TEL AVIV : Israel is bracing for one of the biggest waves of non-Jewish refugees in its history, as incoming Ukrainians force the country to balance its historic desire to help people fleeing war with its responsibility as a haven for Jews.
About 16,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in Israel but two-thirds of them don’t have Jewish roots. While most of the 3.7 million Ukrainians who have fled the war are headed to neighboring European countries, the influx has jolted Israel, which has a population of 9.3 million.
Some Israeli officials fear that an unchecked wave of refugees could undercut the country’s Jewish majority. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said in 2021 that 74% of Israel’s population identify as Jewish, and 21% are Arab. Another 5% are largely non-Arab Christians, most of whom were among or born to the nearly one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came to Israel during the 1990s.
Israel’s Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked on March 8 announced a first-ever policy to cap non-Jewish refugees from Ukraine at 5,000 while permitting an additional 20,000 Ukrainians residing in Israel largely without legal status before the war to remain during the hostilities.
Five days later Ms. Shaked changed course after she was condemned from centrist and left-wing members of her own government. The issue has similarly divided the country largely along political lines, according to polls, with left-wing Israelis supporting a more open policy to absorbing non-Jewish refugees. The revised policy keeps the non-Jewish refugee quota at 5,000 but allows an uncapped number of Ukrainians with family in Israel to stay until the hostilities cease. It also requires Ukrainians to apply for approval from Israel before being allowed to board a plane to Tel Aviv.
Israel’s current quota for Ukrainians entering the country and the requirement that they receive prior approval while abroad effectively suspended a visa-waiver agreement Israel has with Ukraine. The nearby United Arab Emirates took a similar step in early March before quickly backtracking.
On March 23, Israeli officials said they were approaching the quota, with 4,000 non-Jewish Ukrainian refugees already here.
Ms. Shaked has said her policy is meant to give priority to Ukrainians with Jewish roots who are eligible for citizenship.
“We have to remember that the state of Israel is a national homeland of the Jewish people," said Ms. Shaked. She has argued that, relative to the size of its population, Israel is expected to take in and naturalize more Ukrainian refugees than any other country that doesn’t border Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized Israel’s refugee policy in a Zoom-hosted speech to Israeli lawmakers. “Why isn’t Israeli help, or even entry permits, forthcoming," he said.
Mr. Zelensky, who is Jewish, compared Ukrainians fleeing the war to Jews escaping Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. That specific appeal drew outrage from a largely Jewish audience, who considered the comparison incorrect and unnecessary.
Israel’s Supreme Court has given the government until Monday to revise the current policy before ruling whether the quota of Ukrainian refugees and the requirement for entry approval from abroad is legal The petition to the court is backed by Ukraine’s embassy in Tel Aviv. Israeli officials have argued the visa-waiver program is for touristic purposes, while those fleeing war would be more likely to remain in the country.
“We showed that the law relates to any visitor from Ukraine and to any purpose, not only tourism, and the Supreme Court hinted that indeed this is how they see it," said Tomer Warsha, who filed the petition challenging the current refugee policy.
Israel has sought to balance its close relationship with the U.S. and Europe with diplomatic and security ties it has developed with Moscow in recent years.
Israel’s position is that it opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but can only provide humanitarian—not military—aid to maintain its ties with Russia. Moscow has forces in Syria, where Israel has been conducting a long-running aerial campaign against Iranian-backed militants. Israel has a deconfliction line of communication with Russia to prevent the possibility of unintended clashes over Syrian skies. Israel has established a field hospital in Ukraine and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is one of a handful of state leaders mediating between Kyiv and Moscow.
Ukrainian officials say some non-Jewish refugees have been mistreated as they tried to enter the country, in contrast to the relatively easy process for refugees with Jewish roots.
Yulia Tomin, a 25-year-old refugee who fled her hometown of Ivano-Frankivsk with her two young children and her grandmother, isn’t Jewish but she does have Israeli relatives. She said she slept on the floor in the airport from March 8-11 while nursing her 1-month-old son and trying to take care of her 4-year-old daughter. She was transferred to a hotel and slated for deportation before an immigration lawyer took up her case and won.
Others weren’t as fortunate. Two of the women in Ms. Tomin’s hotel were deported earlier this month.
“I’m not afraid here," Ms. Tomin said. “I fear for what will happen in Ukraine."
Israel’s immigration authority hasn’t responded to a reply for comment on Ms. Tomin’s case.
In parliamentary hearings, Israeli officials said they were surprised by the quick buildup of refugees at the airport when the war in Ukraine began. They have since opened facilities at the airport with food and child care available and have switched to considering refugee applications to stay in Israel from abroad to reduce deportation.
Since Feb. 25, 289 Ukrainians have been denied entry into Israel out of more than 16,000 that have arrived.
Many Jewish refugees have had an easier time and their applications for citizenship are now being fast-tracked. Psychiatrist Ilya Tregubov, 40, fled Dnipro with his wife and teenage daughter after rockets began falling. In Lviv, he met officials with Israel’s semi-governmental Jewish Agency, which verified their Jewish heritage and helped them emigrate to Israel. Mr. Tregubov said he and his family are now Israeli citizens, living with his cousin in central Israel and working on their Hebrew.
“It’s a feeling I had all my life. If it gets really bad, I will move to Israel. As a Jew, you have that idea deep in your consciousness. But you don’t really imagine that it will happen," he said.
Israeli officials say they expect between 50,000 to 100,000 Jews this year to immigrate from countries once part of the former Soviet Union, through a law that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to receive citizenship. Israeli officials also said nearly 2,000 Russians have already immigrated to Israel since the war began and thousands more have submitted inquiries regarding immigration.
In the seven decades since its founding, Israel has almost exclusively dealt with waves of Jewish immigration, but it was forced this time to cobble together an ad hoc policy for non-Jewish refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute.
Soviet immigrants in the early 1990s were the biggest group of non-Jews Israel has ever accepted and it also took in non-Jewish refugees from Vietnam in the late 1970s. It has generally refused refugees from Syria and other recent conflicts, and Palestinian refugees from Israel’s founding war have largely never been allowed to return.
“Israel didn’t really deal in the past with large pressure from non-Jews to immigrate to Israel, and therefore, never really developed a coherent policy," he said.
Some Ukrainian refugees are preparing to stay in Israel despite their status being in limbo.
Alla Misiuk and her daughter are among about a dozen non-Jewish families being brought to Israel with the help of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum because their families once saved the lives of Jews during World War II.
On Monday, Ms. Misiuk said she found her young daughter a new school to attend. Yet Mrs. Misiuk still doesn’t know if she and her daughter will be allowed to stay in Israel permanently.
“My home is destroyed. There is no place to go back to," she said.
