GAZING INTO THE '90s

Gazing Into The '90s
I

his special section ex-
plores what the decade
that is now beginning
may bring to Jews in
Detroit, in the United
States, in Israel. In this im-
mediate region, there may be
shifting demographics and a de-
mand for new social services.
Nationally, there may be chang-
ing political alliances. In Israel,
ethnic tensions may worsen with
the arrival of a large, steady
stream of Russian emigres, but
the Jewish state may find itself
considered a strategic asset by

In Israel, Soviet Emigres
Will Be A Major Factor

The abrupt infusion of masses of Russian Jews
will profoundly affect the delicate relationships
within Israel and beyond it.

ZE'EV CHAFETS

Israel Correspondent

hat will Israel be like
in the year 2000?
David Ben Gurion
once observed that,
to be a realist about
Israel, one must believe in
miracles. Unfortunately, these
miracles, which seem to be
parcelled out at the rate of one
per decade, are notoriously dif-
ficult to anticipate. Only one
thing is certain: They invariably
demolish conventional wisdom
and totally confound the careful
predictions of government plan-
ners and free-lance pundits.
Who in 1960, for example,
would have imagined that seven
years later Israel would be at-
tacked by a coalition of Arab
nations, reunite Jerusalem and
take control of more than one
million Arabs — all in six days?
What forecaster, writing in
1970, could have anticipated
Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat's 1977 peace initiative?
And who, ten years ago, would

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22

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1990

have guessed that the USSR
would now be opening its
emigration gates, and that
Israel would be gearing up to
absorb hundreds of thousands
of Soviet Jews?
If the anticipated wave of
aliyah does arrive — and
estimates now put its potential
at between 500,000 and
1,000,000 — it would transform
the country as radically as did
the Six Day War or the peace
with Egypt. For the past 40
years, Israel's heterogeneous
citizens — Ashkenazi and

both the U.S. and the Soviet
Union.
Predicting the future is a
dicey business, but the following
reports are meant to stimulate
thought and discussion as well
as suggest possible trends.
Looking ahead is a sign of
eternal optimism. As long as
mankind can dream about
tomorrow, plan for it and an-
ticipate it, there is hope that
the future can mean leaving our
children a slightly better world
than the one we inherited. ❑

Sephardic, Orthodox and non-
religious, Jewish and Arab —
have been struggling to achieve
a modus vivendi. Israel has also
been struggling to achieve a
balance of power with its Arab
neighbors. The abrupt infusion
of masses of Russian Jews will
profoundly affect these delicate
relationships.
Such an aliyah will increase
Israel's Jewish population by 25
percent. It will also make the
country more hawkish, secular,
industrialized, politically conser-
vative and culturally Western
than it is today.

A Strengthened
Right-Wing
First, politics. Polls indicate
that younger Israelis tend to be
more right-wing than their
parents. Professional politicians
say that a significant majority
of the Russian immigrants who
arrived in Israel in the 1970s
also tend to be hawkish. If
these patterns hold, there is
reason to suppose that the cur-
rent political deadlock, whose
expression is the current govern-
ment of National Unity, will be
broken within the next ten
years. The Likud, which already
receives a majority of Jewish
votes in national and municipal
elections, will be the dominant
political party and Labor will
move to the right to stay
competitive.
As a result, if there is no
negotiated settlement within the
next few years, Israel could

decide, by the end of the 1990s,
to permanently keep the West
Bank. This has been opposed by
doves since the 1967 Six Day
War, largely on the grounds that
absorbing more than one million
Arabs would turn Israel into a
bi-national state. But the influx
of one million Jews from the
USSR would weaken that argu-
ment — and it would make the
West Bank land a valuable place
to settle newcomers.
The Likud might insist on
outright annexation and Labor
might oppose it on principle.
But more likely is this corn-
promise: Labor would reluctant-
ly agree to keep the West Bank,
whose Arab population would be
given the choice of receiving
Israeli citizenship or remaining
non-voting permanent residents;
and Likud, with equal reluc-
tance, would agree to turn Gaza
over to United Nations' or
Egyptian administration.
It is unlikely that the Arab
world would accept such a
policy. Radical states, led by
Syria and/or Iraq, might well
launch a war aimed at forcing
the major powers to intervene
and prevent Israel from formally
claiming the West Bank. Such a
war would be costly. Both the
Syrians and the Iraqis are now
able to reach Israel's major
cities with ground-based mis-
siles. On the other hand, an
Israel with an additional million
Jewish citizens, many of whom
have advanced technological
skills, would be a more muscular