Seeking asylum in Israel: refugees and the history of migration law

Since 2005, approximately 70,000 asylum-seeking refugees from Sudan and Eritrea have entered Israel.

This, along with the highly publicised anti-African immigrant riots in Israel in 2012 and 2014 and the current global refugee crisis, has meant that the issue of African migration has become increasingly controversial.

Here Gilad Ben-Nun looks at this phenomenon in its historical and contemporary contexts, and compares it to the wider debates surrounding the Palestinian refugees in the region and the concept of their right of return.