At this previous post, I related to the new article on demography in Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, that is, the state of Israel as well as the regions of Judea and Samaria. Written by Prof. Ian Lustick, it seeks to undermine the recent prognostications that the so-called "Demographic Threat", that a Jewish minority is the result of the continued administration of the territories, and for sure their incorporation into Israel proper.
I alerted some of the persons involved and one, Yaakov Faitelson, has sent me the following article as a first response.
I am proud to serve as a platform for the discussion of the issue.
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I will not respond on the same level
of the “quality” of Ian Lustick. He continues simply to use and to manipulate the
same sources such as Arnon Sofer, Sergio DellaPergola and others, despite
the fact that their demographic projections and estimates published during last
30 years had crashed to the dust.
Twenty-six years ago I was cited by Dan Petreanu in his article
"Demography: Men or Myth" published by Jerusalem Post in August
16, 1987: "But neither Arab population, says Faitelson, will become a
majority, because the decline in the Arab death rate in the administrated
territories will soon reach a plateau, whereas their birth rate will continue
to fall. Thus, their rate of natural increase will decline while that of the
Jews will increase slightly". And further: "Faitelson predicts that
the Israeli Arabs rate of increase will eventually reach that of the Jews -
today about 1.4 per cent - around the first decade of the next century,
followed about 10 years later by that of the Arabs in the territories".
The natural increase of the Jews in 2012 was 1.52% which was 14.3% higher than
in 1987 and 27.4% higher than in 2000.
The Arabs natural Increase was 2.19% which was 21% lower than in 1987, but 33.7% lower than in 2000. The number of the
Jewish Live Births was 125,492 in 2012, 77.2% higher than in 1987, while
there were 40,080 Arab Live Birth, 58.2%
higher than in 1987.
But here one must take a look at the dynamics of the demographic development:
the number of the Jewish Live births in 2012 was 36.5% higher than in 2000, while it was 1% lower for the Arabs. Actually, the number
of the Arab Live birth has stabilized at around 40,000 during all the past12 years. The Arab Baby Boomers of the 1960s are
about 50 years old already. It means that Arab Death rate started to grow,
accelerating it towards the average level of the Jewish Death rate. It will
sharply influence the Arab Natural increase rate making its decline even faster
in the coming years.
During the same period , the Jewish Natural Increase rate had
been stabilized for the last 45 years
and in 2012 it is almost the same, 1.52%, as it was in 1962 which was 1.55%.
Taking into consideration the continuous annual addition of immigrants to the
development of the Jewish Natural Increase will explain why the heralded “Demographic
Doomsday” never came about and , I claim,definitely will not come in the
future.
Taking in consideration the demographic development in Judea, Samaria and Gaza
Strip, I usually compare the estimates of the Palestinians themselves and
of the US Census Bureau.
It is clear for everyone, that all demographers agree that the Arab growth rate
is decreasing steadily. I believe that even Lustick had paid attention to such
well-known fact. Even while the US Census Bureau takes as their estimate
that the migration balance from the Judea, Samaria and Gaza strip as 0, it
still shows the decrease of the natural increase in Judea and Samaria from
3.01% in 2002 to 2.05 in 2012, 16.7% less in one decade. The picture is similar regarding the Gaza Strip -
14.5% less, from 3.58 to 3.06.
In comparison,, the natural increase of the Arabs of Israel declined by 26.8%,
while the Jewish natural increase rose by 27.5% during the same time period of 2002-2012.
The Head of Demographic Department of the ICBS, Dr. Ahmad Hleihel, had
admitted that the ICBS assumptions regarding demographic developments of the Jewish and
Arab citizens of Israel were mistaken. "Ma'ariv" journalist Rotem Sela
quoted him in his article published on 27.7. 2011: "We were mistaken
in assessing the increase in the Jewish fertility, and on the other hand, the
rate at which Arab fertility declined. I believe that the Arab population's fertility
will continue to fall in the direction of 2-3 children". This conclusion of Dr. Hleihel actually
confirmed the conclusions I made and published already 26 years ago.
Now regarding Aliya and emigration.
In the same Dan Petreanu article, Arnon Sofer was quoted saying as follows:
"So, without even considering future birth rates, to make up one
percentage point today we need an additional 170,000 Jews. Who among us really
expects that sort of Aliya in the near future".
As everyone can understand now, even Lustick, I can suppose, the facts were
quite different. The failure to properly assess the ongoing developments in the
Soviet Union of 1987 was a cause of huge surprise not only for Sofer...
Actually, the same failure of understanding of the current potential of Jewish
Aliya can be seen now, if the rising new wave of the anti-Semitism in
Europe, Latin America, etc., combined with the world economic crisis, is ignored
or downplayed.
Attempting to manipulate the numbers
of the Jewish emigrants from Israel is also a failure. According to the ICBS
the emigration rate from Israel is now on the lowest level in all 65 years of
the Jewish State existence.
Some remarks regarding Lustick's
argumentation as to my forecasts from
2007 for the possible growth of the Jewish population in Israel and the Jewish
Aliya to Israel till 2050 are in order.
I presumed that the natural increase will continue to be 1.27% and, together
with Aliya numbers, the annual increase
would have been 1.42%.
Lustick wrote that my assumption made in 2007 that there will be Aliya of
10,000 Jews annually till 2050 is not real. Let's see what really happened
during the years of 2007-2012.
The annual increase of the Jewish population was 1.83%, which was a 28.9% increase,
higher than my own assumption.
The total number of new immigrants
during this time period was about 86,000 or more than 14,300 annually. That
represents a figure 43% higher than my assumption.
In my paper published by the IZS I had predicted that the
Jewish population of Israel in 2012 will reach 5,878,820 people and the Arab population would be 1,614,415.
Actually, in 2012 there were 6,014.100 Jews (a 2.3% increase above that projection) and 1,648,400 Arabs (2.1% more
than what I projected). In any case, my mistake was just little bit higher than
2%, which is only a half of the 4% statistical error factor.
I will not relate to the facts about the increased Jewish
population. It appears to be more a moral problem for such persons like Lustick
than a demographic problem of the Jewish State. It is enough for me that Prof.
Sofer who only in 2002 talked about the demographic danger caused in State of
Israel by”Arabs, Russians and Moldavian prostitutes", has changed his
opinion and now declares that the members of the mixed families of the
repatriates from the Former Soviet Union are a part of the Zionist majority in
the State of Israel. It took him a lot of time and rivers of the young
soldiers’ blood spilled on defense for Israel to understand it.
However, also
Prof. Sergio DellaPergola has different approach now to the definition ‘who is
a Jew. As he had written in his paper, "Jewish Demographic Policies",
published by the Jewish People Policy Institute in 2011: "It seems that
ways must be found to include and ‘embrace’ this population within the Jewish
community, especially those who have integrated into the country, and whose
children are in the school system and are serving in the IDF". It couldn’t be better stated.
And finally, for such a short note,
let's now see what the Arab demographers, researches and journalists say when
they work for the international institutions and what they are publishing in Arabic. Here just some examples from many:
According to Mustafa Khawaja,Director of Jerusalem Statistical
Department, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics:
"The net balance of arrivals
and departures for the West Bank in the period 1967 to the present has been
consistently negative, with an average of about 10,000 leaving annually… the
main reason for migration by Palestinians relates to the economic factors
resulting from the political instability and the infighting between the
Palestinian parties" as quoted from his work published by the Robert
Shuman Centre for Advanced Studies, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI): European
University Institute, 2010.
Khaled Abu Toameh, "80,000 Palestinians emigrated from territories
since beginning of year (a rise of 50 percent compared to last year), a senior
Palestinian Authority official said Monday. The official, who
asked not to be named, told The Jerusalem Post another 50,000 Palestinians are
now trying to leave through the Jordan River bridges and the Rafah border
crossing". Jerusalem Post, Aug. 26,
2002.
The Egyptian journalist
Bissan Edwan, published on April 16, 2004 the article in Arabic "Demographic
bomb in Israel and the self-deception" this data:
"According to Jordan statistics, at least 150 thousand Palestinians left
the West Bank during the intifada years from 2000 to 2002 and did not
return".
Bissan Edwan comes to the
conclusion that the economic situation in the Palestinian Authority causes the
possibility of new waves of large emigration as it had happened during the
Intifada. Bissan Edwan writes that the demographic factor will play a limited
and marginal role in the future of the conflict. She mentions that the Jewish
net migration was able to maintain a significant Jewish majority of the
population in Israel and that the results of the higher Palestinian natural
increase vanish because of the high rates of emigration, the increasing mortality
and the successful programs of birth control that help lowering Palestinian
fertility rates.
There are a lot of facts
that I bring in my papers to establish my case based on the international
official Data bases and the researches of the Arab and other demographers,
including the PCBS. It is difficult to somebody who isn't looking for truth to
follow it. But this is an acknowledged fact by every objective researcher that
the Arab and Muslim fertility is fast decreasing, not only in the Land of
Israel, but across the countries in the Middle East. Another fact is
that Jewish fertility is stabilized with some significant increase (temporarily,
in my opinion, until, that is, the large part of the Jewish population will be
finally absorbed in the Israeli nation) during the 2 last decades. The Arab TFR
in Judea and Samaria is already equal to the Jews in general, the Israeli Arabs
TFR is decreasing towards convergence with Jewish and even the Arabs of Gaza
Strip are on their way to the same direction.
It needs a higher moral
level and integrity to be able to accept these facts than Prof. Lustick owns.