The population growth among West Bank settlers was three times higher than that of the rest of Israel during the past 12 years, according to a report by the Ariel College Center of Samaria.
The statistical annual report shows that the Jewish population in the West Bank more than doubled during that time, with a growth of 107 percent. The report also shows that the settler population has surged from 130,000 in 2005 to 270,000 by the end of 2007.
Meanwhile, the entire population of Israel grew by 29 percent over the same period.
This population trend has continued over the past three years, with the West Bank settler population growing by 5 percent annually, compared to a 1.7 percentage growth in the entire country.
No other region in Israel has grown in numbers so drastically.
The report further notes that the West Bank settler population is a generally young one, its median age being 20.6, compared to 28.7 in the rest of Israel.
A year earlier there was this demographic report:-
The settler population is growing twice as fast as the rest of the country every year, and the ultra-Orthodox community is responsible for approximately half its annual growth, according to Haaretz's analysis of Interior Ministry figures for 2006. In the last year, the settler population has grown by 5.45 percent, from 260,932 to 275,156.
Without the ultra-Orthodox community the West Bank settlements' growth is 3.7 percent, only a little more than the natural growth the settlements would see, which stands at 3.5 percent.
The growth rate in the ultra-Orthodox Beitar Ilit and Modi'in Ilit is higher than most places in Israel. Modi'in Ilit's population, some 40,000, grows annually by about 11 percent (this year it has grown by 12.5 percent).
Beitar Ilit's population, some 35,000, grows annually by some 10 percent - five to six times more than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv's population growth respectively and twice as much as the growth of many other settlements.
By the end of June, 72,106 people - more than a quarter of the West Bank settlers - were concentrated in Beitar Ilit, Modi'in Ilit and Kochav Yaakov [actually, Tel Tziyon], another ultra-Orthodox settlement, according to Interior Ministry figures.
Demographic vision from this March:-
Jewish settlement of the West Bank could triple to one million people despite Western pressure to curb the growth of enclaves in occupied land, says a leader of the Israeli settlers' council.
"It's totally viable to envisage a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria," said Naftali Bennett, using biblical names for the West Bank, where 2.5 million Palestinians aspire to create their own state, along with 1.5 million in Gaza.
There is this demographic report which is explained here in "Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb".
All of the above would point to no reason for demographic despair.
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