N.America, France set to lead immigration to Israel http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-07-06T143132Z_01_L06911535_RTRUKOC_0_US-ISRAEL-IMMIGRATION.xml&archived=False
Thu Jul 6, 2006
By Steven Scheer
LOD, Israel (Reuters) - Immigration to Israel is expected to post a three-year high in 2006, boosted by a jump in those moving to the Jewish state from North America and France, Israel's agency for immigration said on Thursday.
An estimated 24,000 people are expected to make "aliya", the Hebrew word for immigrating to Israel, this year, its highest figure since 2003 and up from 22,657 in 2005, the Jewish Agency said.
"This is actually proof that people realize that the center of Jewish life is in Israel," agency chairman Zeev Bielski told Reuters. "To be part of the creation of the Jewish state is something you can do only by living in Israel."
Nearly 250 North Americans landed in Israel on Thursday on the first of seven planeloads that will bring an expected 3,400 new immigrants from the United States and Canada, the most since 1983 and well above last year's 2,987.
Immigration from France is also expected to reach 3,500 people in 2006, the highest level since 1971, the agency said.
Immigration earlier in the decade had dropped sharply from about 70,000 per year in the 1990s, mostly from former Soviet states, due to Palestinian-Israeli violence. It posted its first yearly gain in 2005 since 1999.
"You are showing Israel's enemies ... no one will stop Jews from calling Israel their home," Tony Gelbart, a co-founder of the Nefesh B'Nefesh private immigration agency, told the immigrants at Ben Gurion International Airport.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav said rising immigration was a signal to Israel's Arab neighbors that making peace was a far better option than trying to destroy the Jewish state.
Israel's government places great significance on immigration amid concerns that without an influx of foreign Jews the country's Arab minority, which has a far higher birth rate, could eventually outnumber the Jewish population.
Jews constitute 76 percent of Israel's population of 7.04 million people, while Arabs make up some 20 percent.
Among those who immigrated to Israel on Thursday was Ben Kurtzer, brother of former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, with his wife and five children from Dallas.
"Whenever we came to Israel in the past, we always felt that this is home and that we were temporarily living in the United States," said Kurtzer.
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