The suspension of the programme, which affects both Falashas and non-Jews, is all the more tragic in the light of the real progress which was being achieved. The number of pupils in the schools in 1980 had risen by a third since the previous year to 2,244, the agricultural and technical programmes were being extended and new synagogues built. Jean-Claude Nedjar, the field director, had recorded his emotion on seeing villagers in a remote corner of the Semien mountains constructing their own place of worship 'so poor and yet so devoted to the maintenance of their Jewish identity'. During 1980, for the first time, imported matzos were distributed at Passover and, also for the first time, a gift of Hebrew prayer books was donated by the Addis Ababa community of Jews from Aden, thereby marking the end of the schism between the Falashas and their co-religionists from the Yemen.

While the anxiety of the Falashas to emigrate to Israel may have been the ostensible reason for the Ethiopian Government's repressive measures, its actions should be seen against the background of the international situation in which Ethiopia has a difficult part to play. On the one hand, she is bound to her Soviet partner, whose anti-Jewish stance is well-known; on the other, she desires to maintain friendly relations with the countries of the West from whom she seeks economic aid to supplement that received from the East. Nearer home she needs to cultivate good relations with Sudan and to dissuade her neighbour from assisting the Eritrean and Tigrean rebels. Meanwhile, in September 1981, she signed a treaty of friendship with South Yemen and Libya at a time when the latter was at daggers drawn with Sudan. In these circumstances Addis Ababa may have concluded that the sacrifice of the Falasha aid programme represented a small price to pay in order to placate simultaneously the Russians, the Arabs, Colonel Gaddafi and Sudan. It is the unfortunate Falashas who suffer as a result and one can only hope that the severance of their life-line to the outside world will be of short duration.