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This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

JERUSALEM—For 75 days starting in 2020, Luwam Habteab slept on the floor of a prison cell, given little food and no medical care. She was detained that November by Ethiopian security forces for her reporting on the Axum massacre, in which Eritrean forces killed hundreds of civilians over a weekend—one of the deadliest episodes of the 2020-22 Tigray war.

Upon her release, Habteab found that her apartment had been sealed by federal police. Her family had warned her not to return there, telling her that security forces were waiting. A local archbishop with a connection at the Israeli Embassy interceded, after which Habteab was ushered out of the country. She landed in Tel Aviv in August 2023 and applied for asylum. (Habteab is identified by a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal.)

JERUSALEM—For 75 days starting in 2020, Luwam Habteab slept on the floor of a prison cell, given little food and no medical care. She was detained that November by Ethiopian security forces for her reporting on the Axum massacre, in which Eritrean forces killed hundreds of civilians over a weekend—one of the deadliest episodes of the 2020-22 Tigray war.

Upon her release, Habteab found that her apartment had been sealed by federal police. Her family had warned her not to return there, telling her that security forces were waiting. A local archbishop with a connection at the Israeli Embassy interceded, after which Habteab was ushered out of the country. She landed in Tel Aviv in August 2023 and applied for asylum. (Habteab is identified by a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal.)

Habteab now lives in Jerusalem’s Old City, where she spends most of her days praying. As of August, she was one of 1,334 Ethiopians with open asylum claims before Israel’s Interior Ministry, according to figures that the ministry confirmed to Foreign Policy.

Months after Habteab arrived, in January 2024, the Israeli Interior Ministry determined that the situation in Ethiopia was stable enough to send its nationals home, revoking the group protection that had shielded asylum-seekers from deportation. That stability did not last: This July, Tigray’s regional authorities declared that the 2022 peace agreement with the federal government had collapsed, accusing Addis Ababa of preparing for war.

A woman walks past clothes left to dry on the balcony of a school used as shelter at a camp for displaced people in Mekelle, in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, on July 19, 2024. Michele Spatari/AFP via Getty Images

Last month, an alliance of rebel groups launched a full-scale offensive against federal forces, seizing airports across Tigray and pushing into neighboring Afar and Amhara states. Federal forces have since retaken Tigray’s capital, though the rebels have vowed to keep fighting; Eritrea and Ethiopia have cut diplomatic ties. Explosions have been reported in Addis Ababa, which Israeli authorities say is safe for returnees.

Habteab has watched with dread as the fighting returned to her home province. Much of Tigray is under a communications blackout, reviving fears of the total siege during the 2020-22 war that starved the region and killed as many as 600,000 people. Habteab’s family in Tigray is almost impossible to reach, she said.

With Israel’s national elections set for Oct. 27, civil society advocates........

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