Ethiopia Jews Look to Israel for New Life : Emigration: Addis Ababa government says it will resume processing passports after mysterious suspension blamed on ‘technical problems.’

Manor Metaku Solomon, a shy, sweet-faced 8-year-old, is one of more than 20,000 Ethiopian Jews who last year abandoned the hinterlands their families have inhabited for thousands of years for a squalid life in this capital, where they wait in limbo for emigration to Israel.

Manor is living up to his name. It means “wishing for a good life.”

Like most Ethiopian Jews, he tells a simple story: a cherished family dream of a biblical “return to the promised land.” Like them, too, he is an unwitting bit-part actor in a complex and sensitive political drama involving the Ethiopian, Israeli and U.S. governments, many aspects of which are shrouded in secrecy.

In March, the Ethiopian government temporarily stopped processing passports for indigenous Jews. Ethiopian and Israeli officials cited “technical problems” in the application process for exit visas, but were unable to quell speculation from Western sources that the government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam was holding up the emigration, hoping to secure Israeli military aid against a rapidly accelerating insurgency in the countryside.

Ethiopian officials say emigration should now continue at a rate of more than 1,000 a month.

Kassa Kabede, Mengistu’s special envoy on the Ethiopian Jews and a fluent Hebrew speaker from his university days in Israel, vehemently denied any military connection to the temporary halt in emigration. He conceded that Israel supplied arms and training to Ethiopia in the past, such as during the 1977 Somali invasion, and said the Mengistu government would welcome the strong political, economic and defense ties that had existed before a rupture in relations in 1973. Diplomatic relations were restored in 1989.

Government officials, as well as many relief workers and Western diplomats, say the work of American Jewish activists rather than a spontaneous mass movement resulted in about 22,000 Ethiopian Jews leaving their ancestral homes in remote Gonder Province last summer for Addis Ababa in the hope of emigrating to Israel.

But Israeli officials say it was the promise of a better life in the Holy Land that took on an almost biblical momentum through the Ethiopian Jews’ grapevine and propelled them from their homes. The Israelis also cite the Ethiopian Jews’ powerful wish to be reunited with family members airlifted to Israel by the thousands during the 1984-85 famine under the clandestine Operation Moses.

Kassa said that once Operation Moses took place, the Mengistu government had little choice but to complete the exodus to reunite all Ethiopian Jewish families--especially under what he acknowledged was American pressure. Every Ethiopian Jew allowed to emigrate must have a relative in Israel, although greatly extended families and several thousand Christian “relatives” of Ethiopian Jews now in Addis Ababa have complicated the process of determining eligibility.

Official U.S. interest is said to reflect traditional concern for unhindered right of emigration as well as response to pressure from American Jewish groups. President Bush has described a personal role in the 1985 airlift of Ethiopian Jewish refugees stranded in Sudan.

Ethiopian Jews are steeped in knowledge of an ancient Israel from accounts in the Scriptures but have almost no concept of what the Jewish state is like today. Although the origin of Jewish religion here is obscure, most accounts explain the practitioners as descended from one of the “10 lost tribes.”

Relief workers say few seem aware of the problems that their relatives have had in adjusting to an environment in which everything--from modern toilets to minority status in a lighter-skinned society--is strange and new. Hundreds of Ethiopian Jewish families, in fact, have remained in Israeli immigration absorption centers for six years, unable to make the transition.

Officials connected with the current Ethiopian Jewish emigration operation say the Israelis have learned from “past mistakes” in dealing with migrants radically different cultures. The Israeli Embassy compound has been transformed into a sort of “village,” where Ethiopian Jews come to collect $75 monthly stipends and about 4,500 Ethiopian Jewish children attend school in traditional round huts. There, they learn everything from basic Hebrew vocabulary to taking a shower.

The children are being coached at a deliberately slow pace. “We don’t want to immerse them in the new,” said one official. “Showers are just once a week.”

Relief agencies, primarily the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also have worked to cope with the vast needs of thousands of peasants who suddenly find themselves in a city for the first time--most of them arriving during peak rainy season.

“When they first arrived, they were in desperate condition,” recalled Koleletch Alemu, a 35-year-old nurse with the Jewish committee. “They had no shelter, nothing to eat. They were frightened and wet. Many were sick. . . . We had to have our first food distribution on the streets. It was total chaos.”

The Ethiopian Jews, naive about city ways and with substantial money in their pockets for the first time, became easy targets for thieves and prostitutes, along with unscrupulous vendors, taxi drivers and landlords. Disease quickly affected their ranks.

Last August, the Jewish committee set up a clinic--arguably one of Ethiopia’s finest--alongside an effective outreach health program that ties health checkups to food assistance. The mortality rate among the Ethiopian Jews dropped from 39 reported deaths last July to seven in February, far below the death rate for Ethiopia as a whole.

In their native Gonder Province, there was just one doctor per 56,000 people, and clinics were a three-hour walk away, according to Geraldine Scott, a senior Jewish committee coordinator. “Now they have seven doctors for some 20,000 of them, and they’re provided transport,” she said.