Israel Protests Hungary’s Halting of Flights for Soviet Jews

JERUSALEM —  Israel publicly protested Friday a decision by Hungary to cut off charter flights from Budapest for Soviet immigrants because of terrorist threats.

Hungary’s state airline, Malev, also asked the Soviet company Aeroflot to stop flying Soviet Jews to Hungary on the way to Israel.

Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens asked for clarifications of the moves. Some officials in the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir are suspicious that Hungary cut off the flights for diplomatic reasons. There has been an uproar in the Arab world over the influx of Soviet Jews to Israel. The Arabs believe that Israel will settle the newcomers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as in East Jerusalem, which was Arab territory until the 1967 Middle East war.

“It is important to know who took the decision because we will react accordingly,” said Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Shamir.

“This is certainly surrender to pressure by threats of Arab terror,” added Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It is once again the rearing of international terror’s ugly head.”

Earlier this month, an underground group called Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, said to be backed by Iran, made a threat against airlines ferrying Jews to Israel. “All airports facilitating the transport as well as airlines, their jetliners and offices, will be direct targets for us,” the group said in a statement delivered to news agencies in Beirut and elsewhere.

In Tel Aviv, Hungarian diplomats said that Malev is worried about a plane being blown up.

“The Hungarian airline has stopped its chartered flights to Israel because the Islamic Jihad threatened the airline,” said Ganos Vvari, an official at the embassy.

Hungary and Israel renewed diplomatic relations last year after a 22-year break.

As a result of relaxed emigration policies in the Soviet Union and a limit to the number permitted to settle in the United States, up to 100,000 newcomers are expected to arrive in Israel from the Soviet Union this year.

The Soviet government, in response to Arab pressure, has refused to allow direct flights from Moscow.

Shamir’s government insists that it has no plans to direct newcomers to the West Bank and Gaza although the prime minister himself linked the influx to the need to hold on to the disputed territory. The ensuing controversies and worries about the safety of traveling immigrants prompted Israel to censor news reports about the incoming Soviet Jews.

Government officials said that Israel would send its own planes from the government-owned El Al airline to take up the slack from Malev. The Hungarian airline had been flying the twice-weekly immigrant charters for only the past month.

Regularly scheduled flights from Budapest will continue, Hungarian Embassy officials said.

But it is not clear who will make up for a reduction of the flights from Moscow to Budapest.