Israel Warned to Heed Soviet Threat to Stem Immigration

Israel should heed Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s threat to stop the flow of Jewish immigrants if they are settled in occupied territories, the top Israeli immigration official said.

“Gorbachev holds the Jews. We do not have to erect obstacles in his path,” Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the semiofficial Jewish Agency, said in remarks published in Israeli newspapers Tuesday.

The remarks contrasted with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s flat rejection of Gorbachev’s warning at the Washington summit that Moscow would consider halting the influx unless immigrants were barred from occupied Arab lands.

“There is nothing more important now than to save the Jews and bring them home. Any other considerations that could conceivably interfere with this objective must be set aside,” Dinitz said.

“The government has to set its own policy, but it should be done wisely,” said Dinitz, a dovish Labor Party member.

Shamir, head of the hard-line Likud Party, denied that Israel has a policy of settling newcomers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Israelis receive incentives to settle there, and housing costs are considerably cheaper than elsewhere.

Dinitz said Gorbachev bowed to pressure from the Arab world, which already is opposed to the 70,000 Jews living in settlements among the 1.75 million Palestinians of the occupied territories, captured in the 1967 Middle East War.

Israel expects up to 250,000 Soviet Jews this year. Dinitz said that only 285 of the 49,000 Soviet arrivals since April, 1989--or 0.5%--had moved to the territories.

Soviet Jews who choose to settle in the occupied areas are not entitled to an $11,000 stipend from the Jewish Agency. Instead they get help from the Israeli government.

The Jewish Agency raises funds abroad and takes charge of bringing immigrants to Israel.

Aside from providing immigrants a stipend on their arrival, the Jewish Agency pays for immigrants’ transport to Israel, the shipment of their belongings and hotel accommodations.