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Issue: April, 1990

. . . Within 24 hours of the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir was on his way to the United States in a successful effort to convince President Reagan to deny refugee status and close off access to the U.S. for these Jews in order to force them to emigrate to Israel. [see below]

FLEEING ANTI-SEMITISM IN RUSSIA, Jews must have a home, a refuge, a homeland of their own. That's why Israel can't "give" the State of Palestine to Palestinians. That land &emdash; the Occupied Territories of the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and Gaza Strip &emdash; must be available for fleeing Jews to settle.

This is one explanation the Israeli government gives for its intransigent refusal to negotiate a settlement of the Palestinian struggle for land and statehood. This is the explanation we explore in this article.

People, Jews included, do leave the Soviet Union for a variety of reasons, including racism. But the proliferation of national antagonisms is by no means limited to Jews. Throughout the Soviet Union and indeed, the world, ethnic groups are under attack by other ethnic groups who have suffered under a dominant culture - witness the Azerbaijanis against the Armenians, the Serbs, Croats, Kurds, Basques, Afghanis, Sihks, Tamils, Catholic North-Irish etc,. They may get less press than Soviet Jews, but they are no less victims of racism via government policy and dominant neighbors.

A more prevalent and compelling reason for leaving the Soviet Union is economic achievement, often stated as the freedom to choose, the freedom to express, the freedom to "get ahead." Let's face it, there are not a lot of Donald Trump role models in the Soviet Union. In any case, very few people leave the Soviet Union in order to reside in Israel which, after all, doesn't have its share of Donald Trumps either.

Most of the people leaving the Soviet Union seek to reside in the United States. In a survey conducted by the Soviet Jewry Zionist Forum in Israel, headed by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Soviet Jews gave four primary reasons for not wanting to go to Israel: their perception of an Israeli bureaucracy as suffocating as that in the U.S.S.R; forced military service; fear of religious coercion and, for the past two years, fear for their security because of the Intifada. This makes it difficult for the Israeli government to draw these people to Israel.

In 1987 the Soviet Union announced a more liberal immigration policy specifically for Jews who wanted to leave the U.S.S.R. Within 24 hours of the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir was on his way to the United States in a successful effort to convince President Reagan to deny refugee status and close off access to the U.S. for these Jews in order to force them to emigrate to Israel.

Since that 1987 visit, regulations have changed governing the processing of the refugees at the first stop on the flight out of Russia. Most recently, a low quota was placed on the number of Soviet Jews the United States would accept. Reagan's and Shamir's actions were scarcely noted in the American press.

Prior to Shamir's October demand, Soviet Jews petitioned to leave the U.S.S.R. to go to Israel, and when permission was finally granted, flew to their first stop in Europe. At these European processing centers, nearly 90% of them changed their destination to the United States. Then came the changes. The Jews from the Soviet Union now must fly into Israel first, where they can either accept the abundant social services provided for them to resettle in Israel, including large economic and political enticements to settle in the Occupied Territories, or they can state their desire to go on to the United States. If they choose the latter, the immigrants lose their "refugee" status immediately and find themselves on their own in a foreign land, facing a wait of two to three years with no job, no income, no housing and no social services, until they can enter the U.S. under the new lowered quota. Most, of course, cannot afford this option.

Underlying the protestations of innocence and desperation lies a more sinister reason for Israel's sudden concern about the fate of Soviet Jews. With a population of close to two million Palestinians under military occupation, and 80,000 Jewish settlers living in the 55% of the West Bank and 33% of the Gaza Strip Israel has confiscated, Israel is now attempting to fill the Territories with as many Jewish settlers as it can find. (Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres estimates the cost of the resettlement program at $3 billion, plus an anticipated housing loan guarantee of $400 million from the United States).

The West Bank is a major source of water (of which Palestinians are literally permitted the use of 107-156 cm per person per year, and the settlers use 640-1480 cm each per year), and prior to the Intifada, the Territories were Israel's second largest market for manufactured goods. Israel has no interest in discussing an end to its 23-year military occupation of Palestine, simply for the sake of Palestinian self-determination.

The bottom line is that the Zionist dream of both Likkud and Labor is the eventual establishment of Eretz Israel, (Greater Israel), which would encompass several more of the Arab states in the region. A political settlement with the Palestinians and surrounding Arab neighbors would deliver a devastating blow to this plan, from which it may be unable to recover. The dream of Eretz Israel is the primary reason Israel has consistently, and alone among nations in the world, refused to define its borders.

What better defense against giving up land for peace than to point to the settlers and say "How can we ask them to give up their land, and where will they go?"

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