The huge new aliya, or immigration, may give Israel the demographic cushion it needs against a higher Arab birthrate. But it adds to the burden of a society under chronic stress. About Soviet immigrants have arrived so far this year, an additional 20,000 are due next month. Given government housing subsidies amounting to $300 a month, the immigrants are displacing poor Israelis–most of them Sephardic, or Oriental, Jews. This has brought long-simmering class and religious tensions into the open, embarrassing the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
Shamir took office last month with a flimsy majority composed of his Likud party and a handful of Knesset members from religious parties. But Likud depends heavily on the Sephardic vote. The Sephardim resent the wealthier and generally better-educated Ashkenazic Jews, whose roots are European–like those of the Soviet Jews. And they accuse the government of catering to Ashkenazic concerns. “This[protest] is not going to improve until the government realizes that all Israelis have rights,” said activist Yemin Suissa.
The religious right is also unsettled. Since Israeli law requires only that candidates for immigration have a Jewish grandparent, many have only weak ties to the faith. Thirty percent register as non-Jews and arrive with non-Jewish spouses and children. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri charges that the law allows some emigrants to “hitch a ride at Israel’s expense.” But changing it could break up families, countered Natan Sharansky, perhaps the best-known Soviet immigrant in Israel. “We will again be seen as racists,” he said.
Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, a former tank commander, has had trouble navigating this minefield. The Israeli Supreme Court rejected his plan to order the immediate construction of 3,000 homes under emergency regulations. A scheme to shelter immigrants in cheap hotels flopped because of the cost–at least $900 a month per immigrant family. Labor unions concerned about job losses stymied a plan to import 40,000 prefabricated houses by threatening to block the ports. Meanwhile, said Yehuda Grados, a Ben-Gurion University urban planner, population in Israel’s principal city, Tel Aviv, was reaching “a dangerously high concentration,” turning it into “the Jewish Hong Kong.”
