On Dec. 17, when a dazzling blanket of snow still covered the open space adjacent to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, they got off the bus and walked silently in two lines. Some of them held cardboard signs bearing slogans in English such as “Freedom” and “No More Prison.” That setting only added to the surreal spectacle: Rows of dark-skinned men, some with tears streaming down their faces, marched past chanting, “We are human beings!”

Most Israelis and the media still refer to them as “infiltrators.” Those with a more lenient attitude prefer to call them “illegal residents.” Human rights organizations consider them to be asylum seekers and demand they are recognized as refugees — as people whose homeland has become a desolate wilderness. In many cases, it more resembles a killing field.

Two days had passed since they left Holot, an “open detention center” that the government set up in the southern Negev region after the Supreme Court invalidated a law, which would have allowed it to keep the asylum seekers in prison for up to three years. The facility's guests are expected to appear before the authorities to be counted three times a day. At night, they are shut in behind locked gates. It was from there, deep in the desert, that these asylum seekers began their protest march to Jerusalem, a city that the vast majority of them had never even seen. They hoped that once they were there, standing face to face with the government's institutions, they would be able to ask that the gate to freedom be opened for them.

After spending many long hours marching in an exceptional orderly fashion to the gates of the Knesset, and after standing for an extended time in frigid temperatures, the immigration authorities determined that the 48 hours in which they could not be arrested were up. In a swift action, using excessive force, the 307 Africans were forced onto buses and police vans. Some of them spent the night in Holot, while others were moved to Saharonim Prison.