Meet 5 African asylum seekers who have been summoned to Israel’s desert prison

[Update, Feb. 4: “>Holot, Israel's new “open” prison camp for illegal immigrants, picked up a group of asylum seekers in “>wrote on Twitter that only 11 of the 65 asylum seekers ordered to report to Holot today showed up to the bus boarding. “The bus has departed,” he “>Haaretz, about 1,800 men from the African asylum-seeker community have been ordered to report to Holot in the coming weeks. Which means that about 1,800 men who have lived here for up to eight years are now counting down the days until they will board a bus in the Nokia basketball arena parking lot and begin an uncertain stint in captivity. Many more believe they'll be receiving their invites soon. And although the prison's capacity is currently 3,300, Israel's “>reported in this week's print edition: Rather than arrest individual African asylum seekers who have committed street crimes and try them in court, the government is sending them to Holot en masse for the crime of infiltrating Israel’s border fence.

These men don't know if they will ever see Tel Aviv again. Visions of Holot — or at least what they've glimpsed of it in photos, and heard about it through friends who've had the misfortune of witnessing it firsthand — have replaced any dreams they may have had for their futures as refugees taken in by a free and democratic country. “>the Neve Sha'anan neighborhood of South Tel Aviv one year ago. But like me, they're a part of this city now, and I feel sick when I imagine walking to the Central Bus Station without hearing their music and their language, passing their shops, sharing their food.

“>workers' strike that rocked Israel's service industry have done nothing to sway Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar from their mission to drive the “illegal infiltrators” back to Africa. But because international law bans Israel from forcing them onto planes back to Eritrea and Sudan, Netanyahu and Sa'ar apparently hope to drive the asylum seekers into such psychological despair that they choose to go back themselves, with $3,500 in Israeli government cash in their pockets.

Speaking to an African asylum seeker about Holot feels like talking to someone about their execution date. After Holot, the screen will go black. How do you have a casual conversation about something so terribly life-altering?

Below, meet five of the hundreds of Eritrean and Sudanese men currently bracing themselves for Israel's final solution.

“>I first met charismatic Darfuri community leader Mutasim Ali, 27, at the annual memorial rally in North Tel Aviv for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. (He is pictured above at said rally, during his historic campaign to become the first African refugee on the Tel Aviv City Council.) Ali, who has lived in Israel for four years, was the only asylum seeker present at the October event — a devoted activist for months before the community rallied around him by the tens of thousands this January.

At the rally, Ali told me: “Rabin believed in dignity; he wanted everybody that goes to work to feel respected in this world. And in terms of asylum seekers, there is something that needs to be very clear: They came looking for protection. They want to give back to their country. … There is an opportunity to make some changes here, if we believe in the vision of Rabin.”

Along with around a dozen other key African organizers, Ali built momentum for the game-changing January protests by posting fliers, sending out Facebook and text alerts and holding daily planning meetings in Levinksy Park. (“>posted a photo of Ali holding up his Holot papers yesterday. “Mutasim Ali, 1st non-Jewish African to run for Tel Aviv city council, was just ordered to the Holot internment camp,” wrote Blumenthal. The status was re-Tweeted over 100 times.

Ali is currently working with other leaders in his community to devise a group strategy in response to the Holot roundup. (And if anyone can do it, this man can.)

“>the dilapidated, half-empty Central Bus Station. When I visited him on a recent Monday, as reported in ““>visited the week before.) He also asked if I thought he'd be able to travel back and forth to his shop.

That would be quite a stretch. Although inmates are technically allowed to come and go, they must check in to Holot three times a day. From what I've gathered, they are allowed to apply for 24-hour leave, but they need a good reason. And I imagine Musa would soon tire of the eight-hour round trip from Holot to Tel Aviv by bus.

Some 50 inmates at Holot reportedly left during the day and never returned. But according to “>the most recent rally in Levinsky Park.