Soviet Jews Seen Needing Land in Gaza, West Bank

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Sunday that Israel has to hold on to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for a mass wave of Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union.

Government officials predict that at least 300,000 Soviet Jews will move to Israel in the next three years as a result of new Soviet emigration policies and new U.S. restrictions on immigration.

Shamir said the sudden influx of Soviet Jews proves time is on Israel’s side and will change the face of the Jewish state, making it “bigger, better and stronger.”

“The Arabs around us are embarrassed. They are in a mood of defeat, stricken with fear,” the 74-year-old leader told members of his right-wing Likud Party.

“They see the success of Zionism and they have no answer for it. They have no cure. We have an answer, and of course it is not a Palestinian state. For the big immigration, we must have the land of Israel and we have to fight for it, struggle for it.”

Asked later if the government will settle Soviet Jews in the occupied territories, site of a 25-month-old Palestinian uprising, he told reporters:

“We will need a lot of room to absorb everyone, and every immigrant will go where he wants.”

Shamir’s statements launched his campaign to defeat three hard-line Likud ministers challenging him for retracting the dismissal of Science Minister Ezer Weizman over alleged contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Trade Minister Ariel Sharon, architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Housing Minister David Levy and Economics Minister Yitzhak Modai forced Shamir to convene Likud’s central committee early next month.

Shamir said: “Everything is about to change here. With all the waves of immigration that will come . . . the state will be different, will look different. In another five or 10 years, we will not know it.”

About 70,000 Jewish settlers now live among the 1.7 million Palestinians in the occupied territories. Israeli rightists say mass immigration can help change the demographic balance there, strengthening Israel’s presence.