Immigration Policy of Israel, 1948-1994 This

This paper will discuss the immigration policies of the State of Israel, from the time of its inception to the present day. The overall policy has remained unchanged since the declaration of independence in 1948: all Jews from anywhere in the world are welcome to "return" to Israel and live as Israeli citizens. This policy applies only to Jews and Jewish immigration is the only kind of immigration which is welcomed. Within this overall policy, however, Jews from certain parts of the world are more welcome than others and receive preferential treatment. Jews from Europe and North America are preferred to, and enjoy several advantages over, Jews from Asian and African countries. Ironically, Jews from the latter group of countries have tended to outnumber those from the former group of countries and this has led to resentment and charges of discrimination by a very large segment of the Israeli population. The first part of the paper will examine the overall policy and briefly describe the history of Israeli immigration. The second part of the paper will discuss some of the problems which have arisen.

The state of Israel was established with the intention of providing a homeland for Jews all over the world. Consequently, an "open door" immigration policy was announced with the declaration of independence in 1948, a policy which applied only to Jews. Under the Law of Return, the codification

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an Jews was undertaken in May of 1991; this one brought more than 14,000 persons from Ethiopia to Israel. The intentions behind this airlift were not entirely humanitarian, for the Ethiopians were settled in the West Bank region as part of an attempt to repopulate the region with a Jewish majority. It was no accident that the airlift and resettlement occurred during the Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank. Similarly, government officials tried to encourage the Soviet Jews to settle in the West Bank. These efforts illustrate the continuing policy of linking Jewish immigration to securing Jewish control over the territories of Israel (Fotheringham, 1991, p. 37; Rosenthal, 1992). Problems Resulting from the Immigration Policies In spite of Israel's open door immigration policy and official welcome held out to all Jews, trouble within Israeli society started almost from the very beginning of statehood. Israeli Jews have been divided into two groups: Ashkenazim, Jews of European descent, and Oriental Jews, sometimes referred to as Sephardim, of Asian-African descent. Ashkenazim developed the idea of Zionism and constituted the vast majority of the Jewish settlers in Palestine during the Twentieth Century. On the other ha
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Oriental Jews, Soviet Jews, European Jews, Jews Ashkenazim, Horowitz Lissak, Europe United, Jewish Agency, Diaspora Sachar, Israel Elaborate, Ethiopian Jews, oriental jews, israeli government, european jews, soviet jews, sachar 1986, immigration policy, friedman 1984, socioeconomic status, rosenthal 1992, jewish immigration, horowitz lissak 1989, lissak 1989 pp, schechtman 1961 pp, declaration independence 1948, sachar 1986 pp,
Approximate Word count = 4591
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)