Israel's other exodus

Figures showing a big increase in the number of Israelis leaving the country are alarming the country's political establishment, as Justin Huggler reports

The problem of the right wing is that they want a Greater Israel, including the occupied territories, without any withdrawal. The irony is by doing that they invite a bi-national state. Professor David Newman Ben Gurion University

Jean Max emigrated to Israel in 1970 as a committed Zionist. Her three children were born and grew up in Israel. But since they reached adulthood, all three have left for new lives in the United States. And Max, who went to Israel from Britain and is now divorced, is planning to follow them.

Her American visa has arrived, she is going to Boston, where her daughter lives, to look for work. If she finds it, she is leaving Israel after 33 years.

She and her family are part of a growing phenomenon that is worrying the Israeli political establishment.

New figures from the Immigration and Absorption Ministry stunned the establishment. They show 760,000 Israeli citizens now live abroad. The ministry says its figures are an informal estimate, based on research by Israeli embassies around the world.

Even so, for a country of just 6.6 million it is a large number. But the big surprise was the growth in the number of Israelis living abroad: in 2000, it was 550,000. That increase has undoubtedly been fuelled by the suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian militants over the past three years, and by the severe recession into which the Israeli economy has been plunged.

But in few countries in the world are immigration and emigration so politically charged as in Israel. At a conference of American-Jewish supporters of Israel in Jerusalem, Ariel Sharon made a speech that has become familiar during his three years as Prime Minister. "We need you," he told the American delegates, urging them to emigrate to Israel. He made the same appeal to visitors from the British-Jewish community last year, and he has made it repeatedly.

Israel is now said to be as crowded as India: those 6.6 million people live in a small country. But the Israeli Government continues to encourage Jewish immigration, offering generous financial incentives to new arrivals. The reason is that Israelis fear they are sitting on a demographic time bomb.

The results of a study by Israeli academics unnerved even Sharon's right-wing supporters. The study found that by 2020, in just 17 years' time, Palestinians will be the majority in the area of Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

That raises the possibility of the Israeli right's worst nightmare: that Palestinians might stop demanding a state of their own and start asking for the vote. That could spell the end of Israel's identity as a Jewish state, something most Israelis want to keep.

Israelis leave the country for many reasons. Max and her family did not decide to go because of the violence. "I'm leaving because I've always wanted to," she says. "I came here as a Zionist but found Israeli culture was very different from what I was used to." She says she stayed first because she met her husband, then for her children.

But now her children have left she wants to follow them. Her children went for their own reasons. Only her eldest son, Adam, might return if the suicide bombings stop and the economic situation improves, she thinks.

But Max's neighbours in Jerusalem did leave because of the suicide bombings. "They said they were too frightened for their children to stay here," she says. "They went back to Australia, where they had come from. But they said it was difficult to start a new life."

Because her former husband is American, her children have US citizenship. In Israel's immigrant society, many Israelis have second passports, and can leave easily. In the past year, embassies of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have had long queues of second-generation Israelis claiming their right to their parents' old citizenship.

In the 90s, a million immigrants arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union, swelling the population and slowing the rate at which the Palestinian population was overtaking it.

But today, more Jewish people from the former Soviet Union are emigrating to Germany than Israel, and some who arrived in the 90s have left, frustrated by not getting jobs to match their qualifications. In a country full of doctors, a medically qualified migrant from the former Soviet Union can end up a cleaner.

A new situation is beginning to emerge in which some Palestinians are suggesting demographics is their greatest weapon, and that they should use it against Israel. "Sharon is building the wall because he wants to squeeze Palestinians into cantons on half of the West Bank," says Professor Ali Jirbawi of the West Bank's Bir Zeit University.

"They want to call half of the West Bank 'Palestine' so they can squeeze the Palestinians into as small a space as possible and allay their own fears of the demographic effect in the future."

Jirbawi is advocating that the Palestinians should set a six-month time limit on negotiations for a two-state solution. "We should say we accept a two-state solution, but that it means going back to the 1967 borders and a sovereign Palestinian state.

"We should give them six months. If there is no decision, we should say Israel, by its own choice, doesn't want a two-state solution. If Israel wants a one-state solution we accept, but 20 years from now, we're going to ask for one person, one vote."

That is a nightmare scenario for many Israelis. Professor David Newman, of Ben Gurion University, says: "If you look at all the surveys of public opinion, the one issue that unites the Jewish population of Israel is that more than 90 per cent say they want to retain a Jewish majority.

"The problem of the right wing is that they want a Greater Israel, including the occupied territories, without any withdrawal. The irony is by doing that they invite a bi-national state."

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