Arab fertility rate – within Israel’s “Green Line” – has decreased from 4.7 children per woman in 2000 to 4.0 in 2005 and 3.7 during the first months in 2006. Arab fertility rate was 9.3 during the 1960s. Jewish fertility rate is creeping upward to 2.8 in 2006 from 2.7 in 2005, which is the highest in the industrialized world.
 

The systematic decline in Arab fertility rate has been ignored by Israel’s “Prophets of Demographic Doom”. They have assumed that the fertility rate of “today” would be the rate of “tomorrow”, hence their severely erroneous projections since 1948, under-rating Jewish fertility rates, over-rating Arab rates, ignoring Arab emigration (mostly from Judea & Samaria) and under-estimating the scope of Jewish immigration (Aliya).
 

The absolute number of Arab births within Israel’s “Green Line” has stagnated since 1995: 36,500 in 1995, 41,440 in 2001 and 38,000 in 2005/6. At the same time, the number of Jewish births has increased over 25% annually since 1995: 80,400 in 1995, 95,198 in 2001, 105,181 in 2005 and a rate of 107,000 in 2006.
 

Arab population growth rate in Judea & Samaria has been lower (1.8%) – since 2001 – than Jewish population growth rate in Israel’s “Green Line” and Judea & Samaria (2.1%). Net Arab emigration from J & S totaled 15,599 in 2005, averaging over 10,000 annually since 1950.
 

Israel’s “Prophets of Demographic Doom” base their projections - with no scrutiny - on the numbers of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), which are not tangible data but projections. The PCBS projections have been refuted substantially and annually by documented births (40,000 “projected” babies have not been born annually), deaths and migration (over 50,000 “projected” migrants have not migrated annually). The PCBS projections include some 400,000 non-de-facto residents, over 200,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who are counted also as “Green Line” Arabs (double-count) and over 100,000 Palestinians who have received Israeli ID cards since 1997 (double-count).
 

Squandering the US and the European taxpayers’ money. The PCBS grossly erroneous numbers constitute a basis for critical Israeli and US policy-decisions, for water allocation, and for US and European annual contributions to Palestinian organizations, directly and via international organizations.
 

Jews have constituted a solid long-term 67% majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean without Gaza, and a 60% majority with Gaza, since the 1960s. In 1900 and in 1947 there was - west of the Jordan River – a Jewish minority of 8% and 33% respectively.
 

There is no need to sacrifice Jewish Geography (Judea & Samaria) – which is critical to the security and history of the Jewish State – in order to save Jewish Demography. In fact, as documented by the Bennett Zimmerman-led American-Israeli study (www.pademographics.com), a retreat from geography would undermine Jewish demography. The study was published in February, 2006 by the “Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies” (http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/mideast.html).