solution for those who consider Israel their place of residence and who are unable to return to their country of origin if they become ill or have a medical crisis.<\/p>\n The sweeping exclusion of 18\u201360-year-olds from the regulations leaves many without insurance, including those who cannot work temporarily or permanently. Refugees aged 18-60 in particularly difficult situations, such as those who would be categorized as homeless by the Ministry of Welfare, were not covered in the new regulations. In the absence of health insurance, refugee status, and rights regulated by law, the policy patched together by the Ministries of Health and Welfare does not hold together.<\/p>\n Even many of those to whom the regulations should apply do not have access to health services because the regulations set impossible payment requirements: NIS 320 per month for seniors over 60 and NIS per child under the age of 18, with no maximum per family. Those who most need a social safety net \u2013 the elderly who cannot work, minors with ill parents, single mothers, and families in need – cannot afford these payments and will be left without health services. The injustice is especially acute if these regulations are considered in the context of the overall government policy. With no social safety net, they have been pushed to the margins of society. They are not entitled to pensions, housing assistance, tax credits, subsidized daycare, or welfare services. For two decades, they have had to renew their temporary visas every few months. Elderly people or parents working at difficult jobs with low wages cannot afford such high insurance premiums.<\/p>\n Children and youth: The path to marginalization<\/strong><\/p>\n This patchwork policy<\/a>, the lack of asylum status, the temporary visas, and the continued denial of rights, affect the children, the second generation. Their right to education is not disputed and they study in kindergartens and schools from the ages of 3 to 18. However, the efforts of the teachers, parents, and children often go down the drain due to the other holes in the blanket. Without a stable status, with little social or economic integration, and in the absence of aid, allowances, health insurance, and tax credits, families find it difficult to survive.\u00a0 Parents have to work long hours and many refugee children grow up in an environment that is lacking both emotionally and materially and are exposed to risky situations. The situation is even more difficult among the children who spend their preschool years in unlicensed daycare facilities (“babysitters”). Many study in settings that are completely segregated from children who are Israeli citizens.<\/p>\n The children of refugees from Eritrea (7,590), are the largest group. Of these, 1,629 are 9-10 years old. They see their older siblings who finished high school yet still face many barriers, some of them insurmountable, in their attempt to build a future for themselves. When they reach the age of 18, when many other democratic countries would grant them citizenship,<\/a> turn from students into “infiltrators” and are given a 2a5 visa. Despite having grown up in Israel, studied in its education system, and their strong desire to contribute, they face the same fortified walls as their parents encountered. They are denied social rights. With no ID card, they cannot serve in national or military service, cannot engage in professions that require professional licensing, cannot obtain a driver’s license or employment authorization from the police, and are not eligible for daily state health insurance. They cannot get a credit card or use apps to receive services from banks, health clinics, or municipalities. They are forced to waste time and money on bureaucratic matters. Every day they are reminded, in large and small ways, \u00a0that the state does not recognize them as belonging.<\/p>\n The lack of status also affects children\u2019s emotional state, self-perception, ability to dream, and resilience. As a group of social work and mental health experts concluded, in a document submitted to the Ministers of the Interior and Welfare and the Knesset’s Youth Committee<\/a>, “This situation, in which they live without status for many years, and without the ability to belong to the society in which they grow up, increases the risk of serious harm to them and their chances of success in the future.”<\/p>\n The harsh significance of the emotional situation, and its consequences for the chances of these young people to succeed in Israel, was well expressed in an interview with Haaretz<\/em><\/a> by Panan Solomon, a young Eritrean woman. She is a graduate of the education system and currently works as a youth counselor in a preparatory school and said: “The farther I can look into the future is tomorrow because there is no certainty. I’m trying to put my feet on solid ground, but it’s made of paper.” Interviews with Panan and other young people were conducted against the background of the publication of a news story that rocked her world: the Ministry of the Interior is considering regulating the status of the refugee children and giving them permanent status so they can be recruited into the Israeli Defense Forces due to the ongoing war in Gaza and the north.<\/p>\n