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An exploding birthrate means that Arabs will outnumber Jews in Greater Israel next year. How long can Israel continue to rule a "minority" population larger than its Jewish one?
Dec 19, 2001 | Just when the fear of roadside ambushes and suicide bombings is crippling daily life here and the security establishment forecasts more Palestinian attacks in the near future, an Israeli demographer shows up with more bad news: Even without war, in a few decades there may be no Israel to speak of.
In 2020, Jews will be a distinct minority in what they call "Greater Israel," the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing both the internationally recognized state of Israel and the occupied territories, comprising the West Bank and Gaza. According to recent predictions, Arabs will form 58 percent of the total population, up from 49.5 percent today. In Israel proper, Jews will remain a majority but their percentage will drop from 73 percent today to 68 percent in two decades. Counter-terrorism and military raids may work to stave off short-term Palestinian threats, but the demographic equation puts in doubt the survival of the entire Zionist enterprise -- particularly if Israel holds on to the occupied territories.
"If we continue with the status quo, with no decision-making, we have only another 15 years," warned Arnon Soffer, the author of a report on Israeli demography that made a big splash this summer. "If we talk about Greater Israel, we're a minority from this year on."
Today, the numbers of Jews and non-Jews (including Asian and Eastern European workers) are running neck and neck, at just under 5 million each. But the difference in fertility rates between Arabs and Jews is about to topple that precarious balance. While the average Jewish Israeli woman has 2.5 children in her lifetime, her Muslim Arab counterpart in Israel and the West Bank has five children, and in Gaza, one of the most densely populated strips of land in the world, a woman typically has seven. (The fertility rate of Christian Arabs is similar to that of Jews.)
"There is something hateful in counting heads and considering them a threat," said Avishai Margalit, an Israeli political philosopher, in a phone interview recently. "But the reality is that we are now in a tribal war, so you count who's on your side and who's against you."
In the ongoing competition between the Arab and Jewish national movements, the number of births, arrivals and departures may matter more than the number of people killed in skirmishes and terrorist attacks. Jewish immigration is down by roughly 28 percent compared to last year. This is partly because of insecurity created by the intifada and partly because in preceding years, years of economic distress in Russia, immigration was unusually high, according to the Jewish Agency. Unless a new wave of anti-Semitism dislodges Jews in Europe and in America, immigration will dry up almost entirely because the Jewish population abroad is becoming more scarce in countries like Russia, and generally older and more assimilated than in the past.
At the same time, a quiet Palestinian exodus is under way, as families with connections abroad and enough pocket money leave to seek safety and work overseas. But the number of departing Arabs is not high enough to assuage Israeli fears of a demographic takeover. Palestinians may be fleeing, but in the long run, the wealthiest and brightest Israelis will leave too, predicts Soffer. A veteran demographer at Israel's Haifa University, Soffer cites the general deterioration of life in Israel, which includes the growth of relatively poor, anti-Zionist sectors of society (ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs will form 50 percent of the population in 2020), the worsening of daily violence, economic depression, and ethnic strife. His predictions are based on the example of Jerusalem, which young professional Israelis are deserting for all those same reasons: too many religious people, too many Arabs, too many bombs and too few jobs.
And in the Holy Land's maternity wards, Jews will be outpaced. "Time is running out!" warned Soffer, a spry 66-year-old who relishes his position as the nation's Cassandra.
The Israeli obsession with demographic numbers is not new. The 19th century ideology known as Zionism aimed to provide a nation-state for the Jews -- a country where Jews, being a majority, would feel safer than as a scattered, often-persecuted people in the Diaspora. "Population size was critical to the Zionist enterprise," said Calvin Goldscheider, who holds a joint appointment as professor of sociology and professor of Judaic studies at Brown University. "They saw strength in numbers. They could only do certain things if they were numerous, and they were concerned about how many Arabs there were. British policy [during the Mandate] was to control the relative proportions of Jews and Arabs, but Jews objected to this because it would mean they would be a permanent minority."
The United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947 and the subsequent War of Independence changed that. A large piece of Mandatory Palestine became a Jewish-dominated state, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who either lost their land and homes and became refugees in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab states, or were relegated to an inferior class of citizenship and became known as Israeli Arabs. Although Israel, striving to be both Jewish and democratic, gave the Israeli Arabs voting rights and required that they pay taxes, they were systematically denied equal access to land, jobs and education -- a situation that continues to this day.
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