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英独立系：イスラエル崩壊最新情報：米歴史見直し論者から直送の緊急投稿なり。
ISRAELIS LEAVE THEIR LAND, FORCED OUT BY A BATTERED ECONOMY AND YEARS OF
VIOLENCE
By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem --
The Independent (Britain) -- Thursday, November 20, 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=465406&host=3&dir=75
Jean Max emigrated from Britain to Israel in 1970 as a committed
Zionist. Her three children were born and grew up in Israel. But since
they reached adulthood, all three have left for new lives in the United States.
And Ms Max, now divorced, is planning to follow them. Her American visa
has arrived, she is going to Boston, where her daughter lives, to look
for work. If she finds it, she is leaving Israel after 33 years.
Ms Max and her family are part of a growing phenomenon that has the
Israeli political establishment worried. New figures from the
Immigration and Absorption Ministry stunned the establishment. Those
figures show 760,000 Israeli citizens now live abroad. The ministry says
its figures are an informal estimate, based on research by Israeli
embassies around the world.
Even so, for a country of just 6,600,000, it is a large number. But the
big surprise was the growth in the number of Israelis living abroad: in
2000, it was 550,000. That increase has undoubtedly been fuelled by the
suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian militants over the
past three years, and by the severe recession into which the Israeli
economy has been plunged.
But in few countries in the world are immigration and emigration so
politically charged as in Israel. At a recent conference of
American-Jewish supporters of Israel in Jerusalem, Ariel Sharon made a
speech that has become familiar during his three years as Prime
Minister. "We need you," he told the American delegates, urging them to
emigrate to Israel. He made the same appeal to visitors from the
British-Jewish community last year, and he has made it repeatedly.
Israel is now said to be as crowded as India: those 6,600,000 people
live in a small country. But the Israeli government continues to
encourage Jewish immigration, offering generous financial incentives to
new arrivals. The reason is that Israelis fear they are sitting on a
demographic time bomb.
The results of a recent study by Israeli academics unnerved even the
right-wing supporters of Mr Sharon. The study found that by the year
2020, in just 17 years, Palestinians will be the majority in the whole
area of Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. That raises
the possibility of the Israeli right's worst nightmare: that
Palestinians might stop demanding a state of their own and start asking
for the vote. That could spell the end of Israel's identity as a Jewish
state, something most Israelis want to keep.
Israelis leave the country for many reasons. Ms Max says she and her
family did not decide to go because of the violence. "I'm leaving
because I've always wanted to," she says. "I came here as a Zionist but
found Israeli culture was very different from what I was used to." She
stayed, she says, first because she met her husband, then for her children.
But now her children have left, she wants to follow them. Her
children went for their own reasons. Only her eldest son, Adam, might
return if the suicide bombings stopped and the economic situation
improved, she thinks.
But Ms Max's neighbours in Jerusalem did leave because of the
suicide bombings. "They said they were too frightened for their children
to stay here," Ms Max says. "They went back to Australia, where they had
come from. But they said it was very difficult to start a new life."
Because Ms Max's former husband is American, her children have US
citizenship. In Israel's immigrant society, many Israelis have
second passports, and can leave the country easily. In the past year,
embassies in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have had long queues
of second-generation Israelis claiming their right to their parents' old citizenship.
In the Nineties, a million immigrants arrived in Israel from the former
Soviet Union, swelling the population and slowing the rate at which the
Palestinian population was overtaking it. But today, more Jewish people
from the former Soviet Union are emigrating to Germany than Israel, and
some who arrived in the Nineties have left, frustrated by not getting
jobs to match their qualifications. In a country full of doctors, a
medically qualified migrant from the former Soviet Union can end up a cleaner.
A new situation is beginning to emerge in which some Palestinians are
suggesting demographics is their greatest weapon, and that they should
use it against Israel. "Sharon is building the wall because he wants to
squeeze Palestinians into cantons on half of the West Bank," Professor
Ali Jirbawi, of the West Bank's Bir Zeit University, says. "They want to
call half of the West Bank 'Palestine' so they can squeeze the
Palestinians into as small a space as possible and allay their own fears
of the demographic effect in the future."
Professor Jirbawi is advocating that the Palestinians should set a
six-month time limit on negotiations for a two-state solution. "We
should say we accept a two-state solution, but that it means going back
to the 1967 borders, and a fully independent and sovereign Palestinian
state. We should give them six months. If there is no decision, we
should say Israel, by its own choice, doesn't want a two-state solution.
If Israel wants a one-state solution we accept; but 20 years from now,
we're going to ask for one person, one vote."
That is a nightmare scenario for many Israelis. Professor David Newman,
of Ben Gurion University, says: "If you look at the drive for a
two-state solution in the past, it was always to prevent conflict. What
is becoming more prevalent is that people are saying we have to do it
because if we don't we're going to end up with a bi-national state.
"If you look at all the surveys of public opinion, the one issue that
unites the Jewish population of Israel is that more than 90 per cent say
they want to retain a Jewish majority. The problem of the right wing is
that they want a Greater Israel including the occupied territories,
without any withdrawal. The irony is by doing that they invite a
bi-national state."
-------------------------------------------------------
The Families Who Returned Home
USA
Charles Lenchner realised how bad things had become in Israel when he
asked his daughter, Esther, 8, what her favourite television show was.
"She said her favourite programme was [the cartoon] Dexter's Lab," Mr
Lenchner said. "When I asked why she said she would like to have a
laboratory where she could make toys that were really bombs so that Arab
children could take them home and blow up their families."
Mr Lenchner, his mother and his sistermoved to Tel Aviv from
Pittsburgh in 1975 when he was aged six, a move spurred by his
mother's Zionist views. He returned to the US 25 years later,
confronted by evidence such as his daughter's comments of the hatred
that exists in Israel and the occupied territories. "I was just so
demoralised by the absence of hope," said Mr Lenchner, 34, who now
lives in Washington.His daughter still lives in Israel with her mother.
"I am now trying to get her to come to the US," he said.
Andrew Buncombe
RUSSIA
Anna Kozakova, a theatre producer, lived in Israel from 1991 to 1996
with her now-estranged husband, Mikhail Kozakov, who is one of
Russia's leading theatrical actors.
The couple left Moscow because Russian theatre fell into total ruin as
the Soviet Union collapsed. They also feared the rise of
anti-Semitism in the new Russia, and went to find a better life in
Israel, where they lived for five years.
Two factors convinced them to return: life in Russia grew much
better and the Moscow theatre revived impressively. Also, life in
Israel proved to be unsatisfactory.
She said: "Israel didn't offer any real chances for [my husband] to
develop his creativity. The situation in Moscow improved greatly and
Mikhail began receiving very attractive invitations to work. It was
because of the work situation, not because of politics or anything else,
that we decided to return. I have no regrets about that
choice".
Fred Weir
BRITAIN
Gideon and Lynn Seligman abandoned the life they had built together in
western Galilee and returned to Britain disillusioned with the
lack of political and moral leadership on both sides of the
conflict. "In the foreseeable future, I can see no resolution to the
mess. The politics and nature of Israeli society are becoming more
right wing and racist," said Mr Seligman, 40, from his new home in
Stockport, Greater Manchester, yesterday. The couple moved from London
in 1990 feeling optimistic and excited at the prospect of working on a
kibbutz in northern Israel. During the 12 years they
lived there the couple had two children, Ella, now aged 12, and Maya,
eight. The decision to return home in June last year was made all the
more difficult because their community was still growing and
the family had made many friends. "Living in Israel you see the
other side of the mountain, but my feelings of hope gradually gave way
to despair," he said.
Genevieve Roberts
2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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