JERUSALEM (AP) — Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently — and in an alarming new development, violently — calling for their expulsion.
Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn’t seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict.
It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants who manage to sneak in.
Over the past seven years, as many as 60,000 African migrants, most from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped across Israel’s border with Egypt, exploiting the lack of a physical barrier and widespread lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula that has been one result of the fall last year of longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Israel is erecting a barrier along the roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) of border. While this work drags on, the migrants continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a month, ragged and penniless, with some reporting being raped, tortured and extorted by the Bedouins who smuggle them through.
Some migrants are fleeing repressive regimes. Others are simply looking for a better life in a richer country. How many fit into each of those categories is a matter of deep disagreement between officials and migrant advocates.
Some Israelis worry that their national identity as a Jewish state is being threatened by unauthorized African migrants, who now make up less than 1 percent of Israel’s population.
“It’s the crumbling of the Zionist dream,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai warned on Thursday.
Officials claim the overwhelming majority of the migrants are not bona fide refugees escaping persecution and war, but economic migrants looking for jobs. Israeli leaders use terms like “infiltrators,” ”cancer” and “national scourge” to describe them, setting an inflammatory tone.
After the first rape was reported earlier this month, Yishai declared nearly all migrants to be criminals and said they should all be jailed pending deportation.
Days later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned, “60,000 infiltrators are liable to become 600,000, and lead to the eradication of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
The issue of how to deal with them has also caused introspection about whether Israel, after a century of conflict with Arabs, has become a racist society.
“What disturbs me most is the racist atmosphere,” social commentator Tom Segev said. “For several years now, Israel society has been moving in that direction, with all the anti-Arab motions in the parliament. … I think that this society is very sick now.”
Others deny that the pushback is racist, finding it unreasonable that their country of about 8 million should be expected to throw open its doors to unlimited numbers of migrants.
Israel cannot simply kick out the Africans, as some politicians would seem to suggest. As an enthusiastic backer of a 1951 U.N. treaty drafted to address the plight of World War II refugees, it has pledged not to expel asylum-seekers to any country where they would be in danger.
“We’re not going to pull back on our obligations under the refugee convention,” said Daniel Solomon, legal adviser to Israel’s population and immigration authority. “At the same time, other solutions will have to be looked for,” like finding a third country to take them in.
Because most migrants come from Sudan, an enemy state, and Eritrea, a country with an abysmal human rights record, the line between refugee and economic migrants is blurred. So Israel has quietly allowed most migrants from those two countries to stay, without processing their asylum applications.
This status does not allow them to work openly or access social services, so the migrants scrounge for whatever underpaid and insecure employment and volunteer health care they can find.
“Our objective is to have Israel host these people under proper conditions until the option arises for them to go home,” said William Tall, the envoy of the U.N. refugee agency office in Israel.
The Africans began trickling into Israel after neighboring Egypt violently quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees there in 2005, killing at least 20. The numbers surged as word spread of safety and jobs in Israel, a prosperous and liberal country reachable from Africa overland.
The swelling numbers have spawned slums. Fear and intolerance is mounting among locals, who accuse the migrants of stoking crime, including three recent rapes — even though police records show crime among the migrants is lower than among Israelis.
Firebombs were thrown recently at two buildings where migrants live, and a protest against them Wednesday in a poor southern Tel Aviv neighborhood where many Africans live turned violent. The crowd shattered windows of shops and cars belonging to Africans, police said, and a witness reported that protesters spat on migrants and cursed them. No one was hurt.
Bashir Abekker, 32, came to Israel four years ago to escape the war in Sudan’s Darfur region. He thought he’d find safety, “but recently, I’m not safe here. I am afraid for my safety,” he said. “After what happened (Wednesday), I was afraid to go out on the street to buy food.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu condemned the violence. “I want to make it very clear that there is no room for the kinds of expressions and actions we saw last night,” he said. “I say this both to public officials and to the residents of south Tel Aviv, whose pain I understand.”
The Hotline for Migrant Workers advocacy group said the refugees are endangered by the “incitement” of politicians.
On the other side of the divide, neighborhood activist Dror Kahalani said the government is neglecting his already poor community to provide services for migrants, whose rising numbers terrify residents.
“I don’t let my daughters go out unless I go with them,” Kahalani said.
Prominent author and social commentator A.B. Yehoshua came to the defense of the migrants’ Israeli neighbors. “We have to distinguish between economic migrants whom we don’t have to accept, and the bona fide refugees who are suffering and face death if returned,” he said.
For some, the violence against the migrants and calls for their expulsion are difficult to accept given the legacy of the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators. They find it abhorrent that the Jewish state would expel people to face persecution elsewhere.
Others counter that following the mass murder of its own people as the world looked on, Israel has no more of an obligation to help others than the rest of the world does.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is urging Israeli leaders to relinquish the idea of a unified Jerusalem if they truly want peace.
Olmert contends that years of government neglect have kept the Jewish and Palestinian sectors divided.
The comments, made as Israel marked the 45th anniversary of capturing east Jerusalem, were nearly unprecedented for mainstream Israeli leaders and put him at odds with his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Celebrating Israel’s control of Jerusalem, Netanyahu declared his government was committed to keeping Jerusalem Israel’s undivided capital.
“You can’t talk about peace and say you want peace and not believe that is going to oblige us to shed slogans we all used to use,” Olmert told Sunday’s Maariv daily.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Palestinian campaign to boycott goods produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank has received a boost from abroad with an unprecedented South African proposal to have the name of Israel dropped from labels on merchandise made in the settlements.
The South African government issued a notice saying it wants to require merchants “not to incorrectly label products that originate from the Occupied Palestinian Territory as products of Israel.”
The notice did not specify what the labels should say and the proposal has not yet taken effect, pending public objections that can be submitted through the end of June.
But Israel claims it is being singled out because special labels are not applied to products made in dozens of other places where territorial conflicts exist.
“All these things are characteristic of racism,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Sunday. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Israel would summon the South African ambassador to protest the proposal.
Palestinians and their supporters, inspired by the economic boycott of apartheid-era South Africa, have been trying for years to spark a punishing economic war on Israel to force it to end its occupation of lands Palestinians claim for a future state.
Their campaign of divestment and boycott has had negligible economic effect, but the voice of the South African government could be a symbolic boost. South Africa is not major market for Israeli products.
Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, praised the South African step, saying it constituted “a genuine challenge to Israel on its continuous violation of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.” He also voiced hope it would help to shift Israeli public opinion in favor of the Palestinian position.
South Africa would be the first country to require such labeling, Palmor said.
Since 2009, the British government has allowed retailers to distinguish whether West Bank goods are produced by Palestinians or Israeli settlers.
And since 2005, an agreement between Israel and the European Union excludes produce from the West Bank from a preferential tariff rate.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank produce items such as wine, Dead Sea cosmetics and agricultural products, including dates.
ROSH HAAYIN, Israel (AP) — Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi has begun rolling out the world’s first nationwide electric car network. Now, will the drivers come?
After more than $400 million in outlays and more than a year behind schedule, dozens of electric cars have hit the road in Israel, the test site Agassi chose for his Better Place venture. Four stations where the cars can get a new dose of juice when their batteries run out are operating, and the plan is to ramp that number up within months.
The concept: to wean the world from oil and eliminate the biggest hurdles to environmentally friendly electric cars — high cost and limited range.
To do this, Better Place has jettisoned the fixed battery. Instead, drivers can swap their depleted batteries for fully charged ones at a network of stations, receiving a full, 160-kilometer (100-mile) range in five minutes. Better Place owns the batteries, bringing down the purchase price of the cars using the network.
People driving shorter distances, the vast majority of customers, can plug in their batteries each day to chargers installed at their homes, offices and public locations, which will fully recharge in six to eight hours.
He faces a wall of skepticism. A major concern is “range anxiety”: Will the car conk out because its battery is drained, stranding the driver in a dicey neighborhood, en route to the hospital, or with three wailing kids in back?
Rising fuel prices worldwide still haven’t sent electric car sales surging, noted U.S.-based automotive expert John McElroy. “It may not be an energy price issue,” he said. “Consumers may simply decide that electric cars don’t offer the range they need.”
Agassi, a former top executive at software giant SAP AG, said he is ready to prove his doubters wrong. “We’re driving a car that most people said would be a fantasy,” he said.
The swappable battery model aims to reassure drivers about range and show they don’t need to sacrifice convenience or cash to switch to electric.
So far, the four Better Place battery stations are set up in central and northern Israel. During the second half of the year, around 40 stations are due to be operating across the country. But even before that, the company says enough will be up that a motorist could make the 500-kilometer (300-mile) drive from Israel’s northern tip to its southern end.
Agassi has raised $750 million from investors including General Electric Co. and HSBC Holdings PLC since founding Better Place 4 1/2 years ago.
French automaker Renault has begun selling a sedan, the Fluence, customized to use the stations, priced in Israel at roughly $32,000, comparable to other sedans sold here. Currently, about 140 are on the road, most driven by Better Place employees.
The Fluence should start becoming available to the general public within weeks. Leasing companies, which buy about two-thirds of the more than 200,000 new cars sold annually in Israel, have ordered more than 1,800, and private customers have ordered several hundred more.
Compared to electric or hybrid cars in other markets, the sales numbers in this nation of 6 million might not be as humble as they seem: In 2011, Chevrolet sold about 7,700 Volts and Nissan sold under 10,000 LEAFs in the U.S., which has a population of more than 310 million.
“It interests all fleet managers we talk to,” said Shai Dahan, CEO of Eldan Transportation, a top Israeli leasing group.
Better Place, which had promised to have thousands of cars on the road last year, acknowledges the rollout is behind schedule, mostly because of bureaucratic hurdles and production issues at Renault.
Better Place has also spent years testing its integrated system designed to allow its operation center, which is connected to every car, to monitor the vehicles and correct problems remotely. For instance, its software notifies drivers when their batteries are running low and directs them to the nearest switching station.
Israel sales director Zohar Bali predicts up to 5,000 Fluences will be silently running on Israeli roads and highways within a year.
Israel was chosen for the experiment in part because of its tech-savvy population. Also, with 80 percent of the population living in a narrow, densely populated stretch along the Mediterranean coast, it provides a perfect laboratory for the charging network.
Better Place claims it can shave up to 20 percent off the annual cost of owning a car, especially if gas prices, now around $8 a gallon here, continue to rise. Drivers buy access to the switching stations and charging spots through a monthly package ranging from under $300 to over $500, depending on mileage.
Israelis are taking notice. Better Place says more than 80,000 people in this country of 7.8 million have trekked to its visitor’s center, situated at an abandoned oil reserves depot outside Tel Aviv.
What happens in Israel could decide how broadly Better Place deploys.
So far the Fluence is the only model compatible with the grid, but Renault’s Middle East director, Jean-Christophe Pierson, says the company is considering a more compact model. Better Place is also in contact with other carmakers.
Denmark is set to become Better Place’s second launch site this year. Australia is to become its first major market, with deployment in the capital, Canberra, also this year. Small-scale projects are in place in Hawaii and California. Amsterdam is the next European target after Denmark.
The company also has its sights set on China, where it already has opened a demonstration battery switching station.
Agassi sees the “tipping point” for electric cars coming in two to three years, propelled by dropping prices of cars and batteries. By 2017, he expects 50 percent of all new car sales in Israel to be electric.
The largest investor is The Israel Corp., whose holdings include Israel’s biggest oil refinery and deep water oil drilling.
Idan Ofer, whose family controls The Israel Corp. and who serves as Better Place’s chairman, said he saw no contradiction between his oil and clean-tech holdings.
Film giant Kodak “knew about digital photography. And look what happened. They still went bankrupt because they didn’t do anything about it,” observed Ofer. “There are many examples. I don’t want to be there.”
JERUSALEM (AP) — The U.S. has plans in place to attack Iran if necessary to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, Washington’s envoy to Israel said, days ahead of a crucial round of nuclear talks with Tehran.
Dan Shapiro’s message resonated Thursday far beyond the closed forum in which it was made: Iran should not test Washington’s resolve to act on its promise to strike if diplomacy and sanctions fail to pressure Tehran to abandon its disputed nuclear program.
Shapiro told the Israel Bar Association the U.S. hopes it will not have to resort to military force.
“But that doesn’t mean that option is not fully available. Not just available, but it’s ready,” he said. “The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready.”
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, like energy production. The U.S. and Israel suspect Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but differences have emerged in how to persuade Tehran to curb its program.
Washington says diplomacy and economic sanctions must be given a chance to run its course, and is taking the lead in the ongoing talks between six global powers and Iran.
Israel, while saying it would prefer a diplomatic solution, has expressed skepticism about these talks and says time is running out for military action to be effective.
President Barack Obama has assured Israel that the U.S. is prepared to take military action if necessary, and it is standard procedure for armies to draw up plans for a broad range of possible scenarios. But Shapiro’s comments were the most explicit sign yet that preparations have been stepped up.
In his speech, Shapiro acknowledged the clock is ticking.
“We do believe there is time. Some time, not an unlimited amount of time,” Shapiro said. “But at a certain point, we may have to make a judgment that the diplomacy will not work.”
The U.S. envoy spoke on Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained a recording of his remarks on Thursday.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany are gearing up to for a May 23 meeting with Iran in Baghdad. Shortly after the meeting, the U.N. atomic agency is to release its latest report card on Iran’s nuclear efforts.
In Tehran on Thursday, top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili warned against Western pressure at next week’s talks, which are a follow-up to negotiations in Istanbul last month that all sides praised as positive.
“Cooperation is what we can talk about in Baghdad,” Jalili said in comments broadcast on Iranian state TV.
“Some say time is running out for the talks,” he added. “I say time for the (West’s) pressure strategy is running out.”
Four rounds of U.N. sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment, a process that has civilian uses but is also key to bomb-making. But recent U.S. and European measures, including an oil embargo and financial and banking sanctions, have bludgeoned Iran’s economy by curtailing its ability to carry on economic transactions with the international community.
Israel says a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran would threaten the Jewish state’s survival and has waged a fierce diplomatic campaign against the Iranian nuclear program for years. Israel cites Iranian calls for Israel’s destruction, Iran’s arsenal of missiles, and its support for anti-Israel militant groups.
Senior officials have expressed skepticism about the sanctions’ effectiveness, and believe Tehran is using the talks to stall the international community as Iran moves ever closer to a nuclear bomb.
The United States has urged Israel to refrain from attacking, at least at this point. Tough new economic sanctions are to go into effect over the summer, and American officials fear an Israeli strike could set off a regional war without significantly setting back the Iranian program.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues the negotiations will fail unless Iran agrees to halt all uranium enrichment, ship its current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and dismantle an underground enrichment facility near the city of Qom.
Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, who until a few days ago commanded Israel’s air force, said in a Jerusalem Post interview Thursday that the air force is prepared for any scenario, including striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israel’s military chief told the Associated Press last month that other countries as well as Israel have readied their armed forces for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear sites.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said Wednesday it has closed its investigation into the shelling deaths of 21 members of a single Palestinian family and would not file any charges in what was one of the gravest incidents in the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip.
The military’s move, which exonerates Israeli soldiers from any responsibility in the killings, outraged relatives of the killed Palestinians and the Israeli human rights group that had pressed for the investigation. They said the findings proved the army is not capable of investigating the conduct of its soldiers.
“We are talking about a crime against civilians,” said Salah Samouni, 34, whose 2-year-old daughter was killed when Israeli shells slammed into the Gaza City house where the family had gathered.
“We know that God above will punish the killers. If they escaped trial, they can’t escape God’s punishment,” said Samouni, who survived the shelling.
Israel launched the three-week offensive in Gaza in response to months of rocket fire by the ruling Hamas militant group. About 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the fighting, including hundreds of civilians, and thousands of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Thirteen Israelis also died.
Surviving members of the Samouni family had claimed the family was ordered by Israeli soldiers to take refuge in a house that was then shelled, killing 21 people.
In its findings, the Israeli military said its investigation “totally refuted” allegations that the incident was a war crime. It denied the building was deliberately targeted or that soldiers acted recklessly.
Following the war, a U.N. report accused Israel of deliberately attacking civilians in its campaign against Hamas militants. The report’s lead author, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, later questioned that finding, although the report was never modified or withdrawn.
The report also accused Hamas militants of targeting Israeli civilians, and said that both sides may have committed war crimes.
B’tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said it was “intolerable” that the military exonerated itself of responsibility in the Samouni case. The military’s response “demonstrates yet again the need for an Israeli investigation mechanism that is external to the army.”
The Israeli military has filed three indictments against soldiers who took part in the operation, and in three other cases, disciplinary action alone was taken.
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Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a special cabinet meeting marking 'Jerusalem Day' in the Ammunition Hill memorial in Jerusalem, Sunday, May 20, 2012. 'Jeruslem Day' marks the anniversary of Israel's capture of the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Mideast war.(AP Photo/Abir Sultan, Pool)(Credit: AP) 
Palestinians throw rocks at an Israeli army bulldozer during clashes in the northern West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, near the Jewish settlement of Kdumim, Friday, May 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)(Credit: AP) 
Israeli border police scuffle with a demonstrator during a protest calling for the release of prisoners jailed in Israel outside the Ofer military prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Tuesday May 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)(Credit: AP) 