Sudanese in Israel

The term covers populations with separate histories: members of Sudan’s former Jewish community and mostly non-Jewish Sudanese asylum seekers who reached Israel from 2005 onward. The sources do not provide a single current count for all Sudanese residents and use legally distinct categories including asylum seeker, recognized refugee, temporary resident, and conditional-release visa holder.[1][9]

A Jewish community in Sudan developed after the establishment of British-Egyptian administration in 1898, with settlers moving into Omdurman, Khartoum, and Port Said.[1] By 1908 the community was thought to number about twenty families, led by Salomon Malka.[1] In the 1920s, Jews from the Arab world arrived seeking economic opportunities, and in the 1930s they were joined by Ashkenazi Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.[1] The community was predominantly Sephardi, with many members working in trade; most spoke Egyptian-Sudanese, Arabic, and English.[1]

The institutional life of the community centered on Khartoum’s Ohel Shelomo Synagogue, built in 1926 and capable of holding several hundred worshippers.[1] A communal hall constructed beside it in the 1940s hosted youth activities, celebrations, and conferences and included a kosher cafeteria.[1] The community maintained two cemeteries but did not establish a Jewish school; children generally attended bilingual Arabic-English missionary schools and received religious instruction through the synagogue.[1]

The community is thought to have peaked in the mid-1950s and began to dissipate following Sudanese independence and Israel’s 1956 Sinai campaign, which the World Jewish Congress links to instability and antisemitic rhetoric in the local press.[1] Many Jews then settled in Israel, while others emigrated to Europe and North America.[1] By the time of the 1967 war, the approximately 1,000-strong community faced new obstacles: the government made exit visas and the transfer of assets difficult, though it did not formally expel residents.[10] Nearly all eventually left using pretexts such as holidays or business trips, entrusting possessions to sympathetic acquaintances, and ultimately settling in Israel, the United States, England, and Switzerland.[10]

One personal testimony published by the World Jewish Congress illustrates the difficulty of departure. A woman recalled that after 1967 her family was in England and could not return, while her brother remained in Sudan, was briefly imprisoned for questioning, and was denied travel papers before eventually leaving for Geneva with the help of the Swiss ambassador—reportedly pleading, “I am a Jew and I need to leave this country.”[10] The rest of the family later went to Israel after other countries refused them asylum, though they subsequently returned to England and eventually joined the brother in Geneva.[10] Today small pockets of Jewish life in Israel and the diaspora continue to celebrate Sudanese Jewish heritage.[1]

Sudanese nationals began reaching Israel in significant numbers from 2005 onward, crossing the Sinai desert—often with Bedouin guides—and sometimes arriving wounded or malnourished.[2] Many were fleeing violence in Darfur, where conflict that began in 2003 involved Sudanese government forces and allied Janjaweed militias fighting rebel groups challenging the government’s marginalization of the region; the conflict has been associated with mass killings, displacement, village destruction, and allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing.[7] Others came from the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile region, or had left Egypt following difficulties with Egyptian authorities.[11] A 2013 estimate put the cumulative total of refugees and migrants from Sudan, Eritrea, and other African countries who had crossed the Sinai into Israel since 2006 at around 60,000, though this figure combines multiple nationalities and categories.[12]

The Sinai crossing carried severe risks. Reports cited by refugee activists estimated that several hundred people had been shot dead by Egyptian border police and several thousand murdered by members of a Bedouin group the source calls the Rashida, while others were kidnapped and tortured for ransom.[12] A 2012 research paper described Israel at that time as an “onward secondary movement” destination for people who had traveled through Egypt: some viewed it as a bridge to Europe, and the deteriorating security situation in Egypt had itself reduced the number attempting the Sinai route.[13]

At the peak of broader African arrivals around 2010, approximately 1,300 people crossed from Sinai per month.[14] The Hotline for Migrant Workers estimated that by the time its historical count was compiled, some 5,000 Sudanese migrants had entered Israel through the Egyptian border.[2] Construction of a barrier along the Israeli-Egyptian border, completed in 2014, reduced new illegal crossings sharply: figures fell to 11 in 2016 and none in 2017.[14] By 2017, around 20,000 of the approximately 60,000 African asylum seekers who had crossed from Egypt had left Israel.[15]

A separate and much smaller movement occurred in 2020, when Lebanese economic hardship prompted some Sudanese workers in Lebanon to attempt to reach Israel via the northern border. Lebanon had a few thousand Sudanese among its foreign-worker population at the time; in May and June 2020, the IDF prevented several crossing incidents involving around ten people and captured at least one individual near Shlomi.[16] The Lebanese army and UNIFIL intercepted close to twenty additional would-be crossers, and one Sudanese person was found shot dead in Lebanese territory.[16]

When Sudanese arrivals first reached Israel in significant numbers, the authorities lacked a settled policy for handling them. Early arrivals caught crossing the border were often sent to Kibbutz Eilot, where a group that grew from 17 to 170 people—including about 40 children—was eventually joined by UN representatives who awarded refugee status that allowed recipients to work.[17] By June 2007, more than 300 African and Sudanese refugees were employed in Eilat hotels, with the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the UN Refugee Agency helping arrange release from detention, housing, and employment.[17] In April 2007, about 340 people had been documented as having left Sudan and reached Israel, though actual numbers appeared higher; men caught crossing were often imprisoned while women and children were passed between authorities and sometimes found shelter with volunteers.[18] The Kibbutz Movement reported that 155 Sudanese had been accepted in kibbutzim and moshavim around Israel.[18]

In 2006, approximately 280 Sudanese were detained or held in controlled facilities in Israel; none received formal refugee status that year.[11][19] Of those detainees, 88 had previously been recognized as refugees by UNHCR in Cairo and another 137 had been registered there without recognition.[11] After a petition by the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Tel Aviv University’s Refugee Rights Clinic, the Supreme Court gave the government 30 days on May 8, 2006, to develop a new policy for Sudanese detainees.[11] About 200 were held under the 1954 Infiltration Prevention Law, which lacked judicial oversight; by November, a government-appointed adviser had reviewed roughly one-third of the cases and recommended releasing seven detainees.[19] At year’s end, 80 Sudanese were held in kibbutzim and women’s shelters while approximately 200 remained in prison facilities.[11]

Numbers grew rapidly in subsequent years. For 2007, UNHCR registered 5,505 new arrivals in Israel, 30 percent of them Sudanese, and estimated roughly 7,000 asylum seekers in the country at year’s end; the estimated number of Sudanese migrants rose from about 200 in 2006 to nearly 3,000 by the close of 2007.[20] In December 2007, the government granted temporary refugee status to 500 Sudanese.[20] By 2008, about 4,000 of approximately 15,000 asylum seekers in Israel were estimated to be Sudanese; UNHCR registered 7,483 new asylum seekers that year, 29 percent Sudanese.[21] The government considered Eritreans and Sudanese to be under temporary protection and provided such protection to approximately 9,000–11,000 people during 2008, while relying on UNHCR for refugee-status determinations.[21]

Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Crossings Authority was created in July 2008 and took formal responsibility for refugees and asylum seekers from UNHCR in July 2009.[13] The government announced bans on employing Sudanese asylum seekers but did not enforce them; a Supreme Court decision of January 13, 2011, upheld the decision not to fine employers, which meant Sudanese asylum seekers could in practice work legally.[13] A 2009 report from Arad estimated 700–1,000 Sudanese living there without official figures and noted that the education system had absorbed more than 100 refugee children; national policy at the time barred asylum seekers from residing in the central region, restricting them to areas north of Hadera or south of Gedera.[22]

Israeli policy toward African asylum seekers, including Sudanese nationals, underwent a series of contentious legal and legislative changes from 2012 onward. A 2012 paper described the situation at that time as involving approximately 7,000 documented Sudanese refugees, most of them Christian and from South Sudan, alongside about 1,200 from Darfur.[13] South Sudanese nationals were treated separately following South Sudan’s independence in July 2011: in February 2012, the Interior Ministry told South Sudanese nationals to return home by March, offering voluntary returnees a one-time payment of $1,300 and a plane ticket; in June, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that South Sudanese could be deported there.[13]

In 2012, about 60,000 African migrants were living in Israel, with roughly 53,000—mostly Sudanese and Eritrean—not being deported and receiving temporary protection.[23] An integrated government policy introduced in December 2013 sought to reduce migrant numbers in city centers, encourage voluntary departure, increase financial incentives to leave, and transfer people from urban centers to Holot, an open detention facility in the Negev.[24] In the first quarter of 2014, about 4,000 migrants left voluntarily and migration across the Sinai border was almost completely halted.[24] A January 2014 march in Tel Aviv by more than 20,000 African migrants and asylum seekers called for refugee recognition, an end to arrests, the release of detained people, and international condemnation of Israel’s detention policy; more than 300 migrants had been arrested following a December law permitting indefinite detention of those without valid visas.[2]

Sudanese asylum seekers were notably overrepresented at Holot. A February 2015 Maariv report found that Sudanese made up 73.9 percent of Holot’s residents—1,529 people—despite representing only 20 percent of Israel’s total asylum-seeker population; the facility’s actual population, according to Israel Prison Service figures, stood at 2,071 in January 2015.[25] Darfuri residents interviewed at Holot described earlier work across Israel and difficulty finding housing or employment outside south Tel Aviv, with landlords and employers directing them toward that area.[25] Hundreds of Holot residents marched toward the Egyptian border in June 2014 to demand release; participants were later sentenced to three months in the closed Saharonim detention facility.[25]

After Supreme Court intervention in 2014, the number voluntarily departing fell; subsequent legislation reduced the permitted detention period to three months, and in 2015 the High Court overturned the permitted detention period for the third consecutive time.[24] Border crossings resumed on a smaller scale in the second half of 2015.[24]

In December 2017, the Knesset approved a deportation plan by a vote of 71–41 affecting about 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers, primarily Eritrean and Sudanese, offering voluntary departure with a $3,500 grant or the risk of incarceration.[15] On April 2, 2018, the government announced that it had cancelled a forced-expulsion plan and reached an agreement with UNHCR that would seek Western resettlement for at least 16,250 people while allowing the remainder to stay legally in Israel; south Tel Aviv was also to receive neighborhood-repair funding.[26] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled the agreement within about a day, and its proposed terms were not implemented.[27] A Prime Minister’s Office statement cited in connection with the plan put the number of asylum seekers in Israel at 37,000 at that time.[27]

The ADL noted that before the UNHCR arrangement was floated, Israel had planned to deport thousands of asylum seekers—through persuasion or force—to an unnamed African country, reportedly Rwanda. It described concerns that earlier deportees had faced violence and inhumane conditions and subsequently traveled through South Sudan, Sudan, and Libya in search of protection.[27]

A distinct policy thread concerned Sudanese asylum seekers specifically from Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile—regions the government identified as areas of particular concern. In February 2018, the government announced humanitarian visas for 300 Sudanese migrants from Darfur, followed in August by another 300 visas covering people from Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains.[3] These visas allowed holders to work legally and reenter Israel after short departures, though NGOs cautioned they did not confer the full protections of refugee status. The source does not state how many of the announced visas were ultimately issued.[3] On October 28, 2018, the government announced it would stop issuing the visas to Sudanese citizens and begin examining their asylum claims individually.[3]

Despite this announcement, progress on examining applications was slow. In 2020, the government told the Supreme Court on August 31 that political uncertainty in Sudan prevented it from establishing criteria or ruling on individual Darfuri applications.[28] On October 13, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that 600 Sudanese who had received special protection status in 2007 would be considered refugees.[28]

In 2021, following petitions on behalf of Sudanese asylum seekers from Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile, the Supreme Court gave the government until December 30 to set a decision policy, examine applications individually, grant humanitarian status, or develop a departure solution; if it failed, 2,445 Sudanese applicants who had applied before June 2017 were to receive temporary residency pending decisions on their cases.[4] On December 26, the Population and Immigration Authority published a list of 2,426 people to receive six-month temporary residency, renewable individually; the status provided access to social benefits but could be revoked if an asylum request was denied.[4]

By the end of 2022, at least 120 Darfuris who should have received temporary residency under the December 2021 commitment had not done so.[29] HIAS filed a court petition on November 30, 2022, seeking temporary residency for Sudanese applicants whose cases came after the cutoff date for earlier petitions; it remained pending at year’s end.[29] These developments illustrate the prolonged gap between court orders and their implementation in practice.

Establishing the precise number of Sudanese in Israel is complicated by the fact that official statistics typically report Eritreans and Sudanese as a combined group rather than separate nationalities. As of September 30, 2020, the Population and Immigration Authority counted 31,012 irregular migrants and asylum seekers in Israel, of whom 28,175 were from Eritrea or Sudan combined.[30] By September 30, 2023, the figure had fallen to 23,249 adult asylum seekers, with 20,759 from Eritrea or Sudan; more than 8,000 children of asylum seekers—most born in Israel—also lived in the country.[9]

Separate nationality-specific estimates vary by source and date. The Jerusalem Post reported approximately 6,200 Sudanese in November 2020.[5] The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants estimated around 7,150 in April 2023.[6] Population and Immigration Authority data reported in February 2025 placed the number at approximately 4,000.[7] These estimates use different dates and sources and should not be treated as a directly comparable statistical series. As of July 2025, about 4,549 Sudanese asylum applications were being processed alongside 6,371 Eritrean applications, out of roughly 27,560 total pending applications; these were application counts rather than population totals.[8]

Geographically, Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers have concentrated in south Tel Aviv, particularly in the neighborhoods of Naveh Sha’anan, Hatikva, and Shapira.[6] Many find employment in restaurants, hotels, and cleaning services, though the combined community suffered severe economic disruption during the 2020 hotel and restaurant shutdowns: a Jerusalem Post report indicated that about 80 percent suddenly became unemployed and were ineligible for government support stipends because of their status.[6] In earlier years, an estimated 700–1,000 Sudanese lived in Arad without official figures, and the city’s education system had absorbed more than 100 refugee children.[22]

The Israeli government’s approach to Sudanese asylum claims has been characterized by very low recognition rates and prolonged uncertainty. The Times of Israel reported in 2021 that about 5,000 Sudanese had applied for asylum and that the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants said their applications had not been reviewed.[31] A 2018 Calcalist report said Israel had approved only 11 of approximately 14,000 asylum requests it had received across all nationalities.[15] NGOs and UNHCR have put the overall refugee-recognition rate below one percent.[9][31]

Mutasim Ali, a Darfur native who arrived in Israel around 2010 and studied law with scholarship support, became the best-known individual case of Sudanese refugee recognition. A 2021 report said he had been the only Sudanese applicant recognized under the Refugee Convention since 2006, while separate humanitarian or temporary statuses had been granted to others.[31] This individual-recognition history is distinct from the October 2020 Supreme Court ruling that deemed 600 Sudanese who had received special protection in 2007 to be refugees.[28]

Most Sudanese asylum seekers have instead been issued conditional-release visas requiring frequent renewal, available only in Bnei Brak and Eilat, which prevent deportation but do not provide access to welfare or medical services.[9] These visas do not formally include work permits, although the government has not enforced the employment prohibition against employers—a de facto arrangement upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.[13][9] As of 2023, legally recognized refugees received social services, but asylum seekers generally did not receive public social benefits; adults could enroll in health insurance only through employers and otherwise had access only to emergency care, while children could obtain medical insurance for 120 shekels per month.[9]

The case of Mahmoud Usman illustrates the length of some proceedings. He left Darfur in 2010, traveled through Egypt and the Sinai, and applied for asylum shortly after arriving in Israel.[7] He spent six to seven months in an initial detention facility and was detained again on multiple occasions after missing or arriving late to appointments.[7] His application was tentatively approved in late 2024—more than a decade after filing—but had not been fully ratified as of his December 2024 interview.[7]

In November 2020, 5,119 Sudanese had applied for asylum and received no answer, according to the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.[5] The Jerusalem Post reported that around 100 had received temporary status and that Mutasim Ali was the only one to have attained full individual refugee status at that point.[5]

Sudan’s announcement in October 2020 that it would normalize relations with Israel created anxiety among Sudanese asylum seekers, who feared it could open the door to forced returns.[5] The normalization deal had been reached on October 23, 2020, but had not yet been formalized at the time of initial reporting; Israeli media reported that return of Sudanese migrants had been discussed, potentially with financial incentives and safety assurances.[5] The government had promised the Supreme Court not to deport asylum seekers before examining their claims.[5]

In an August 2020 Ynet report, Africa researcher Galia Sabar estimated that about 6,300 Sudanese asylum seekers were living in Israel, most from Darfur and the Blue Nile region, and argued that ongoing unrest and violence against civilians in those areas made return unsafe. She maintained that “asylum seekers” was the legally appropriate term and that they should not be returned unless it could be established that their lives would not be at risk.[32] Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen, by contrast, said a future peace agreement should include their return and characterized them as labor migrants who had entered Israel from Egypt.[32]

Sudanese residents interviewed by media at the time said they hoped to return to Sudan one day but not while conditions remained dangerous.[5] Renewed conflict beginning in 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—whose roots trace to the Janjaweed militias—has further complicated any prospect of safe return for those from Darfur and other affected regions.[7]

Israeli academic institutions, particularly Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, have produced research on the psychological conditions of Sudanese and Darfuri asylum seekers in Israel. A study of migration-related traumatic experiences examining a consecutive sample at the Physicians for Human Rights Open Clinic found that 149 Sudanese and 895 Eritrean adults participated; among the Sudanese, 16.8 percent of men and 22.2 percent of women reported witnessing violence during migration, while 51.9 percent of men and 44.4 percent of women reported being victims of violence.[33]

A community-sample study of 300 Darfuri asylum seekers living in Israel examined relationships between war trauma and psychological stress, identifying four trauma dimensions: war exposure, life threat, torture-assault, and sexual violence.[34] Life-threat exposure was the only dimension that significantly predicted both PTSD and depressive symptom severity; interpersonal sensitivity partially mediated its association with PTSD symptoms and fully mediated its association with depressive symptoms.[34]

A related cross-sectional study, also drawing on 300 Darfuri asylum seekers in Israel, compared direct trauma exposure with indirect exposure through events experienced by family, friends, and community members.[35] Direct exposure was associated with worse mental-health symptoms and lower psychological well-being, while indirect exposure to similar events was associated with fewer PTSD, depressive, and anxiety symptoms and with improved well-being—a preliminary finding the authors described as warranting further investigation.[35]

A questionnaire study of 227 Darfuri asylum seekers aged 19–58 assessed post-migration difficulties, social contacts, perceived support, community volunteering, and well-being.[36] Perceived social support was associated with less distress and greater well-being; having more Israeli friends was also associated with greater well-being.[36] By contrast, having more asylum-seeker friends was associated with greater distress and lower well-being, a pattern the authors attributed in part to shared adversity and the costs of social exposure to others’ suffering.[36]

Ben-Gurion University also ran an Israel Science Foundation-funded project on “The psycho-social conditions and needs of Darfuri refugees in Israel” from January 2010 to December 2012, led by Vered Slonim-Nevo.[37] Mental-health services have been limited: as of 2023, two clinics in Tel Aviv provided services to asylum seekers, including one opened in May of that year for torture survivors, and an estimated 4,000 torture-victim refugees and asylum seekers received limited support.[9]

Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seeking children have been enrolled in Israeli schools, often without a formal national policy framework to guide their integration. A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 22 teachers across Israeli schools found that, in the absence of official policy, teachers adopted avoidance and depoliticization strategies in navigating a polarized environment and hostility directed toward African asylum seekers.[38] The study’s authors argue that the broader Israeli sociopolitical context shaped how teachers responded to asylum-seeking pupils.[38]

Media coverage of the community has also been examined academically. An analysis of 180 news articles covering asylum seekers’ protests in December 2013 and January 2014 found that newspapers provided a site where competing accounts—including those of asylum seekers themselves—were contested, but concluded that press coverage did not necessarily translate into recognition of asylum seekers as refugees.[39] A parallel study of 79 photographs published in two newspapers during the same period identified visual portrayals of asylum seekers as either an imminent threat or as passive victims, with dehumanizing techniques that the study argues presented people as lacking individual or collective histories.[40]

The status and characterization of Sudanese nationals in Israel has been the subject of sustained public, legal, and political controversy. A central dispute concerns whether particular arrivals qualify as refugees fleeing persecution or are economic migrants. Israeli officials have at various points characterized African migrants as seeking work, while Sudanese asylum seekers and advocacy organizations have documented flight from genocide in Darfur and from broader fighting.[15][7] The term “infiltrators,” embedded in Israeli law—notably the 1954 Infiltration Prevention Law—and used in political discourse for people who crossed the border irregularly, is disputed and can carry a derogatory connotation.[3]

The safety of return to Sudan, particularly Darfur, has also been contested. Galia Sabar argued that returning Sudanese asylum seekers while violence continued in their regions of origin would put their lives at risk; Intelligence Minister Cohen countered that they were labor migrants and should be included in return provisions of any normalization agreement.[32] The 2018 planned deportation to a third country—reportedly Rwanda—drew objections citing reports that earlier deportees had faced violence and inhumane conditions and had subsequently traveled through multiple countries in search of protection.[27]

Recognition statistics vary because sources use different legal categories: refugee status under the Refugee Convention, humanitarian status, temporary protection, humanitarian visas, and conditional-release documents are distinct and have changed in availability over time. Israel’s recognition of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers collectively has been reported as below one-half of one percent, compared with a global estimate of around 60 percent for Sudanese applicants cited by ASSAF.[7] Population figures are similarly not directly comparable: the combined Eritrean-or-Sudanese totals were 28,175 in 2020 and 20,759 in 2023, but neither figure provides a Sudanese-only count.[30][9]