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African migrants receive food from local charity workers offering social services in South Tel Aviv's Levinsky Park.
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Eritrean workers, one wearing a t-shirt advertising the Birthright Israel programme, look on in Levinsky Park as a mixed group of Israelis and Africans play in a drum circle.
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Having lived for four months with friends in Rishon Letzion, 22-year-old Mubarak from Darfur works in a supermarket. "For work, Arabic is no good," he says. "You need Hebrew."
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A group of West African men play football on a paved surface inside Levinsky Park adjacent to the central bus station, seen in the background.
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At the Darfur Computer Center, area residents buy electronics and receive other community services.
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Migrants from Eritrea, whose flag is seen in the mirror, use internet stations to connect with family members at home and make phone calls.
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Like many shopkeepers, this electronics merchant says he is wary of thieves. Pointing to the security cameras in his shop, he then asks, "But, then again, in which country do people not steal? The government should either kick them out or give them work permits."
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John Deng Gir, 39, hails from South Sudan and sells belts and shoes on Neve Sh'anan Street. He says he plans to accept the government's 1000 euro grant and plane ticket home, along with his two Israeli-born young children who live in the southern resort city of Eilat.
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The African migrant issue has come to the fore in Israeli media as the Palestinian peace process is on the back burner, and the topic of Iran has faded from the headlines.
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At a cafe owned by a man from Darfur, groups of Eritreans play cards, smoke shisha and watch professional wrestling.
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Some of the immigrants are assimilating and have Hebrew-speaking children. They often take jobs that Israelis do not want.
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But many Israelis say the volume of African migration has become socially overwhelming, even though most live in areas also populated by other migrants, including Filipinos, Chinese and Nepalese workers.
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As Israelis debate how to resolve a problem that many in the country say has boiled over, the migrant communities eke out a living and maintain cultural ties to their countries of origin through film, music and cuisine.
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Eritrean workers push cases of beer past a synagogue. Many Israeli liberals are sympathetic to the plight of African migrants, but the nationalist right has stoked the flames of social controversy and warned of negative long-term implications for Zionist national identity.
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Tel Aviv residents walk past a poster for a campaign with a slogan that reads "Refugee, Not Infiltrator" and features the faces and stories of African migrants who are slated to be placed in detention centres in Israel's southern Negev Desert.