Last update - 00:00 15/07/2007
Cabinet delays okay for expanding Nativ operations to Germany
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent
The cabinet was to have authorized Sunday a controversial decision to expand the Nativ agency into Germany for the first time in the organization's history, but the discussion was postponed until next week.
The decision to postpone the discussion was believed to be technical and not substantive.
Nativ, a semi-covert agency founded within the Prime Minister's Office in the 1950s, operated in the former Soviet Union to bring Jews to Israel and as a liaison to Jewish dissidents. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been tasked with processing immigration to Israel and running Israeli culture centers in the former Soviet Union.
Sunday's cabinet vote is expected to rescind a previous decision from 2003 limiting Nativ's operations to the countries of the former Soviet Union. If the vote passes, Nativ will send two delegates to Germany as early as September this year to set up operations among the some 120,000 Russian-speaking Jews who have immigrated to the country in recent years.
The initiative to expand Nativ's operations to Russia - promoted by the Strategic Affairs Ministry - was met with opposition by the Jewish Agency and the Foreign Ministry, as well as German Jewish groups who have threatened the unprecedented step of turning to the German government.
However a compromise has now been reached under which Nativ's operations in Germany will be subject to a steering committee with the representation of all parties concerned. Furthermore, the Foreign Ministry has interceded to ensure Nativ will not operate in Germany until it has received the German government's authorization.
In what is seen as an apparent victory for the Jewish Agency, Nativ's emissaries will only be able to engage in promoting aliyah with the Jewish Agency's approval. The Jewish Agency sees the arrangement as a way of ensuring its seniority among the Israeli organizations operating in the Diaspora.
The draft to be presented to the cabinet Sunday adopts the findings of an interministerial committee headed by the director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry, Hagai Peleg.
Among the committee's recommendations are a reform in consular immigration processing procedures to make it easier for wealthy Russians to settle in Israel.
The committee recommended against expanding Nativ's operations to the United States, but the bureau could in the future be allowed to operate in the Russian-Jewish community in Toronto, Canada, which is considered one of the largest in the world.