1990 Influx of Immigrants to Israel Largest Since 1949 : Mideast: Approximately 187,000 emigres, most of them Soviet Jews, have arrived since January.

Israel in 1990 received the highest number of immigrants in one year since 1949 and expects new records to be set in 1991, immigration officials said Monday.

Approximately 187,000 immigrants, the majority of them Soviet Jews, have arrived in Israel since January, 1990, immigration officials said.

Their number is expected to reach 200,000 by Dec. 31, the highest number since 1949--a year after independence--when 239,964 Jews arrived in Israel in a one-year period, officials said. In 1989, approximately 12,000 newcomers arrived in Israel.

“Every month exceeded the previous month (in 1990). The trend is upwards all the time,” said Gad Ben-Ari, spokesman for the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency.

Israeli officials have repeatedly underlined their belief that it is urgent to bring as many Soviet Jews to Israel as soon as possible. Ben-Ari said that a combination of growing political and economic instability and rising anti-Semitism are driving Jews out of the Soviet Union.

Ben-Ari said the airlifting of Soviet Jews to Israel entered a new phase in recent days with the arrival of about 1,500 immigrants daily instead of 800 as in previous months. Since Dec. 19, about 8,000 immigrants have arrived at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Israeli absorption officials are preparing a new terminal at Ben-Gurion airport that will be capable of accommodating the absorption of an additional 1,000 immigrants daily.

“It’s an increase of 30% to 40%. This is going to be the pace for immigration from now on,” Ben-Ari said. He expects that in 1991, at least 400,000 immigrants will arrive in Israel.

An editorial in the mass circulation Yediot Aharonot newspaper said Israel’s wildest dreams have come true, but along with the dreams comes the nightmare of housing shortages. The daily said that more than 600,000 immigrants will have arrived in Israel by the end of 1991.

The mass immigration has caused a major housing shortage while rents have skyrocketed 30% to 40% since 1989. The Israeli government has pledged to build 80,000 apartments starting in 1991, but so far only several thousands are ready to house the approximately 30,000 immigrants expected to arrive each month.

More than 1 million Soviet Jews have received invitations to emigrate to Israel, immigration officials said. Soviet authorities require any Jew who wants to emigrate to Israel to present an invitation by a relative.

Experts in Israel estimate that approximately 3 million Jews live in the Soviet Union.

Ben-Ari said the Jewish Agency currently has the potential to airlift 50,000 immigrants a month to Israel and is working to increase its capacity, but he declined to disclose further details.

Meanwhile, the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, began debate Monday on a $32.9-billion budget for 1991 aimed at coping with the rising tide of immigrants.

Anticipating the arrival by 1993 of more than 1 million Jews under Soviet emigration reforms, Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai told parliament:

“The state of Israel won’t be what it was a year ago when we will complete this assignment of absorbing a million and perhaps 1.5 million or more Jews of the Soviet Union among us.”