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The last two weeks of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 have brought with them an unprecedented wave of protests by African asylum seekers in Israel. What started as a group of several dozen escaping prison and marching through the desert to Jerusalem quickly evolved into a massive strike and a series of rallies by tens of thousands of asylum seekers across the country. In just under a month, asylum seekers have transformed themselves from the subject of political debate into a political entity of political agency demanding the end of imprisonment and basic human rights. In the words of Mutasim Ali, an asylum seeker from Sudan and one of the protest leaders: “Israel is giving us a horrible choice: go to jail or face death. If we are part of the problem, we must be part of the solution.”
How did all of this happen? What is the legal and social background for the protests? Where might they lead? It is these questions that the following report, based on the ongoing coverage of +972 Magazine of the issue on asylum seekers in Israel, will try to answer.
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