OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, June 9 (IslamOnline & New Agencies) - In an attempt to populate empty Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) will send Jewish communities from abroad headed by their local rabbis to the West Bank, the Israeli daily Maariv said Sunday.

The project, entitled "Rise to Israel of the Rabbi and his Community", will begin in late June when some 70 to 100 families will arrive from New York, led by their rabbi Mordechai Tendler. They will move into the Kohav settlement, north of Jerusalem, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

A second group of around 50 families is expected in Israel shortly afterwards from the southern French city of Marseille, led by their community rabbi Abraham Maimon.

Since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, immigration to Israel has dropped, and so has the number of people moving into settlements in the occupied territories, which are considered illegal under international law and according to the signed Palestinian-Israeli agreements, AFP reported.

In 2001, some 45,000 people immigrated to Israel against 60,000 in 2000, according to WZO figures. In 2001, only 2,500 people chose to live in settlements, while in the previous decade some 5,000 to 7,000 moved into them yearly, AFP said.

The bulk of the immigrants still comes from countries of the former Soviet Union with 35,000 in 2001, some 34 percent less than in 2000.

At least 40 percent of these immigrants are not considered Jewish by Israel's official rabbinate, but they nevertheless benefit from the so-called law of return and are granted citizenship.

Israel has vowed to encourage immigration from Argentina, whose 200,000 Jews are affected, like the rest of the country, by the serious economic crisis there.

The Jewish State has a population of 6.5 million people, with 5.2 million Jews and 1.2 million Arabs.

The WZO is an umbrella group for several Zionist movements, including the Jewish Agency, a non-governmental organization charged with supervising and encouraging immigration to Israel.

The daily Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, reported Wednesday, June 5, 2002, that 400 North Americans Jews will immigrate to Israel in June through a program held by an Israeli organization called Nefesh b'Nefesh.

The 400 are to arrive in Israel on a chartered plane funded by the organization created to finance immigration through the help of private donors, including a Christian group.

It will be the first time in at least 25 years that such a large number of North American immigrants have arrived at one time, the paper said.

Rabbi Joshua Fass, the founder of the organization, hopes this will be a quarterly event that will change the face of North American immigration through his new U.S. group, Nefesh b'Nefesh.

A detailed new map of the West Bank released by the B'Tselem center for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories showed that Israeli settlers exert control over nearly half of the Palestinian territories through a strategic placement of a few Jewish colonial settlements.