Tuesday’s release was bittersweet for Hussein, who said he was relieved to be out but overwhelmed by the hardships to follow. “If I could feel safe and secure in Sudan, I would return,” he said.
Those released Tuesday have limited employment opportunities. They are officially barred from working, though they can still find under-the-table jobs in the service industry. They are not eligible for public welfare or medical insurance.
Earlier this week, Interior Minister Silvan Shalom also banned the freed African migrants from Tel Aviv and the resort city of Eilat. Shalom offered no justification, other than saying on Facebook that it was “the first part of resolving the issue.”
Many migrants leaving the detention facility Tuesday said they would go to other, smaller cities, where they hoped to find menial jobs.
Hussein said he might go to the southern city of Arad, which has a small tourism sector, because others had suggested it. He and others waited in the desert sun outside Holot for the regularly scheduled buses to come.
The vast majority of Africans remain free, concentrated in mainly poor Israeli neighborhoods where they have settled. Residents have complained the areas have been turned into crime-ridden slums.
Israel is home to some 120,000 Ethiopian Jews, a small minority in a country of 8 million. Although they complain of discrimination and lack of opportunity, Ethiopian Jews are citizens.
Israel has offered African migrants financial incentives to those willing leave for the African countries of Rwanda and Uganda. But the migrants face many dangers, including the risk being deported back to their homelands, according to Elizabeth Tsurkov, a project director at an advocacy group, the Hotline for Migrant Workers, and few have taken up the offer.
Article Appeared @http://www.africanglobe.net/africa/israel-releases-african-refugees-prison-camp/