How many Sudanese people are currently finding refuge in Israel?

Answer 1

This is a moving target. The first 230 refugees arrived in Israel in 2006. According to more recent reports (January 2008) there are approximately 1,700 Sudanese among 2,400 African refugee-seekers in Israel. Harvard College's New Society offers a rather detailed report on "Sudanese Refugees in Israel and Egypt." For more details, see the Related Link.

Many of the Sudanese who fled war-torn Sudan have gone to Egypt. Some of them are fleeing ill-treatment at the hands of Egyptian authorities -- or simply trying to improve their economic prospects -- and have fled (paying "couriers" around US$400 to help them get across the Suez Canal, the Sinai desert and the border) to Israel.

One issue is that Sudan does not recognize Israel, so that Israeli authorities fear that some of the Sudanese refugees are not what they appear, and may have malevolent intentions to the Jewish state. This has caused some soul searching on how to handle these "enemy aliens" (as the UK referred to anyone of German origin fleeing Germany during WW2 -- including thousands of Jewish refugees).

There is also a talk among sudanese nongovernmental organizations that Israel has encouraged the sudanese refugees for political reasons concerning Darfur issue which America describes as genocide. The Israeli activists were seen in demonstrations for Darfur shouting "never again" refering to historical mass killing against Jews in Europe during world war.