When Ibrahim Saadeldin fled Darfur three years ago, staggering into the night after Janjawid militias destroyed his village and killed his siblings, he never imagined that he would end up in an Israeli jail.

The 29-year-old African spent more than a year in a local detention centre as Israel has wrestled with an increasingly uncomfortable problem: how should a country created as a haven for Jews after the Holocaust cope with refugees from a modern-day genocide?

Mr Saadeldin was picked up by border guards, who found him dehydrated and bleeding from days in the desert and a final climb over Israel’s barbed-wire border with Egypt.

He is one of about 400 Sudanese refugees who have made such a journey in the past three years, sneaking across the border only to be arrested in Israel as infiltrators from an enemy state.

The Government says that it must treat all Sudanese as potential security threats. As citizens of an enemy state they cannot stay, Israel says. But human rights groups say that Israel has a special obligation to these refugees, comparing their plight to that of Jews who sought sanctuary after the Second World War.

In the absence of a definitive policy, Israel has adopted a patchwork approach, sending about 120 Sudanese to prison, confining 200 more to kibbutzim and finding minimum-wage work for the remaining 80. Faced with the prospect of hundreds more refugees as the crisis worsens in Darfur, the Government is looking for a more permanent solution.

According to a draft deal reportedly being brokered with the United Nations, Israel would grant refugee status to 90 Sudanese who have already arrived here from Darfur. The remaining 300 or so would be deported to countries identified by the UN. Israel would refuse to accept any more Sudanese, turning those who arrive here over to UN custody.

“At the end of the day, we’re appreciative of their plight,” said Miri Eisen, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office. “But just because we are the only Western democracy they can arrive at by foot, we don’t want to suddenly become the focus for providing all of the solutions,” she said.

“We are a Jewish country. Does that mean we resolve all of the world’s problems?”

The problem, according to case workers at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is that there are very few countries willing to open their doors to the Sudanese. Any deal that precludes Israel from absorbing further refugees would set a dangerous precedent, they say.

Many, like Mr Saadeldin, fled Khartoum by lorry, seeking shelter in Egypt initially. But they faced further persecution, which in Mr Saadeldin’s case, included jail and torture.

His pregnant wife was among 27 Sudanese killed by Egyptian police during a refugee protest in Cairo in 2005, he said. “The police took me away in a bus. From the window I saw my wife’s body on the street. Her face was beaten and bloody. She was dead,” he said.

He escaped to Israel on foot, with only the clothes on his back, a pencil and can of cola.

After spending a year in jail, the UN found him work at a kibbutz in northern Israel. He earns a little more than £2 an hour picking potatoes and carrots. “Every day I pray to stay,” he said. “I will never be able to return to my home. This is the next best thing.”

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