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No Man’s Land

Rebecca Collard June 22, 2009 Egypt is shooting them. Israel won’t recognize them. What’s a poor refugee to do?

Cairo, June 2007: late one night, Ghebre piled into a car with four other African migrants. They were headed east across the Sinai Peninsula toward Israel. Ghebre had fled his native Eritrea, by way of Sudan, eighteen months earlier. “The plan was … if Egypt is okay, we would stay here,” he tells me. “If not, we go to Israel.”

Ghebre was in Cairo for just four days before traffickers convinced him their $700 US fee was worth passage into the Promised Land. The route, over the Suez Canal and across the 266-kilometre frontier with Israel, has become a thoroughfare for …

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Winter

ISSUE 42 Winter 2011

online content:

also in this issue:

  • Getting Plowed

    by Selena Ross In this exclusive investigative report from Montreal, Maisonneuve exposes the bid-rigging, violence and sabotage at the heart of an unlikely racket: snow removal.

  • In the House of the Lord

    by Andrea Bennett The Jackson Avenue Housing Co-operative and the religious battle raging in one of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods.

  • After Jack

    by Nick Taylor-Vaisey Last May, Jack Layton led the NDP to the greatest victory in party history. Now that he's gone, will the party be able to maintain its momentum?
  • [see full issue contents]