Israelis Hail Reports of Accord on Soviet Jews

Israeli leaders on Tuesday welcomed reports that about 11,000 Soviet Jews may be allowed to fly to Israel via Romania this year, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir cautioned that nothing is certain in the effort to increase Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

“We do not believe 11,000 to 12,000 is enough,” said a spokesman for Shamir. “We will welcome every Jew. But there are 400,000 who have made requests to leave the Soviet Union, and our fight is for every one of them.”

U.S. Jewish leaders said Monday that they received pledges from Kremlin leaders during talks held in Moscow last week that 11,000 to 12,000 Jews will be allowed to leave for Israel this year via Romania.

“If this change takes place, it would certainly be very important--from the standpoint of Israel’s position in the world and in terms of the emigration of Jews to Israel,” Shamir told state radio.

Nothing is certain, he emphasized, without elaborating. “It’s enough to say that things have not been completed formally,” he said.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also welcomed the reports.

“Of course we have a huge interest in this,” he said. “First and foremost, the matter of Jews, but also the matter of ties with the Soviet Union and its role in the Middle East.”

President Chaim Herzog told state radio: “I hope the reports are true. They follow other signs that point to a real, or perhaps dramatic, change in the Soviet Union.”

In the first official Soviet comment on the talks, Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov confirmed in a telephone interview with Israeli radio Tuesday that the meetings between Soviet officials and American Jewish leaders took place.

However, he refused to provide details of the meetings and said Soviet Foreign Ministry officials did not take part.

Pressure on Shamir

Experts on Soviet-Israel relations say the change in Soviet policy, if it occurs, will bring fresh pressure on Shamir to agree to Moscow’s participation in an international Middle East peace conference which he opposes.

Israel has long ruled out a Soviet role in Middle East peace efforts until Moscow eases Jewish emigration restrictions and renews diplomatic relations it broke with the Jewish state during the 1967 Middle East War.

Peres has said he favors Moscow’s participation in a peace conference if it meets Israel’s conditions, while Shamir recently said the two issues are not linked.

Soviet Jewish emigration hit a high of 51,000 in 1979. It has been reduced to a trickle of about 1,000 a year in the last six years, but the number was apparently rising even before the Moscow talks. In Washington, the State Department said Tuesday that about 700 Soviet Jews arrived in the West during the first quarter of 1987, a sharp increase over last year’s figures.

Deputy spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley called the emigration rate “a good beginning, but there is still a long way to go.”

Echoes Israeli View

“All who wish to leave the Soviet Union should be permitted to do so,” she said, echoing the Israeli view.

In recent years, about 80% of those leaving the Soviet Union have opted to go to the United States and other Western countries after arriving in Vienna, long a transit point for emigrating Soviet Jews. Direct flights via Romania are expected to stop Jews from bypassing Israel.

During a recent visit to the United States, Shamir criticized U.S. policy that permitted Soviet Jews to come to the United States.

Oakley said Tuesday that the United States believes the right of free choice should be retained. “It is longstanding United States policy that Soviet Jews should be able to emigrate to the country of their choice,” she said.

Israeli officials say they are fully ready to take in the new immigrants, but some experts assert that forcing Soviet Jews who want to live in the West to come to Israel is likely to create serious problems.

“We are trying to prepare ourselves for the possibility of their absorption here in Israel, and it is important for us that they will believe that here in Israel, all of us are eager to see them,” Immigration Minister Yaacov Tsur said in a radio interview.

Problem of Integration

Hebrew University Prof. Amnon Sella, an expert on the Soviet Union, said the problem of integrating Soviet Jews could increase.

“With refuseniks who have a high motivation to come to Israel, the problem will not be acute,” he said, referring to Jewish activists who have been denied permission to leave.

“But if this sets in motion the departure of others, if there are those whose main motivation is to leave the Soviet Union, the problem will be greater,” Sella said.

But Israeli officials say that only 6% of the 170,000 Jews who have come to Israel in the last 17 years have left the Jewish state.

Chaim Aron of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration and Absorption Division said Israel had enough apartments for immigrants to absorb 1,000 people a month.