Israel arrests and plans to deport Ethiopian asylum seekers
Israel has begun arresting Ethiopian asylum seekers and plans to deport those already in detention next month, civil society sources have told Middle East Eye.
Starting on 17 April, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority will act on a January 2024 government decision and deport all Ethiopian asylum seekers from Israel, Haaretz reported on Monday.
News of the planned deportation comes after several human rights groups petitioned Israel’s supreme court to block the move, which initially delayed government action.
Israel's supreme court has backed the state’s position and will allow it to deport the asylum seekers, who are not Jewish, back to Ethiopia.
“There are approximately 8,000 Ethiopian nationals that Israel intends to deport, about 1,000 of whom are from the Tigray region,” Gilad Palombo, the public advocacy director for Assaf, an aid organisation for refugees and asylum seekers in Israel, told Middle East Eye.
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The war in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray broke out in 2020 between government forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
More than 100,000 people were killed during the conflict, and while the war officially ended with a peace agreement in 2022, fighting has continued sporadically and fears of a return to all-out war are ever present.
'The intention is to deport them as soon as it becomes possible. The state of Israel plans to send them back to Ethiopia'
- Gilad Palombo, Assaf
Palombo said that the Population and Immigration Authority, an interior ministry body that regulates the residency and employment of foreigners in Israel, has already begun arresting Ethiopians that Israel accuses of being “infiltrators”, a specific legal term used to label people who enter the country illegally.
“As long as Ethiopian nationals are not granted group protection status, they are not allowed to work. Several dozen have been arrested so far, some of whom have already been released,” Palombo told MEE, referring to Ethiopian asylum seekers.
“The intention is to deport them as soon as it becomes possible… the state of Israel plans to send them back to Ethiopia,” Palombo said.
Palombo said that several human rights organisations had filed an inquiry with the court on whether the state would allow some endangered individuals to stay in Israel, but that he was not optimistic about its chances.
Death and displacement in Ethiopia
In mid-2025, the UN estimated that at least 3.3 million people were internally displaced in Ethiopia.
As fighting and instability continue in the Ethiopian regions of Amhara, Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz and Tigray, civilians have faced a humanitarian crisis, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report last year.
Bazi Gete, an Ethiopian-Israeli writer and filmmaker, told MEE that after the ceasefire in Tigray, “there was supposedly a return to normalcy, but in reality, this area remains cut off from other parts of Ethiopia”.
Gete added that if they are deported, the 8,000 Ethiopian asylum seekers living in Israel will face acute danger, as they will be “returning to a kind of no man’s land.”
“The deportation of Ethiopians from Israel will harm them on multiple levels,” Gete said. “It depends on whether they are regime opponents, but some of them may face real danger to their lives, while others risk detention.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began his time in office by releasing political prisoners and lifting bans on opposition groups.
In 2019, after just a year in the job, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with his determination to resolve a longstanding border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea garnering special mention.
But soon after, Abiy launched the war in Tigray, and since then repression at home in Ethiopia has grown, with the government committing a slew of human rights violations and embarking on campaigns of mass censorship.
Ethiopia has, under Abiy, moved decisively into the orbit of the United Arab Emirates, and has been drawn into the UAE’s supply of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group in Sudan.
A landlocked country that has long sought access to the sea, Ethiopia is once again seriously considering an invasion of Eritrea, with the Red Sea port of Assab a particular flashpoint.
“All of them would be returning to a region in severe economic distress,” Gete said of the Ethiopian asylum seekers Israel is planning to deport. “They will have to depend on outside assistance and whatever savings they have managed to accumulate.”
Palombo agreed with Gete regarding the serious dangers facing Ethiopian asylum seekers.
“In some areas there is ongoing fighting and famine as a result,” he said, adding that the Tigray region “is very dangerous, with reports indicating particular risk for women and children.”
Israel's longstanding deportation policy
According to Assaf, some 72,000 asylum seekers live legally in Israel, of whom 50,000 live under a “protected group” status.
Most of the asylum seekers living in Israel under this status come from Eritrea, Sudan and Ukraine.
'The policy of interior ministers over the past 20 years has been to make life in Israel unbearable for asylum seekers'
- Gilad Palombo, Assaf
The 8,000 Ethiopian asylum seekers marked for deportation and 14,000 refugees from several different countries live in Israel without the state recognising them as a “protected group”, and so are considered to be in the country illegally.
All asylum seekers and refugees in Israel are living under harsh legal and economic restrictions, according to Assaf.
Whether living in Israel legally or illegally, they “are excluded from most welfare services, public healthcare, and any basic social safety net,” the group said in a report.
Fifty-seven percent of asylum seekers live in poverty, Assaf said, while 85 percent are facing food insecurity, and many suffer from extreme food insecurity.
“The policy of interior ministers over the past 20 years has been to make life in Israel unbearable for asylum seekers,” Palombo told MEE.
“This policy has been in place since refugees first arrived here from Africa in 2006,” Palombo said, adding that “the aim is to encourage 'voluntary emigration'.”
Between 2013 and 2018, Israel had a deal with Rwanda whereby it deported asylum seekers – mostly from Sudan and Eritrea - to the landlocked African country. It 2017, Israel was reportedly paying Rwanda $5,000 for every person it received.
“The goal is that there will be no refugees here,” Palombo said. “The state is investing significant efforts to deport anyone it can.“
In the past two years, the Knesset has approved a law directed against asylum seekers, and several others are in preliminary stages.
"Refugees and labour migrants from the African continent are not wanted in Israel," Gete told MEE.
"Propaganda portrays them as the source of all problems... They are not allowed to live here with dignity."
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