person:uzi dann

Israel’s big lie revealed: Deported asylum seekers in Uganda lament broken promises and a grim future

Haaretz met with deported asylum seekers who were left with no papers or work permits; they can’t even enter refugee camps as they have no status. One option is to risk death and head for Europe
By Uzi Dann (Kampala, Uganda) Mar 04, 2018

KAMPALA, Uganda – It’s around noon in Uganda’s capital Kampala. The streets are bustling and traffic is heavy. Meles looks out of place, and he certainly feels it. “I don’t have a future here,” he tells Haaretz. “I have no hope, no job. My life is ruined.”
He’s a relative newcomer here. He has been here for around two and a half months and says it’s just a matter of time until he’s on the road again. “I’m already 31 and prefer to try my luck elsewhere rather than live this way, God willing,” he says, pointing upward and not at the two crosses on his chest. “This time I’ll be lucky.”
The last time he tried his luck nearly a decade ago he deserted his unlimited military service in the Eritrean army and started walking north. Ultimately he reached Israel, where he lived for more than seven and a half years, from the beginning of 2010 until last November. Then he was forced to “leave voluntarily.”

In addition to the threat of prison if he didn’t leave, there was the $3,500 that Israel gave and the laissez-passer document, ensuring him legal status in a third country and the right to work. There were also verbal assurances that things would be all right – that he’d be able to make a living and integrate into his new country.
Soon after Meles landed at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, he discovered there wasn’t much substance to the assurances, not even a way to contact the government clerk who sent him there. And regarding the documents, someone in Uganda was there to take them away from him as soon as he landed.
Haaretz on the ground in Uganda - דלג

Haaretz has heard this story repeatedly from former asylum seekers in Israel who went to Rwanda (and from there took a circuitous path to neighboring Uganda), and from those whose airplane ticket took them straight to Entebbe. Haaretz met with more than 15 of them in Kampala and spoke with several others by phone. No Israeli official contacted them once they had left Israel, or took any interest in them once they had reached Africa.
Meles has no documents and no job, and has no status in Uganda letting him work. He has spent some of the $3,500, and it looks like the rest will be gone soon. He regrets that he didn’t opt for the Holot detention center in the south.

Meles in Kampala. Uzi Dan
“It would be better to be in jail in Israel, where at least I would get food,” he says, adding that he advises asylum seekers still in Israel not to accept the offer of passage to a third country.
Meles’ Hebrew is excellent, an indication that he adjusted well during his seven and a half years in Israel. He worked three years for one employer and four years for another, the owner of a grocery store near Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market. From the very beginning he tried to obtain legal status in Israel.
When he arrived at the Saharonim detention facility in 2010, he gave details about his travails. He repeated them a month later when he left Saharonim and was granted a temporary visa. And he repeated them five years later when he submitted an asylum request. Like many others, he never received an answer on his request, but around that time he was told that his residence visa would not be renewed.

Un cavalier allemand représente la Palestine aux Jeux olympiques, une « initiative pour la paix » | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/un-cavalier-allemand-repr-sente-la-palestine-aux-jeux-olympiques-une-

http://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/2016-08-10T151152Z_2119778197_RIOEC8A167QCP_RTRMADP_3_OLYMPICS-RIO-EQUESTRIAN-DRESSAGEIND.JPG

Le concurrent à l’épreuve de dressage Christian Zimmermann (54 ans) explique que sa décision de représenter son pays d’adoption à Rio est « pour la Palestine, mais pas contre Israël »
(...)
Cependant, a-t-il ajouté, il a choisi de concourir sous le drapeau palestinien pour faire une remarque politique sur les relations de l’Allemagne avec Israël.

« Nous, en tant qu’Allemands, avons une responsabilité particulière envers le peuple juif et Israël », a-t-il déclaré au journal.

« Mais cette responsabilité signifie également que nous devons encourager la paix dans le conflit au Moyen-Orient, aussi difficile que cela puisse être. En plus de cela, on peut critiquer l’évolution de la politique israélienne au cours des dernières années. Donc finalement, j’ai décidé de monter pour la Palestine, comme un geste envers le peuple palestinien. Si, en participant aux Jeux olympiques, je peux contribuer d’une certaine manière à donner à la région et à ses habitants une plus grande voix, j’aurai réussi. »

La délégation olympique palestinienne, composée de six personnes, comprend également un coureur du 100 m de Gaza, un judoka et une nageuse du 50 m qui a réalisé toute sa formation dans une piscine de 25 mètres car il n’y a pas d’installations olympiques en Cisjordanie.

Palestinian FIFA move hit an Israeli nerve
The bid pushed Israel into a state of constant tension and hinted at how much BDS efforts could hurt the Israeli public; but it also displays the Palestinian Authority’s logic of stagnation.
By Amira Hass | Jun. 1, 2015 Haaretz Daily Newspaper
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.659004

A laywoman’s question to UEFA, the European soccer federation, and to its president, Michel Platini, who worked diligently to shelve the Palestinian bid to suspend Israel from FIFA.

Will you let Beitar Jerusalem play against European teams? This question is based on an amended Palestinian motion adopted in full at the FIFA congress relating to Israeli violations of the organization’s statutes.

After its win against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Beitar is in fact expected to play in Europe. This is the team whose coach Guy Levy said about a month ago: “Even if there was an [Arab] player who suited me professionally, I wouldn’t bring him on because it would create unnecessary tensions.”

So I ask you, Platini, how do you square Levy’s statement with Section 3 of the FIFA statutes, entitled “Non-discrimination and stance against racism”? The section states: “Discrimination of any kind against a Country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin color, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion … is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”

Racial segregation in sports led to South Africa’s suspension from FIFA in 1962. The Israeli sociologist Tamir Sorek, who teaches at the University of Florida, has researched Palestinian soccer before and after 1948. He told Haaretz that in 1977, whites were asked in a South African opinion poll to name the greatest damage inflicted by apartheid. Damage to South African sports ranked No. 3.

“Historians disagree on the extent sanctions in general, and in sports in particular, contributed to the downfall of the apartheid regime,” Sorek said. “But there is no doubt that the ruling party believed that the boycott was influencing public opinion.”

In 1992, when leaders of the ruling National Party wanted to lay the groundwork for a regime change, a central theme in their propaganda was that a change would improve the international standing of South African athletes. Sorek added that with all the differences between the South African and Israeli violations, “if pressure builds in the future to suspend Israel from sports organizations, the public effect will be huge compared to the effect of blocking researchers’ access to funding.”

On Friday, 163 FIFA members voted in favor of the Palestinian amendment to the motion (with nine against and 37 abstaining). The headlines and reporting focused on the shelving of a resolution that would have suspended Israel from FIFA. My Haaretz colleagues Barak Ravid and Uzi Dann suggested that anybody celebrating an Israeli victory shouldn’t overdo it.

In that same spirit, I would suggest that Palestinians angry that once again a Palestinian leader has caved should learn something about how politics work.

A Palestinian insistence that FIFA vote for Israel’s suspension would have ended in failure. The head of the Palestinian soccer federation, Jabril Rajoub, could have retained a macho image and flaunted the demand to put the Palestinian resolution to a vote, just as those who fire Qassam rockets at Israel from Gaza flaunt their dubious military achievements. But the predicted defeat of the motion would have given a kosher stamp of approval to Israel’s violations.

But now, 167 delegates have affirmed in the amendment that passed: “Restrictions of Palestinian rights for the freedom of movement. Players and football officials both within and outside the borders of the occupied State of Palestine, have been systematically restricted from their right to free movement, and continue to be hindered, limited, and obstructed by a set of unilateral regulations arbitrarily and inconsistently implemented. This constitutes a direct violation by IFA of Article 13.3 of the FIFA Statute, specifically in relation to Article 13.1(i) and its correspond[ing] articles in UEFA rules.”

Commentators spoke of a yellow card against Israel, not a red card. Another hackneyed phrase — a snowball effect — would no less accurately reflect the maneuver room the Palestinian delegation managed to create.

FIFA has now appointed the equivalent of a probation officer for Israel. The establishment of a monitoring committee will enable the Palestinians to continue to pester FIFA, and it puts Rajoub under the microscope of social-media activists who will demand proof that a corrupt FIFA hasn’t bought him off.

On the other side of the front, the monitoring committee leaves Israel in a state of constant tension. Any expression of racism on the Israeli soccer field and the delaying of a soccer player at the Allenby crossing would be grounds for deliberations and possible punishment of Israel.

Since the Palestinian Authority’s infancy, Palestinian membership in FIFA and the state­-like etiquette surrounding soccer games fit into the PA leadership’s efforts to present its institutions as permanent and natural: a ­state ­in ­the ­making. It’s one way to make people forget that its intended transitional political presence became permanent.

In short, the Palestinian leadership needs soccer, with its popularity, to project an air of normalcy — to maintain the PA existence and the logic of its existence.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel is working in its own way to undermine this false normalcy. It’s setting the bar high for the PA. Anyone who considers himself a Palestinian leader must take this threshold into account.

Thus, Rajoub understood he had to use globally institutionalized soccer, one of the tools of Palestinian normalization, as anti-normalization leverage, and challenge the rules of the game that Israel has been imposing.