Issues in Focus Development of the Negev is Top Priority in Jewish Agency Plans

The development of the Negev has top priority in the Jewish Agency’s settlement plans and Galilee is second, Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives said at a press conference here yesterday. He assigned no priority to settlements in the occupied territories and implied that there was no money for such activities on a large scale.

Referring to statements last week by Transport Minister Haim Landau that ground would be broken for 10 new settlements on the West Bank during the Passover holidays, Dulzin said he knew no thing of such plans and observed that decisions on settlements without a budget were worthless. He stressed that the WZO would “follow the guidelines of the government” in that respect.

Dulzin dwelt on the preparations by the WZO and Jewish Agency for the new era of peace with Egypt. “We have to ascertain that the Negev does not turn out to be a military camp,” he said, and therefore most efforts, in both rural and urban settlements, should be concentrated there. The Negev is slated to become the site of three new air bases and major military installations after Israel completes its evacuation of Sinai in three years.

IMPORTANCE OF GALILEE

Galilee ranked next in importance. “We have to make sure that the Galilee is settled with Jews as fast as possible,” Dulzin said. “If we neglect the Galilee as we have done until now, we shall face very grave problems,” an apparent reference to the possibility that Arabs will outnumber Jews in that region.

Dulzin said the WZO’s settlement department will set up 28 manned lookout posts in Galilee in the near future which eventually will become settlements. He said that for the first time, candidates for these settlements were being recruited directly by the Jewish Agency and not through the settlement movements linked to Israel’s various political parties. Meanwhile, he said, the lookout posts would serve to stop the illegal seizure of land in Galilee.

Dulzin reported that the Jewish Agency’s settlement department has established a special task force to plan the development of the Pithat Shalom region where Israelis now living in Sinai will be resettled. He said the plans call for 20 new settlements on the Israeli side of the border with Egypt. Of these, 14 will be relocated from the Rafah region of Sinai and six new settlements for immigrants will be built.

INCREASED IMMIGRATION EXPECTED

Dulzin said he expected a sharp increase in immigration as peace becomes a political reality. “There is good reason to believe that the number of immigrants will be doubled with peace. The security tension that characterized Israel so far was one of the factors which deterred immigrants from coming,” he said. He predicted that about 45,000 immigrants would arrive this year and claimed there was a potential of 250,000 Jews all over the world who would consider aliya.

Dulzin said that while Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union has increased in absolute numbers, he was concerned by the growing number of “drop-outs” — Russian Jews who opt to settle in countries other than Israel after leaving the USSR He said monthly emigration from Russia is now between 4000-4300 and the total number of Jews leaving this year may reach 50,000. But in the last three months the drop-out rate has reached 70 percent.

He said he would meet again soon with the leaders of HIAS and the Joint Distribution Committee to discuss the drop-out problem. “Presently, the leaders of American Jewry show more understanding of the problem than in the past,” Dulzin said, but he did not elaborate.

With respect to the problem of yordim — Israelis who settle abroad — Dulzin said that between 12-13,000 Israelis left the country annually and “we did not succeed to return the yordim.” He accused the yordim of making it difficult to promote aliya abroad. He said most of them were veteran Israelis and there was little re-emigration among immigrants. Of the 145,000 Russian Jews who arrived in Israel over the past nine years, only 4000 returned. Of the immigrant population as a whole, only a maximum of 15 percent return to their countries of origin, Dulzin said.

But he warned that unless the housing shortage is solved, aliya would shrink. “We now have more aliya candidates than we have housing and the absorption centers are absolutely packed,” Dulzin said.

JEWISH AGENCY ASSEMBLY IN JUNE

He said he expected the Jewish Agency General Assembly, which convenes here in June, to be expanded into a convention of solidarity of Jews the world over with Israel in the new era of peace.

Dulzin stressed that the Jewish Agency delegates come to Israel at their own expense and urged the Israeli public not to underestimate the importance of such events. “It all began with one Zionist Congress in Basel and ended with the establishment of the State of Israel,” he said. He expressed hope that many more such gatherings will take place to improve ties between Israel and diaspora Jews. “We must show them that we care to hear what they have to say,” Dulzin said.