Jerusalem Cloakroom #124

by Yoram Ettinger
yoramtex@netvision.net.il

July 13, 2002  

1. Mythical dimensions have been attached to the real demographic threat – to the survival of Israel – in an attempt to scare Israel into sweeping and reckless concessions, back to the 1949 lines.
    

2.  In 1900 the demographic genie was harnessed by the leading Jewish historian, Shimon Doubnov, who opposed the vision of a sovereign Jewish state, promoting Jewish autonomy in Europe. He suggested that Jewish and Arab birth rates, immigration and emigration determined that the number of Jews in the Land of Israel would grow from 50,000 in 1900 to 500,000 in the year 2000: a negligible minority. His assessments were demolished by a 5.5 million Jewish majority in Israel in 2000!
    

3. In 1948 the demographic threat was employed by Prof. Roberto Bacchi of the Hebrew University, a world renowned statistician. He attempted to persuade Ben-Gurion to postpone the establishment of the Jewish state, claiming that the 650,000 Jewish majority in 1948 would become a minority by 1968. In 1968 there were 2.4 million Jews and 406,000 Arabs in Israel!
    

4.  In 1967 Israel’s leading doves deployed top statisticians in order to convince then Prime Minister Eshkol to evacuate Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They warned that by 1987 there would be an Arab majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. However, by 1987 Jewish majority shrunk by a mere 1%, declining from 63.35% in 1967 to 62.4% in 1987, before the arrival to Israel of one million Jews from the former Soviet Union.
    

5.  In contrast to doomsday predictions, the Jewish population (between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean) has grown 164 times between 1882 and 1990 (from 24,000 to 3,947,000), while the Arab population has grown 5.8 times (from 425,000 to 2,450,000). Growth rate is not determined solely by birth rate. It is affected by many unpredictable variables: immigration, emigration, war, terrorism, urbanization, economy, education, health services, etc. Thus, during 1948-67 the Arab population in Judea & Samaria grew only by 30,000! Arab emigration accelerated during the 1976-1980 economic petro-driven boom in the Persian Gulf, slowed-down in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo Accord, but has accelerated since the eruption of Palestinian terrorism in September 2000. Moreover, the higher the literacy, the lower the birth rate: Palestinian birth rate was 8 kids per family in 1970, 7 in 1985 and it is 5.6 in 2002.
    

6.  While the real demographic threat has been shifty and defying conventions, Israel’s geography and topography – the key to its national security – have been fixed. Survival in the most violent and unpredictable region of the globe and Jewish history, require control of the geographically and topographically superior Judea & Samaria , while tempering with the demographic threat.