In Rare Unity, Arabs Fight an Influx of Soviet Settlers : Mideast: A surge of Jewish emigres kindles Arab fears that Palestinians will find no room if a million newcomers fill ‘greater’ Israel.

T he Arabs, most untypically, are uniting in a timely way to confront the third decisive development since World War II in the Arab-Israeli dispute. In the process, they are criticizing both the Soviet Union and the United States.

The issue is the sudden emergence of a mass migration of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel, which according to the latest and steadily expanding estimates would bring up to a million Russians into Israel over six years. Arabs see this as putting an end, once and for all, to Palestinian hopes of going home.

This is why the issue is as decisive to Arabs as the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the Six-Day War and its consequences in 1967.

In the 1930s and 1940s, when the Palestinians were fighting both the Zionists and the British administration, the Palestinians concentrated on the immigration issue, recognizing that the first need of the new Jewish state would be evermore Jewish people on the land. Subsequent figures validate their forebodings. In 1920, when the British mandate began, there were 60,000 Jews and 640,000 Palestinians in the country. In 1948, when the mandate ended, the new state started with a population of 700,000 Jews and 1.3 million Palestinians--the Jewish increase almost entirely due to immigration. Now there are 3.7 million Jews in Israel, alongside 750,000 Palestinians, with 1.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Why did the Arabs not agitate as strongly as now to the inflow of Jewish immigrants between 1948 and 1989? For one thing, most of these emigres came from the Arab countries, especially Iraq and Morocco, and the Arabs could hardly ask these governments to prevent their Jews from leaving--that would have produced an international outcry. The Arab governments, in fact, wanted to get rid of people who could possibly be fifth-columnists for Israel. Furthermore, most of the rest of the emigres came from Russia and Eastern Europe, and since these countries were allies, the Arabs refrained from criticizing them.

At the moment, Arab agitation over the Soviet influx is concentrated, narrowly and somewhat shortsightedly, on the possible settlement of the newcomers in the occupied territories. Citing international law, the United Nations condemns such settlement, as does the United States, which has said it has not provided Israel with funds for such action--nor will it do so. But Israel knows from long experience that it can defy U.S. wishes as long as American disapproval amounts only to rote expressions that such actions “are unhelpful to the peace process.”

The Soviets, meanwhile, on Friday called on the U.N. Security Council to discuss Israel’s plans to settle Soviet Jewish emigrants on Israeli-occupied territories, charging that the policy violated the norms of international law.

Unmoved by Soviet and U.S. disapproval, Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud government has said repeatedly that it cannot and will not tell the Russian Jews where to settle or not settle in “greater” Israel--that is, the whole of former Palestine between the Jordan River and the sea. Shamir has said, however, that Tel Aviv plans to settle 100,000 Soviet Jews each year in the occupied territories, because of the expected surge in immigration.

The ultimate Israeli purpose--the objective that so alarms the PLO and the other Arabs, was laid down bluntly by Shamir on Jan. 14: “Greater immigration calls for a greater Israel.”

Surprised at the alarm and disapproval those words produced, Shamir has tried to explain them away, but neither he nor his followers have repudiated them. In the meantime, Israeli peace groups opposed to the inflow have been prevented from expressing their views to the new arrivals at Tel Aviv airport, while groups of militants from the existing settlements are allowed to recruit members from the bewildered new arrivals at the airport itself. In any case, whether or not the Soviet newcomers do end up on the West Bank, it would be impossible to monitor their destination with any non-Israeli organization.

A surge of Russian emigres settling in the West Bank would create pressures bound to encourage those in Israel who talk of the “transfer”--that is, the forcible deportation of most Palestinians to make way for Jewish immigrants. If such a policy was ever implemented, the Arabs would go to war. It is that dread possibility that makes this particular crisis of decisive importance.

Faced with this new challenge, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank Palestinians, the Arab League, Kings Hassan of Morocco and Hussein of Jordan, Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Hafez Assad of Syria have all joined in the chorus of alarm; a special Arab League mission is currently visiting Moscow and Washington to press the Arab view.

The Soviet response to Arab complaints is that under perestroika, the nation cannot prevent people from leaving if they want to. The Arabs find that defense specious, feeling the Soviets could at least try to calm Jewish fears of persecution, which, added to Soviet economic woes, is causing them to leave in such numbers.

Above all, the Arabs argue, the Soviets could advance an unanswerable liberal argument if they insist, once again, all emigres be given the freedom to choose their new country and not, as has now become the case, be channeled into going to Israel alone.

The final Soviet argument is to blame the United States for causing the crisis. When the Soviet Union opened its gates, at the insistence of the United States and the Western countries, the United States closed its doors, by limiting the quota for Soviet refugees. The number the Bush Administration has proposed to admit for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 is 50,000--43,500 were admitted the previous year. Until September, 1988, the United States automatically granted refugee status to Soviet Jews--but as recently as 1987 the number of such refugees was only 8,155. (A Soviet spokesman said last week that U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III told Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze the United States would accept up to 20,000 more Soviet emigrants a year as refugees, raising the quota to about 60,000 or 70,000.) The United States, after all, has insisted for years that Soviet Jews should be free to choose their destinations. But as the number of Soviet refugees grew, Administration officials said they cannot support all who want to come to the United States.

If the United States were to return to being true to its basic humanitarian principles, the current crisis would promptly disappear. The current Israeli government, at least, is working for what it views, however mistakenly, as Israel’s national interest. It is difficult to see how any U.S. interests are being served in this imbroglio.