Sharansky Warns Radical Solutions May Be Necessary for Absorption

Declaring that Soviet olim “are gripped by growing disillusion and despair,” immigrant activist Natan Sharansky warned Tuesday night of “radical solutions” unless the government quickly resolves the absorption crisis.

Sharansky, president of the Soviet Jewry Zionist Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, accused the Israeli government of grossly mismanaging the country’s deteriorating aliyah absorption process.

“Deepening unemployment, soaring costs of commercial mortgages and lack of basic cash to pay for daily necessities are placing impossible strains on Soviet olim who are gripped by growing disillusion and despair,” he said.

“Faced with these impossible conditions, activist groups see radical solutions as increasingly attractive,” Sharansky said without elaborating.

Sharansky arrived in Israel to a hero’s welcome in 1986 when he was reunited with his wife, Avital, after more than nine years in Soviet prisons and labor camps.

A fiery advocate of the rights of Soviet Jews and dissenters while still in the Gulag, Sharansky brought his gadfly role to Israel, stinging the authorities when he felt the needs of Soviet olim were bypassed or poorly handled.

Speaking at a news conference here called to protest current conditions, Sharansky described the government as a collection of uncoordinated fiefdoms.

“The government’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing,” he declared.

“Houses are being built in the north and south of the country where no chance of finding a job exists and no serious efforts are taken to create thousands of professional jobs in areas where housing does exist.

“Increasingly, aliyah is becoming a source of social discontent and Israelis are blaming Soviet aliyah for the country’s economic woes,” Sharansky said.

Figures released by the Absorption Ministry this week predicted that by January 1992 some 72,000 Soviet immigrants would join the ranks of Israel’s unemployed. That would amount to about 25 percent of the 360,000 olim who arrived in the past two years.

But Soviet Jewry Zionist Forum sources claim the figure does not account for hidden unemployment, which will increase next year when another 150,000 newcomers are no longer eligible for the “family absorption basket.”

That is a cash subsidy given every new arrival to tide them over the first year. It currently amounts to about $7,312 per family, from which they must pay rent, food bills and other expenses. The subsidy is the main feature of a direct absorption program by which newcomers plunge directly into Israeli society without a period of adjustment at an absorption center.

Yuli Kosharovsky of the Forum said that of the 9,000 to 10,000 olim arriving each month, only 40 percent can cope with direct absorption.

Weaker olim should be given traditional support to carry them over, he said. He called on the government to initiate the immediate mass construction of low-rent conventional apartments to end the financial exploitation of Soviet olim by landlords.

Referring to last week’s Jerusalem Report, which said up to 1 million Soviet olim could arrive in Israel in 1992, Sharansky said it was indeed possible if the Soviet Union continues to disintegrate.

But unlike some immigrant activists, Sharansky is totally opposed to creating a ethnic Soviet political party in Israel. He said such a move would divide the nation and constitute a disservice to Soviet Jewry.

He also rejected mass demonstrations to call attention to the plight of Soviet olim, but hinted that in coming elections Soviet Jews would vote for whichever major party demonstrated its ability to offer practical solutions to their problems.

He observed that according to a recent poll, 80 percent of the 350,000 Soviet olim eligible to vote said they would vote.