Peled Optimistic About Increased Emigration of Soviet Jews

A prediction that Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union will reach record numbers this year was made this week in an exclusive Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview by Natan Peled. Israel’s Minister of Immigrant Absorption since last year. He said the exodus this year will exceed the 3,000 of 1969, and discounted reports that the exit door would be nailed up following the Soviet Communist Party Congress. There has been “no decrease whatsoever” since the Congress closed, he said. The 57-year-old Peled, himself Russian-born (he changed his surname, Friedel, to the Hebrew word for steel), remarked that the Soviet authorities are themselves uncertain on the issue and have “no definite policy” on it. (This observation contradicted the widely held view that the Kremlin is essentially opposed to letting out citizens who may bolster the Israeli Army.) Peled contended that the emigration approval to “hundreds” of Soviet Jews to date represents “not a major policy decision” but an experiment. He rejected the idea that the Kremlin is letting out the activists and will shut the door after they leave; for every activist who departs, he said, five or 10 others take his place. Peled, who strongly endorses diaspora demonstrations for Soviet Jewry, reported a dialogue he had on the matter with Meir Wilner, head of Israel’s pro-Moscow Rakach Communists. Wilner, he said, insisted that actually only “very few” Soviet Jews want to leave, to which he responded, to Wilner’s apparent discomfort: “Let them go and the question will be closed.”

Peled, in the United States under the auspices of the American Zionist Federation for speeches keyed to Israeli Independence Day, said there were no problems in providing housing for the constantly arriving Soviet Jews. There was also no worry, he said, about such activists’ joining Israel’s anti-Meir radical faction, since “very few get actually involved” in Israeli politics. As for Soviet Jewish emigres who return home because they become dissatisfied with life in Israel–because they miss their relatives or don’t like their work or whatever–they are “very, very rare.” The former minister to Bulgaria and ambassador to Austria, holder of one of the two Mapam portfolios in the Israeli Cabinet, said his party agreed with Premier Golda Meir that the solution of the Middle East imbroglio lies in “territorial compromise.” Why, he was asked, should Israel give up any of the Arab areas acquired through victory in war? “Because we want peace and we are ready to pay a price for a peace settlement”; besides, all that Arab land and all those Arabs on it would threaten the “Jewish character” of the state. Peled criticized Egypt for demanding total Israeli withdrawal prior to the drawing up of a peace treaty, but he denied that what he called the “non-negotiable” status of Jerusalem was either an “ultimatum” or a “precondition.”

As he explained it: “The problem of Jerusalem is not a problem of negotiations or discussions. All Israelis consider Jerusalem a unified city.” The religious rights of all are and will be guaranteed “within the framework of a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty,” he continued, but that setup is not a precondition because “there are certain points regarding Jerusalem that are negotiable.” An interim Mideast solution providing for a reopening of the Suez Canal would be “quite a good idea” for Israel despite its obvious strategic advantages to the Soviets and the Egyptians, the personable Israeli official observed. That is because it would be a first step toward peace, and additionally, “you cannot envisage the closing of the Suez Canal forever.” Peled said Israelis consider President Nixon “quite friendly” regarding Israeli security needs, though they fear he may subject them to territorial “pressures.” But, he added, “There is readiness in Israel to face such pressures. Israel is not prepared to give up what it considers its vital interests.” The Mapam minister called Mrs. Meir “a very popular and a very strong leader,” but would not speculate on whether she or Defense Minister Moshe Dayan will be interested in the Premiership when the brass ring comes around again in 1973. As to reports, denied by Israeli higher-ups, that Mrs. Meir favors Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir as her successor, Peled conceded that “I feel he is a candidate.”