Israel’s acute housing problem will top the agenda of the reconstituted Jewish Agency’s second general assembly opening here Feb. 5. Moshe Rivlin, director general of the Jewish Agency said at a press conference here today that housing would be the dominant theme at the four-day meeting which will examine all phases of the Jewish Agency’s work.
Rivlin noted that the housing shortage hits immigrants very hard. “The question of housing will be discussed at four different meetings during the assembly,” he said. Other problems to be dealt with by the 300 delegates expected to attend include Jewish settlement, higher education, immigration and absorption, and budgetary matters. The Jewish Agency was reconstituted in Aug. 1970 and its first general assembly was held in June, 1971.
Jewish Agency Treasurer Leon Dultzin said Friday at a press luncheon in Tel Aviv that the housing shortage was one of the main reasons why so many young, single immigrants, return to their country of origin. He said the rate of returnees among unmarried olim was 40 percent last year. Priority in housing goes to immigrants with families.
70-80,000 IMMIGRANTS EXPECTED IN 1973
Rivlin said that between 70-80,000 immigrants are expected in 1973, between 40-50,000 of them from the Soviet Union. He predicted that the recession in immigration from the United States would continue, but he said he hoped their numbers would not fall below the 6000 mark.
Dultzin stressed the contributions made by immigrants to the national economy and urged the “old timers” to “open their hearts” to the newcomers and integrate them socially as well as economically. He noted that new immigrants were a major source of economic expansion, and that of 40,000 new workers who joined Israel’s labor market last year, 16,000 were new immigrants. He said that in the previous year, immigrants accounted for 13,000 of the 35,000 new members of the work force.
According to Rivlin, the additional workers represented an IL 300 million increase in Israel’s gross national product and a net increase of IL 100 million. He said newcomers brought $300 million to Israel which was added to the nation’s foreign currency reserves.
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