TEL AVIV: Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population.

The prime minister’s remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet for a ban on immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in the government between those who say an influx from the former Soviet Union threatens Israel’s religious identity and those who increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate.

The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on the issue by declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which is more stringent in its definition than government legislation, should not be allowed to settle in Israel.

But Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said: “It should be possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so.”

Israel’s establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the disagreement is the decade-long wave of immigration in which about one million Russians and citizens of the former Soviet republics have come to Israel under the “grandfather clause” of the Law of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli citizenship.

The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent.

Orthodox rabbis say that up to 70 per cent of the arrivals in recent years do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual’s mother to have been Jewish.

The government estimates that 25 per cent of all Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to religious law and need to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is laborious and partly because the Russian community tends to be secular.

The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says such figures threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

“By the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish identity,” he said. “A secular state will bring ... hundreds of thousands of goyim (gentiles) who will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see Christmas trees.”

The leftwing Meretz party reinforced the point by bringing a Christmas tree to the launch of its election campaign among Russian voters because it is part of the immigrants’ “tradition”.

Yishai and Israel’s chief rabbis, Yisrael Meir Lau and Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, want the grandfather clause repealed and the right of return limited to those who are Jews as defined by religious law.

But Sharon sees a more important demographic process at work. The higher Arab birthrate means that Jews will be outnumbered in Israel and the areas it now governs within decades. Arabs already account for 20 per cent of Israeli citizens.

Immigration has fallen to its lowest level since the end of the cold war and Sharon is keen to revive it, even if that opens the gates to people of questionable Jewish ancestry.

For political and security reasons, Sharon is not about to alienate Russian immigrants by questioning their right to be in Israel.

For a start the Russians, as all immigrants from the former Soviet Union are known in Israel, have the voting power to decide who governs.

But while the Russians are rightwing on security and economic issues, they view religious conservatives with suspicion and complain of maltreatment at the hands of the orthodox. Many are unable to marry because only religious weddings are permitted under Israeli law and the chief rabbis refuse to recognise them as Jewish.

The defence ministry calls up young Russian immigrants to serve in the army while the interior ministry denies them rights because they are not deemed Jewish. Some, suspected of lying about being Jewish have been subjected to humiliating DNA tests.

The growing number of secular Russians has also been blamed for a rise in anti-Semitic graffiti in the Jewish side of Jerusalem. The government has recorded 500 incidents over the past two years.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.