Israel bans Sudanese refugee protests against UAE's support for RSF

The Israeli police have cancelled two demonstrations planned by Sudanese refugees who sought to protest the atrocities taking place in Sudan by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary.

One of the demonstrations was planned to take place outside the Emirati embassy in Herzliya, a city north of Tel Aviv, against the support the United Arab Emirates provides to the RSF, whose fighters are accused of committing genocide in Sudan.

On Tuesday, police informed the organisers that the protest outside the embassy "could, with a high degree of certainty, cause severe harm to state security and public order", according to a Haaretz report.

Following this, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the protest organisers, requesting that the police decision be overturned.

In the petition, the association argued that “cancelling a demonstration because there is opposition to it amounts to rewarding violence and constitutes a severe and disproportionate violation of freedom of expression, which is a fundamental right".

However, after the justices were presented with the National Security Council's position, which stated that “holding the demonstration would harm Israel’s foreign relations and national security”, the petition was withdrawn, and the court upheld the police decision.

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Anwar Suliman, an asylum seeker from Sudan and one of the protest organisers, told Middle East Eye that they had submitted a request earlier this month to hold a demonstration outside the Emirati embassy on 20 November.

Shortly afterwards, he said, police informed him the protest would not be authorised. He then contacted the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

"As a community of asylum seekers, we decided to do something," Suliman told MEE, adding that "we wanted to protest outside the UAE embassy in Herzliya" due to “the backing the UAE gives to what is happening in Sudan".

Suliman added that the organisers also planned a memorial gathering in Tel Aviv, where candles would be lit in memory of those killed by the RSF. Police cancelled this as well.

On Wednesday, the police maintained that the memorial gathering could harm Israel’s foreign relations and national security, and said they would not allow the community of Sudanese asylum seekers to gather in a park in Tel Aviv to hold the event.

Suliman told MEE that the police cancelled the memorial so that "there won’t be a demonstration or signs raised against the UAE".

"The UAE requested that the demonstration not be held," Suliman said, adding that he fears Israel "is doing dirty things with them".

"The State of Israel knows that the UAE is involved in the massacre in Sudan, where people have been brutally massacred," Suliman added.

Capture of el-Fasher

MEE has previously revealed that the UAE provides the RSF militia with extensive logistical and military support.

Since the war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 over plans to dissolve the RSF and merge it into the regular military, the paramilitary has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by rights groups and UN investigators.

The US and several human rights groups have accused the RSF of committing genocide against the Masalit community in West Darfur earlier in the conflict.

'Other than Haaretz, no one in the Israeli media wanted to touch this'

- Anwar Suliman, Sudanese asylum seeker

The demand to protest outside the Emirati embassy comes against the backdrop of RSF forces, supported by the UAE, seizing control of the city of el-Fasher in the Darfur region on 26 October.

The 260,000 inhabitants of el-Fasher had been starved under siege for 18 months prior to the RSF assault.

Testimonies and reports from the city since then point to widespread killings of civilians, with RSF forces accused of murder, sexual violence and expulsions.

The governor of Darfur, Minni Arko Minnawi, has told MEE that 27,000 Sudanese were killed by RSF in just three days following the onslaught. 

Suliman told MEE that in light of the massacre in el-Fasher, "we will not give up, we have many ways to express our protest", adding that "the [Israeli] media is not covering the massacre in Sudan". 

"Other than Haaretz, no one in the Israeli media wanted to touch this," Suliman said of the lack of Israeli media interest, adding that "maybe they are afraid of something".

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As of September 2025, according to Israel’s Ministry of Interior, 1,845 Sudanese asylum seekers live in Israel.

During the 2000s, thousands of Sudanese asylum seekers arrived in Israel. The government classified them as "infiltrators" despite their legal international status as refugees.

Only a few hundred Sudanese received temporary status after a long legal battle in the Israeli court system, while many others were deported to third countries as part of a "voluntary departure" programme initiated by the government.

In 2012, protests were held in Israel against the presence of Sudanese asylum seekers, during which Likud MP Miri Regev - now serving as minister of transportation - said that “the Sudanese are a cancer in our body, we will do everything to send them back to their place of origin".

In 2018, those who refused to "leave voluntarily" were placed in the Holot detention centre in southern Israel. However, later that year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the cancellation of the programme.

According to a report by the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli human rights organisation, Israel places numerous obstacles before asylum seekers in the fields of employment, housing and healthcare.

Israeli public officials "portray the refugees as prone to criminality and as spreaders of disease, based on racist stereotypes", the report said.

"The refugees, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of the country’s population, are also presented as a demographic and security threat," added the report.