JERUSALEM: According to Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the closure of a Russian organisation that handles Jewish immigration to Israel would be a “major event” for bilateral relations.
A hearing on July 28 has been scheduled after a Moscow court last week stated that the justice ministry had asked for the “dissolution” of the Jewish Agency due to various legal irregularities.
Some observers saw that as the Kremlin firing a warning shot at Lapid, who has adopted a more forceful rhetorical stance regarding the Ukraine conflict than Israel’s former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who resigned on July 1.
According to a government statement, Lapid warned a gathering of top officials that “closing the Jewish Agency offices would be a major occurrence that would impact ties.
In addition to diplomatic attempts to resolve the conflict, he directed that a legal team be prepared to depart for Moscow as soon as the Russian authorisation for discussions is received and to make every effort to exhaust the legal dialogue”.
The Jewish Agency, which was founded in 1929, was crucial to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Thousands of Jews from all over the USSR moved for Israel after it started operating in Russia in 1989, two years before the Soviet Union collapsed.
