Visitors and foreign nationals continued Tuesday to stream out of Israel, as two more international airlines indicated they might suspend service to Tel Aviv because of the danger of war and the cost of soaring insurance rates.
Malev, the Hungarian airline, said Tuesday it would decide in a day or so whether to halt regular service to Israel. The move could affect the pace of Soviet Jewish immigration, which has already slowed because of the uncertain situation in the region.
The Jewish Agency has been chartering Malev planes to bring Soviet olim from Eastern European capitals in the absence of direct service from the Soviet Union.
Alitalia, the Italian carrier, announced that it was suspending service to the Middle East because of skyrocketing insurance rates. However, it said later Tuesday that it would continue to fly here until next week and then reassess the situation.
Five airlines have already pulled out, and four carriers have reduced flights.
Israel’s national carrier, El Al, as well as U.S. carriers Trans World Airways and Tower Air, which have not suspended service, will honor the tickets of airlines that have discontinued service to Tel Aviv, in accordance with standard operating procedure in the industry.
Officials at Ben-Gurion Airport said remaining departing flights were sold out for the next several days, as foreign students, businessmen, journalists, diplomats and foreign workers hastened to leave Israel.
Of an estimated 5,000 foreign volunteers working on kibbutzim in various parts of Israel, no more than 500 were still in the country Tuesday.
The Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait is just a week away, and no one can say whether or not the U.S.-led international coalition will launch a war against Saddam Hussein into which Israel could be dragged against its will.
Nevertheless, some air carriers have not cut down their service, and one has just initiated flights.
Interflug, the airline of former East Germany, went ahead with its plans to inaugurate regular weekly service from Berlin to Tel Aviv.
Lufthansa, the carrier of former West Germany, said it was adding an extra flight to Israel to handle the large-scale exodus of foreigners.
NO CUTBACKS BY TWA
TWA said it planned no cutbacks or suspensions in service to Tel Aviv. “We have been saying all along that we are going to continue to operate into Tel Aviv,” a TWA spokesman said Tuesday.
The departing residents include some 500 dependents of U.N. civilian personnel working with the various U.N. peacekeeping and truce observer agencies in Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Timor Goksel, a spokesman for the ninenation United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, said the advisory suggesting that non-essential personnel leave the area applied to the wives and children of civilian employees, who have been living mostly in Nahariya, but not to UNIFIL’s 5,800 officers and troops.
The U.N. dependents will be airlifted from Ben-Gurion Airport to Cyprus, where they can connect with airlines that no longer serve Israel.
Britain, Finland, Germany, Holland and Sweden have now added their names to the list of nations advising their citizens to leave Israel before Jan. 15.
The Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv also advised all Dutch residents of Israel to carefully consider whether they should leave Israel now, although it does not want to compel them.
It is not likely that many will follow this advice, as these dual nationals include people whose children and grandchildren are permanent Israeli citizens.
The number of Dutch citizens who hold dual Dutch-Israeli citizenship is estimated at between 8,000 and 14,000.
The Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv will not, as of Jan. 14, operate from its office in Tel Aviv but from the residence of the Dutch ambassador in Herzliya, which is considered safer.
Israel’s civil defense authorities announced, meanwhile, that they will begin distributing gas masks to the rural 20 percent of the population which has not yet received them.
About 80 percent of the population, which lives in densely populated urban and suburban regions, received their gas masks and poison gas antidote kits in October and November.
Residents of northern and central rural areas will get their masks first. The southern region will be dealt with later.
A problem arose with Orthodox Jewish men, whose thick beards render regular gas masks inefficient. Special protective hoods were designed for them.
But the cost of supplying them, about $15 million, is prohibitive, and the authorities said those who refuse to shave their beards will have to do without the protection.
(JTA correspondent Henrietta Boas in Amsterdam contributed to this report.)
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