Dear Colleague:
What's the most important factor underlying the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in the Middle East? Land? Money? Strategic position? Or
birthrates?
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
25 August 2005
Vol. 7 / No. 33
Israel's Demographic Geopolitics
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
Few issues affect geopolitics more than the violent conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians. The suicidal implosion of Western
birthrates, including that of Israeli Jews, is one of those few. We
currently see the intersection of these two problems as Israel
unilaterally abandons her settlements in the Gaza Strip and part of the
West Bank in the absence of any concessions from the Palestinian side,
even in the absence of any serious attempt by the Palestinian Authority to
stop the Islamic terrorists so prevalent and celebrated among Palestinian
Arabs. Why has Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel
"Bulldozer" Sharon, who is often called the father of the settlements,
decided to abandon the "land for peace" formula and instead adopt "land
for nothing" now?
Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the one who cut a lasting peace deal
with Egypt, used to talk about offering Israeli citizenship to all
"residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip"-the occupied
territories-in the 1970s. He thought Israeli Jews would continue to
outnumber Palestinians, and could outvote the Arabs and maintain control
of a Greater Israel without depriving them of basic civil rights. On Dec.
28, 1977, Begin proposed, "A resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who asks
for Israeli citizenship will obtain it in compliance with the citizenship
law of the State of Israel. Residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who
freely choose Israeli citizenship will be eligible to vote, and be elected
to the Knesset, in accord with Israel's election law."
Now such an offer would be too risky. Some experts have predicted that
the number of Palestinians in Greater Israel will exceed the number of
Jews by 2015. Others think it could happen as early as 2010. Then,
Palestinians could call for a "one-state solution," saying that they want
to take up Begin's offer while knowing they would end up taking control of
this Greater Israel. (They couldn't do so immediately, since so many
Palestinians are so young and below voting age.) In fact,
then-Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia threatened to ask for one
state in January 2004 if a two-state solution could not be negotiated.
"We will go for a one-state solution," he asserted.
Israel's Haaretz newspaper estimates that Jews became a minoirty in
Greater Israel this very year of 2005. Perhaps not coinidentally, this is
the year that Israel is pulling out of Gaza and ridding herself of
approximately 1.3 million Palestinians. Given that no peace settlement
for a two-state solution with the Palestiains was anywhere near, Sharon
had two choices: Unilateral disengagment, or somehow deny the coming calls
for voting rights for the majority of people in Greater Israel. The
latter was untenable, so he chose the former.
How did Palestinians come to outnumber Jews despite massive immigration
into Israel from the former Soviet Union? And how come divesting herself
of Gaza has gained Israel only 20 years, according to a demographic expert
cited by AP on August 14?
Israel's low birthrate and the Palestinians' relatively normal one has led
to this major decision of unilateral withdrawal, one that affects not only
Israel and the Palestinians, but the entire Middle East and the entire
world. A specific territorial action with major local and geopolitical
consequences has been prompted by a disastrously low birthrate-just as low
birthrates in Western European nations have in part prompted them to
import millions of Muslim workers, leading to another situation having
enormous local and global consequences.
Sharon himself used to dismiss the demographic issue. Not anymore.
According to Haaretz Diplomatic Editor Aluf Benn in an August 14 article,
Sharon told a group of French Jews during his recent trip to Paris, "The
future of the Jewish people depends on the nature of Israel as a Jewish
and democratic state. In this spirit, we initiated the disengagement
plan.. That would secure the Jewish majority in the land of Israel."
Benn says that the demographic issue could become the next big one in
Israel, and could even drive her to offer bits of her own territory to the
Palestinian Authority in order to dump some of her most populous Arab
towns (1.2 million Arabs live within Israel proper). Israel might receive
in return pieces of the West Bank where her settlements lie. Predicts
Benn, "Once disengagement from the Gaza Strip is complete, this will
become the next frontier of Israeli politics."
The total fertility rate of women in Gaza averages 5.9 over the course of
her lifetime, according to the CIA World Factbook. Among Palestinians in
the West Bank, it's 4.4. Among Israeli Jews, it's 2.4, though Ben
Wattenberg in Fewer says it was 2.6 in 2002 and has been stable since
1990-but he also says the Muslim rate in Israel was 4.6. There are about
1.2 million Arabs in Israel, 1.3 million in Gaza, and 2.4 million in the
West Bank, or 4.9 million total in Greater Israel while there are 5.3
million Jews total (some estimate these numbers a little differently).
Jewish immigration into Israel has dropped to tiny numbers.
Different experts have slightly different numbers, but all agree:
Palestinians are out-reproducing Israeli Jews by a large margin.
Palestinians' relative immunity to contemporary anti-family and anti-life
dogmas has served them well.
It's now become commonplace for commentators to cite the demographic
aspect to the Gaza and West Bank pull-outs. Victor David Hansen wrote in
the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 26, 2005, "In Sharon's thinking, it no
longer made any sense to periodically send thousands of soldiers to Gaza
to protect less than 10,000 Israeli civilians abroad, when a demographic
time bomb of too few Jews was ticking inside Israel proper." Georgie Anne
Geyer wrote on Aug. 18, 2005, "This, to me at least, means that [Sharon]
may have actually given up his life-long vision of a 'Greater Israel.'.
Why would a man like Gen. Sharon so pare down his dreams? The answers are
found no longer in military might, but in demographic might."
As the late Yassir Arafat said, "The womb of the Arab woman is my best
weapon." But no one should blame Palestinians for having children; they
do what comes naturally. It's the self-inflicted refusal to nurture the
Israeli Jewish people that has been Arafat's best weapon.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
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