Citizenship

In Jerusalem last week, Pinhas Koplovitch, a small, balding Polish Jew, took a slim, dark-blue booklet from the hands of an Israeli government official and murmured a traditional thanksgiving: "Praised be Thou, O Lord, who hast let me live to see this day." Koplovitch had in his hands the first Israeli passport.

Until Israel's long-delayed nationalization law came into effect last month, residents of Israel remained citizens of their old countries, or were stateless. The law made citizens, if they so desired, of all the 1,400,000 resident Jews, whether immigrants or native-born. More than 20,000, including a handful of U.S.-born, did not so desire, preferring to keep their old citizenships--and passports. Some of these holdouts wanted to keep the right of re-entry into their native lands, or still had property there, or wanted the protection of bigger and stronger powers than Israel. But the holdouts were subjected to critical fire by patriots. Sniffed one Israeli newspaper: "Our joy cannot be spoiled because these few thousands did not want to become Israeli citizens because of petty motives."

The country's 175,000 Arabs were forced by the law to go through complicated technicalities before they were accepted as citizens. Arab members of Israel's Parliament protested that at least half of Israel's Arabs would fail to qualify, would thus be aliens in their native land.

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