It is true that Israel has always depended on some level of immigration to maintain or improve its demographic position in relation to the Arab population, a dependency that will likely continue. Without immigration, long-term demographic stability will require a convergence of birthrates between the Jewish and Arab population groups. In this regard, it is instructive to note the different fertility rates of Israel’s various Arab subgroups. Among Christian Arabs, fertility rates have fallen to 2.1, barely replacement level. The Druze, who once boasted high fertility rates, are now holding steady at 2.66, just below the current Israeli Jewish fertility rate of 2.7. The reason for this drop is likely linked to the modernization of the Druze community and its integration into Israeli society, including its participation in Israel’s military and increased educational opportunities for women, which in turn led to delayed marriage and fewer childbearing years. Today in Israel it is widely advocated that in the interests of equality, Israel should adopt similar policies for the Muslim sector, including national service and enhanced educational opportunities for both men and women. If these were adopted, their high but declining fertility rates might decline even further, and eventually approach Jewish levels.

The conclusions from all this seem overwhelmingly clear: The Arab demographic time bomb is, in many crucial respects, a dud. It is the product of a dramatically inflated account of the actual number of Palestinians living in the territories, combined with obsolete assumptions about future growth. The question must now be asked: Why is it that Israel has relied on PA population projections as starting assumptions in envisioning the future contours of the Jewish state? And why have these statistical errors gone unnoticed? The official answer is that when Israel turned over administration of the territories to the new PA agencies in 1994 and 1995, no Israeli agency was charged with monitoring the accuracy of the PCBS figures. Recently, when the Knesset’s Operations Committee summoned members of the ICBS for three inquiry hearings devoted to this question, the ICBS maintained that monitoring the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza was beyond its jurisdiction, both for budgetary reasons and because the Oslo accords explicitly barred Israeli agencies from doing so. Furthermore, the original divergence between PCBS and ICBS numbers occurred in 1997, when the political process between Israel and the PA was proceeding smoothly and there was little interest in questioning the figures.

In some cases, simple negligence contributed to reports about a dwindling Jewish ratio. Though it is generally known that both Israeli and PA surveys include Jerusalem’s Arabs, many international and government agencies, including, for example, the U.S. State Department and the CIA, simply add the two surveys together to get their totals, thus double-counting the 220,000 Jerusalem Arabs. Yet an additional reason, it seems, relates to the intense politicization of the subject in Israel and the PA, and the way that Israelis have come to assume the inevitability of Arab demographic dominance. Prominent Israeli academics who addressed demography were committed to the separation of Jewish and Arab populations, and their policy recommendations were inseparable from their “demographic time bomb” warnings. Arnon Soffer’s widely distributed Israel Demography 2004-2020: In Light of the Process of Disengagement,²⁰ for example, accepted PCBS population claims for the West Bank and Gaza, exaggerated Jerusalem Arabs by nearly double, removed religiously unclassified Soviet immigrants from the ICBS “Jews and Other” category, included foreign workers in the “Arabs and Other” category (not included by the ICBS in Israel’s population), and included illegal immigrants to Israel from the PA without removing the same persons from the PCBS count, thereby arriving at a Jewish minority west of the Jordan River.

Moreover, the PCBS numbers continue to be widely cited by national and international organizations, lending them further credibility. International aid to the territories, for example, is based in part on PA population figures. On March 15, 2006, pleading for continued American aid to Palestinians, U.S. Quartet representative James Wolfensohn told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee there was a humanitarian crisis developing for 4 to 4.5 million Palestinians in the territories.²¹ Surprisingly, no senators questioned his numbers or their provenance, although his casual reference was higher than even those claims made by the PCBS or Israeli demographers. There are signs that this automatic acceptance of inflated figures may well be on the wane, however: Since the Oslo accords, the U.S. has granted the Palestinians $1.5 billion, most of which has gone not to the PA, but rather to humanitarian programs whose budgets are often calculated on a per capita basis. While it is difficult to backtrack on a decade of aid calculations, in the wake of Hamas’ recent victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, various government agencies are reassessing aid programs to the Palestinians. The Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, for example, chaired by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, invited the authors of this article to present evidence of the inflated population figures issued by the PA. As a result, the U.S. and other donors may decide to recalibrate their support, given the significantly smaller number of people in the territories.²²

Yet the deeper answer to why the incorrect figures were unquestioningly accepted may lie in history itself: For more than a century, Jews have been locked in a demographic battle with Arabs. As such, many are predisposed to believe the worst-case scenarios—and a chorus of scholars ready to confirm their worst fears is always waiting in the wings.

Do the Jews of Israel face a demographic threat? The answer is still a qualified yes—but the threat has been greatly exaggerated. As the real numbers make clear, Arab population growth is not an overwhelming force that is destined, sooner or later, to relegate the Jews to minority status. On the contrary: With a greater understanding of demography and the specific forces that drive it, Israeli policymakers can develop a range of choices to affect the long-term demographic trends in the region—from the encouragement of Jewish immigration to the fostering of economic and social equality between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. More important, Israel must realize that it has time, demographically speaking, to evaluate these choices, and to make the right decisions.

What is clear, however, is that the corrected data neutralizes a major psychological weapon in the Arab-Jewish propaganda war. Palestinians have wielded their supposed demographic strength to threaten Israel and inspire confidence in the inevitability of victory; but the Jews, it must now be declared openly, are not a vulnerable majority whose foothold in the land is weak. On the contrary, the Jews remain a clear-cut majority with robust demographic features. This moment in Israel’s history is, therefore, a pivotal one: It must undertake the kind of bold new thinking that will ensure that the Jewish state remains a reality, even as the rights and welfare of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs are addressed. And this can begin only with good, reliable data.

Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise are the authors of The Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza: The Million Person Gap, recently published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel. Population Forecast for Israel and West Bank 2025 debuted in Israel at the Herzliya Conference and in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.

 

1. Nahum Barnea, “Olmert Calls for Unilateral Disengagement from Majority of Territories,” Yediot Aharonot, December 5, 2003.

2. Bradley Burston, “The Fight of Sharon’s Life: His Place in History,” Haaretz, May 27, 2003.

3. Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise, “The Million Person Gap: The Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza,” Mideast Security and Policy Studies 65 (February 2006), www.biu.ac.il/Besa/MSPS65.pdf.

4. Zimmerman, Seid, and Wise, “The Million Person Gap,” pp. 12-13.

5. Zimmerman, Seid, and Wise, “The Million Person Gap,” pp. 14-15; Palestine Central Election Commission, “Central Election Commission Registers Over 67% of Eligible Voters,” press release, October 14, 2004.

6. Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), “Demographic Indicators of the Palestinian Territory, 1997-2015”; PA Ministry of Health, “Health Status in Palestine,” Annual Reports 1997-2003.

7. PA Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Statistics About General Education in Palestine, 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 reports, www.mohe.gov.ps; Zimmerman, Seid, and Wise, “The Million Person Gap,” pp. 20-21.

8. Inigo Gilmore, “Hebron’s Middle Classes Choose America Rather than Martyrdom,” Telegraph News, September 5, 2004.

9. Uriah Shavit and Jalal Bana, “The Secret Exodus: Palestinian Emigration,” Haaretz, magazine section, October 5, 2001.

11. But here, too, the argument can be made that since Israeli Druze do not identify with the Palestinian national identity, serve in the IDF, and generally support their country and its institutions, it might be misleading to include them in Israeli Arab or Palestinian figures.

12. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2005, 56 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 2005), pp. 140-141.

13. ICBS, Statistical Abstract, p. 140; “Changes in Amount of Child Allowances,” National Insurance Institute of Israel, January 8, 2005, www.btl.gov.il/English/whats_new/children_1_05.htm. This change in policy coincided with an immediate drop in pregnancies, for example, among Bedouin families.

14. Zimmerman, Seid, and Wise, “The Million Person Gap,” pp. 12-13. Fertility rates were calculated for each year from 1997 through 2003 on the basis of births recorded by the PA Ministry of Health, “Health Status in Palestine: Annual reports,” and a residents-only population base for the West Bank and Gaza.

15. Charley J. Levine, “Interview: Sergio DellaPergola,” Hadassah Magazine 87 (June/July2006), www.hadassah.org/news/content/per_hadassah/archive/2006/06_jun/interview.asp. DellaPergola stated, “Very few forecasters saw the influx of one million Russian Jews even a few years before it started to happen in the 1990s.”

16. Ruth Eglash, “Persuading Israelis Abroad to Come Back Home,” Jerusalem Post, March 23, 2006. Article cites figures released by the Israel Ministry of Immigrant Absorption for 2003, 2004, and 2005.

17. “Population Forecast for Israel and West Bank 2025,” Presentation at the Sixth Herzliya Conference, Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise, January 23, 2006, www.pademographics.com/Forecast%20for%20Israel%202025.ppt; ICBS, “Projections of Population in Israel for 2010-2025,” Statistical Abstract, pp. 105-109; ICBS, Ahmad Hleihel, “Demographic Trends in Israel,” Presentation at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, June 8, 2005.

18. Net immigration was 86,200 from 2001 to 2004, ICBS, Statistical Abstract, Table 2.2, p. 31.

19. “Fertility and Mortality Assumptions,” United Nations World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. Fertility figures correspond to PCBS reference noted in note 101 of our BESA report. Slide no. 5.

20. Soffer and Bystrov, Israel Demography 2004-2020, pp. 12-17.

22. www.house.gov/international_ relations/109/zim030806.pdf.