At least 40 people remained hospitalized Sunday morning, 12 of them in serious condition, with injuries sustained during hours-long violent clashes in south Tel Aviv between supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government on Saturday.
Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center said 24 people were still hospitalized there, including seven in serious condition. The injuries were not life-threatening, the hospital said.
At Ramat Gan’s Sheba Medical Center, four people were still hospitalized, three of them in critical condition. A policeman was hospitalized in moderate condition in the neurosurgery unit after having a piece of a camping stove removed from his head.
“He was coming out of the police station,” the officer’s wife Rinat told Kan Radio Sunday. “He just managed to notice five or six [migrants] standing there, five meters from him. He didn’t even have a chance to think and they attacked him… He works in an administrative job. They caught him at the entrance.”
Other patients were hospitalized at Petah Tikva’s Beilinson, Holon’s Wolfson, Rishon Lezion’s Shamir and Kfar Saba’s Meir.
Some 50 individuals are under arrest following the Tel Aviv riots, which led to some 170 wounded, among them 50 policemen. The police officers’ injuries were predominantly bruises, many resulting from stones and other blunt objects.
General view of Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv on November 10, 2020 (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
While they had been aware of the potential for clashes outside the venue where the Eritrean embassy in Tel Aviv was set to hold an official event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the country’s ruler’s rise to power, police have said they were “surprised” by their intensity. Massive forces were rushed in as officials realized the scale of the unrest.
Unnamed police sources who spoke to Haaretz on Sunday described havoc at the force’s forward command center as the riots unfolded.
“The right hand didn’t know what the left was doing,” a senior official told the paper (Hebrew).
One source told Haaretz that eventually Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai arrived and took direct control of the situation from Tel Aviv District police chief Peretz Amar, raging at the chaos he encountered.
Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, left, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at the scene of a terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, outside of Jerusalem, August 1, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Amar, formerly head of the Southern District, recently replaced former regional commander Amichai Eshed.
Eshed was pushed out of the role by Shabtai and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, with the latter widely reported to have been dissatisfied with Eshed’s ostensibly soft approach toward demonstrators against the judicial overhaul, as he repeatedly resisted the minister’s demands for a tougher crackdown on road blockages.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Saturday night that he and a team of ministers would look into the possibility of deporting migrants who behaved violently.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, June 25, 2023.(Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP)
“The prime minister has decided to convene a special ministerial team to review the possibility of taking action against illegal infiltrators who took part in the unrest, including deportation,” the Prime Minister’s Office said. According to the announcement, the team will meet on Sunday.
Israel’s right wing largely rejects African migrants’ claims of asylum-seeking and routinely refers to all migrants, regardless of motives and circumstances, as “illegal infiltrators.”
The chaos broke out amid a demonstration against the Eritrean government event. Opponents of the regime, decked in blue, arrived on the scene to demonstrate against supporters, who wore red. The rallies soon devolved into violence that lasted for several hours.
Eritrean asylum seekers protest against the regime, in Tel Aviv, September 2, 2023 (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Eritreans from both sides faced off using construction lumber, pieces of metal, rocks and at least one axe, tearing through a neighborhood of south Tel Aviv where many asylum seekers live. Rioters smashed store windows and police cars in the area.
Police in riot gear shot tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters, who broke through barricades and hurled rocks at the police.
Police said officers resorted to live fire in some cases when they felt their lives were in danger.
“If we hadn’t been there today and hadn’t intervened between the two groups of demonstrators — the supporters and opponents of the regime — we would be counting bodies,” a senior police official told Channel 12 Saturday.
“We protected ourselves and tried to separate and calm the field. There were police officers here who feared for their lives and were forced to use live fire. They fired stun grenades in order to disperse the event,” he said.
The director of Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, where many of the wounded were treated, said Saturday that he could “not recall” a medical event on such a scale for the hospital.
Haim Bublil, Yarkon District Police chief, said that authorities had coordinated with both sides in the lead-up to the event, but the groups did not adhere to requirements set up by the police.
A police car damaged by rioting Eritrean asylum seekers at a protest against the regime in Tel Aviv, September 2, 2023 (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
“Opponents of the regime broke through the barriers, fought with police, threw rocks and pieces of fencing. We used crowd dispersal methods. We were surprised by the intensity of the violence,” Bublil said.
“It was a breach of all the norms that we allow,” said Bublil. “And it created a situation in which we had to use significant means, including live fire by police officers.”
Representatives of the Eritrean community in Israel said that they had warned police a week ago over threats of violence surrounding the event hosted by the Eritrean embassy.
Eritreans make up the majority of the more than 30,000 African asylum-seekers in Israel. Most asylum seekers arrived in Israel through Egypt in 2007-2012.
Those who arrived say they fled danger and persecution from a country known as the North Korea of Africa, with no elections, no free press and forced lifetime military conscription in slavery-like conditions.
In Israel, migrants and asylum-seekers face an uncertain future as the state attempts to make their lives difficult and deport them. The legal status of most of the Eritrean community in Israel is that of “infiltrators,” as asylum requests are often not examined, rejected outright, or never filed by migrants.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
