A year ago, the government decided to register the property claims of Jews from Arab countries, which are estimated in the billions of dollars. The declared purpose of the campaign was to create a counterweight to expected claims by Palestinians, if and when negotiations on a final settlement are resumed.
What seemed at the time a very remote possibility has become more and more likely in recent months. It is therefore only natural to ask how the campaign, which could be of great financial, legal, political, and international importance, is progressing. The answer is simple it isn’t.
The Ministry of Justice, which is handling registration of claims, promised to conduct a publicity campaign to encourage the submitting of forms. Except for a few scattered announcements and press releases, however, no movement is visible.
There are several reasons for the inaction. One is technical since Israel has no approved budget, the operating budget is one twelfth of the 2004 budget for each month, and money cannot be budgeted for new activities. The second reason is more substantial. There are parties in the government, mostly those dealing with diplomacy, who are unenthusiastic, to put it mildly, about the registration campaign, fearing that it will arouse Palestinians to make their own claims.
This claim does not hold water, for the simple reason that Palestinian claims have been ready for submitting for a long time, and all sorts of numbers for them have been quoted. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, has objected to Israel’s claim registration campaign in the past, and its position has not changed since then.
In order to add to Israel’s embarrassment, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) has announced its own campaign to register claims. WOJAC Israel president Oved Benozer and WOJAC USA president Heskel M. Haddad, a well-known ophthalmologist living in New York, are coordinating the campaign. Claim forms for the campaign can be downloaded from the WOJAC website in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
WOJAC asserts that 951,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries after the establishment of Israel. This figure is significantly larger than those cited by academic researchers. It is usually claimed that 600,000 Arabs left Israel in 1947-1949, and a similar number of Jews left Arab countries.
In any case, it is unclear how WOJAC’s campaign will fit in with that of the Ministry of Justice, although WOJAC says that its actions are authorized by the Israeli government. When the Israeli government itself is not exactly coordinated and united, however, it is more reasonable to assume that the result will be duplicate and even contradictory registration of claims.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on February 24, 2005