Eritrea: Extraordinary Eritreans - a Support Centre for Eritreans in Israel
By Ruth Michaelson in Tel Aviv, 2 April 2013
Israel is home to one of the largest Eritrean communities in the world.
However, they face discrimination and live in constant fear. One Eritrean
woman has founded a centre to give them support.
An estimated 35,000 Eritreans live in Israel. Many survived a perilous
2000-kilometre desert journey across Sudan and Egypt to get to Israel.
Many are lured by people and arms smugglers in Sudan. They are then met with
suspicion by the Israeli authorities who neither send them back to Eritrea
nor grant them refugee status.
And the introduction of the Law to Prevent Infiltration in January 2012
means that people trying to enter Israel without a permit can be detained
without charge for up to three years.
It is this state of fear and limbo that provoked a 29-year-old woman to set
up the Eritrean Community Women's Centre in Tel Aviv.
At the Eritrean Community Women's Centre in South Tel Aviv, Zebib Sultan,
29, plays with her 18-month-old son Aron.
Sultan fled Sudan for Israel in 2009, and like all the women around her, was
imprisoned in a detention centre when she first arrived:
"We used to be sixty women in a tent. We had nothing to drink and no place
to sleep - no blankets and no sheets. We had to lay close together to get
warm."
Having been expelled from the centre with nothing but a bus ticket for Tel
Aviv, Sultan came to the run-down south of the city that houses the majority
of Israel's Eritrean community.
Despite having previously worked with the humanitarian organisation Médecins
Sans Frontières in Eritrea, Sultan worked as a cleaner before deciding to
found the Eritrean Women's Community centre.
This is the only one of its kind in Israel, providing support to around 100
women.
"We give English and Hebrew courses: this is necessary for work. Also we
have art class, we also have family planning activities [sic]," Sultan
explains.
"We also have a domestic abuse group: we discuss different women's issues
within the community. We escort women to doctors also, as they don't have
the language and someone should be with them. I always go with them," she
adds.
Unlike community centres in other richer countries that form part of a
support network, the centre is the sole form of assistance that many
Eritreans have access to in Israel.
Sarah Robinson, the refugee Rights Coordinator at Amnesty International
Israel who helped Sultan to found the centre, says her work is important.
"Before the opening of this centre, there really was no address that was
comprehensive for women to deal with the past trauma, and unfortunately they
are always on survival mode so they can't even think about the past often.
They have to find a job, [but] they don't have formal work permits; they
don't have access to government healthcare or welfare services. So they're
pretty much left on their own to deal with the trauma they experienced on
the way."
Sultan's success is to understand precisely what her community needs. The
centre also provides day-care services for young children to allow their
mothers time to work, and will soon implement a program to tackle domestic
abuse and prostitution among Eritrean women.
"When I see other women who are abused, in addition to the stress they have
from the policies here and the general situation, with others suffering just
inside their houses, it hurts me a lot. So I feel responsible. I have to do
something if I can help these women," she says.
Despite providing a lifeline for Eritrean women in Israel, the centre is
constantly threatened with closure as it strives from month to month to find
funding from private Eritrean donors living abroad.
Sultan continues to work; although it is an uphill struggle: it is unusual
to find Eritreans who plan to stay in Israel for the long-term, as such is
the level of discrimination that they face.
