At the end of the War of Independence, after the expulsion and flight of some 700,000 Arabs, the population of Israel consisted of 82 percent Jews and 18 percent Arabs. In 2003, 54 years and almost 3 million immigrants later, the Central Bureau of Statistics' official figures indicated a similar Jewish-Arab ratio (81 percent Jews, 19 percent Arabs), with the figure for Jews including non-Jewish immigrants.
 |
Advertisement |
|
In other words, the great immigration effort, including the dramatic influxes of immigrants in the early fifties and in the 1990s, served only to "balance out" the growth of the Arab population (most of it due to natural increase, and the rest achieved through family unification, the marriage of Arab citizens to foreign nationals and the annexation of East Jerusalem). The result was that the Jewish-Arab ratio remained the same.
If we assume that the proportion of Jews in the population is, in fact, even lower (because the figures do not reflect Palestinians residing in Israel illegally) and that massive immigration is no longer very likely, it becomes clear why more and more demographic experts and Jewish politicians see the question of a "Jewish majority" in Israel as a central issue, even within the 1967 borders.
Professor Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer from the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry, is among the more moderate members of his profession. His style is not apocalyptic, and his predictions tend to be highly cautious (some experts, as will be shown later, consider them too cautious). And yet even he is worried. As he explains, a demographic balance is made up of three components: immigration, mortality and birth.
In immigration, the Jews have a clear advantage, but DellaPergola says this advantage is gradually diminishing. According to his forecasts, the first decade of the 21st century will bring to Israel a net immigration increase (the number of arriving immigrants minus the number of departing ones) of only 105,000 people. In the second decade the number will drop further, to 49,000, and in the third decade it will fall to 28,000. According to this prediction, even where immigration is concerned, Jews are not certain to maintain their edge.
A research project recently conducted at the Israel Defense Forces National Defense College shows that the number of Palestinians that have entered sovereign Israel in the decade since the Oslo Accords (whether illegally or through legal marriages and family unification) is around 240,000. Family unification permits have been almost entirely suspended since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, but Palestinian immigration to East Jerusalem has increased, reaching 70,000-100,000 people during this period, the researchers estimate.
Where mortality is concerned, the Arab population is worse off than the Jewish sector. The rate of infant mortality among Jews is five deaths for every 1,000 births (0.5 percent), while in the Arab sector it is double - 10 for every 1,000 births. Demographers agree that these numbers are inconsequential for long-term demographic processes (they share the same view of the small differences in life expectancy between the two sectors).
In the third area, birth, the Arab population enjoys a clear-cut advantage. While the average birth rate for a Jewish woman is 2.6 births, for an Arab woman it is 4.6. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab sector recorded 30 percent of all births in the country in 2002.
Stabilizing fertility trends
The picture comes into greater focus when fertility trends since the establishment of the state are broken down according to the different non-Jewish sectors. According to the CBS, birth rates in the Jewish sector have remained very stable: from 3.5 births at the establishment of the state, the average rate has slowly and quietly dropped to the current 2.6 births (with a brief leap to four births in the early 1950s, when large Jewish families arrived from the Muslim countries).
Fertility trends in the non-Jewish sectors, by contrast, have undergone dramatic shifts. When the state was established, the average birth rate among Muslims was eight births per woman. In the sixties the figure leaped to 10 births; today it stands at 4.6 births. The Druze population began with an average of seven births per woman; the figure rose to eight in the sixties and is now 8.2 per woman. Only the Christians, who began with an average rate of 4.5 births, now fall below the Jewish average with 2.3 births per woman.
This trend of a rise followed by a drop is therefore found in all of the groups, and most markedly among the non-Jews. The demographers attribute it to the diverse effects of the modernization process. In the short term, modernization boosts fertility (mostly thanks to improved health care), but in the long run its various aspects - the move into cities and cramped apartments, women's employment outside the home, the desire for more disposable income - causes a significant drop in birth rates.
In both the Jewish and the Muslim case, by the way, the birth rate is high relative to the standard of living. DellaPergola compared the Israeli gross domestic product figures to those of countries with similar fertility levels. He found that the fertility level of Israel's Jews, a population with an average annual per capita GDP of $17,000, exists elsewhere in the world only in countries with an annual average per capita GDP of $3,200 (like Albania and Uzbekistan). The fertility level of Israel's Muslims, whose per capita GDP is about $8,000 a year, is common to countries whose per capita GDP is about $760 (like Kenya and Sudan).
From this DellaPergola concludes that factors other than the standard of living shape Israel's fertility levels - primarily, he claims, "the national conflict, which pushes both groups to increase birth rates." DellaPergola even identifies a kind of vicious cycle: the conflict pushes up birth rates, and the rise in fertility in turn amplifies the conflict. Or, in another paradoxical formulation, "the intense concern with demographics boosts fertility."
The big question is, of course, whether the current stabilization is itself stable or liable to change in the future. DellaPergola has constructed a prediction made up of three possibilities: the maximum, the minimum and a real estimate. The maximal prediction is that the Arab sector will maintain its current fertility level; in other words, DellaPergola is not entertaining the possibility of a further hike. The minimal assessment, which he himself dismisses as untenable, is an immediate drop in the Arab fertility level to match Jewish fertility. His "real" estimate is that the slow drop in the Arab fertility level will continue, while Jewish fertility will remain stable, until the two finally even out in 2050 at an average 2.6 births per woman.
DellaPergola says that his estimate is based on the assumption that "eventually the Jewish majority will serve as a model for the Arab population, albeit through a slow process." In any case, until that happens, he believes that the Arab minority (including the Druze) will continue to grow and will amount to 26 percent of the Israeli population in 2050. In 2020, he estimates, Arabs in Israel will form 23 percent of the population - a figure supported by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Soffer's warnings
Some demographic experts do not agree with DellaPergola's assumptions. Foremost among them is Professor Arnon Soffer, Chair of Geostrategy at Haifa University. Soffer has for many years been associated with the warnings against the Arab "demographic problem."
He disagrees with DellaPergola both about the current figures and about future trends, claiming that his colleague's reliance on official Population Registry figures makes his data incomplete. In actuality, he claims, the Israeli population also includes Palestinians residing in the country illegally (he estimates their number in 2002 reached some 220,000), as well as foreign laborers (about 300,000, in his estimate). When this data is figured into the analysis, the breakdown of the Israeli population is as follows: 72 percent Jews, 3 percent non-Jewish immigrants, 4 percent foreign laborers, 19 percent Arabs and 2 percent Druze (Soffer distinguishes the Druze from the Arabs because the former, unlike the latter, perform compulsory military service).
As for the future, Soffer does not believe in forecasts exceeding a range of 20 years, and therefore will only talk about what may happen until 2020. In this period, he believes, the real estimate is more or less based on the current fertility trends. According to these trends, in 2020 the Israeli population (which he claims will number some 10 million people) will consist of 64 percent Jews, 4 percent non-Jewish immigrants, 5 percent foreign laborers, 25 percent Arabs and 2 percent Druze.
Dr. Yitzhak Ravid is an economist who formerly headed the center for military studies at the Armaments Development Authority (Rafael) and in recent years has come to specialize in demographics. He accepts Soffer's basic assumptions, although his predictions fall closer to those of DellaPergola. His forecast for the Israeli population in 2020 is 67 percent Jews, 6 percent non-Jewish immigrants, 4 percent foreign laborers, 21 percent Arabs and 2 percent Druze (he also distinguishes between Druze and Arabs, for the same reason as Soffer).
To produce more accurate estimates about fertility trends, demographers strive for a detailed breakdown of Israel's Muslim society (Muslims account for over 80 percent of the Arab sector). As it turns out, there are distinct differences not only between Muslims and Christians, but within the Muslim population itself. In northern Israel the average birth rate for Muslim women is 3.9; in the Jerusalem district - 4.3; in the central region - 4.9; and in the south (whose Muslims are mostly Bedouin) the figure leaps to an average of nine births per woman - the highest in the world (higher than in the Gaza Strip).
Soffer, in colorful language, is happy to attribute the dramatic gap between north and south to "my university, Haifa University. The fact that so many Arabs from northern Israel come to study here, including Muslim women, creates the low birth rates. If that is the result, I don't mind being called 'the PLO's university' a thousand times over. To me, involving Arabs in the university at Haifa is the ultimate Zionist act."
Ravid attributes the high Bedouin birth rate to "the rare combination of Third World birth norms and the health care of a developed Western country." He adds that "the state's child allowances are set according to the needs of a Western population. But because children are much less expensive to raise in the Bedouin villages, the allowances become additional income for the family and an incentive to procreate."
The Islamic question
A separate issue is the turn to orthodox religion within Israel's Muslim society in the last few years. Here the experts differ. Ravid considers the trend to be of no real consequence, and he cites Iran as proof: "Iran is considered to be fanatic in its religious views, and yet its government, with the backing and support of religious officials, is encouraging family planning and lower birth rates. This is preached at the mosques themselves - so much so that Iran is now, I think, the most advanced country in the Middle East in terms of its socioeconomic thought."
According to data Ravid has collected, Iran's natural increase is now about 1.5 percent a year - only slightly higher than that of Jewish Israel. He also does not foresee a change in Muslim fertility trends in Israel: "In my opinion, they have simply reached what for them is an optimal balance between the desired number of children and the family's ability [to raise them]; hence the stable figures."
DellaPergola, by contrast, thinks that the Islamic factor is significant. He does not believe that norms of Islamic identity in Iran can be applied to Israel, where Islamic identity is tied up with the conflict between Arabs and Jews. This is one of the reasons he suggests for the difference in fertility levels between Muslims in northern and central Israel (the Bedouin are a different story, in part because Bedouin men take several wives, leading to a rise in fertility). Nevertheless, he does find in the Iranian model support for his estimate that the Israeli Muslim fertility level could eventually equal that of the Jewish sector. "In my opinion, in the long term modernization will triumph over Muslim fundamentalism."
Dr. Rassem Khamaisi, a lecturer in geography at Haifa University and an urban planner from the Galilee village of Kafr Kana, has a somewhat different view of the situation. He thinks that the main reason for the stable Muslim fertility level is not religion, but a general conservatism. "It takes time for the population to adjust to changes in its lifestyle and for these changes to affect birth patterns. In the long term, I believe that Muslim fertility will be similar to that of the Jews, although not entirely identical."
These analyses yield further refinement of the factors that might influence the demographic balance in the long run. DellaPergola and Soffer agree that the central factor is the level of modernization and education within Arab society. DellaPergola stresses the importance of encouraging procreation, "since it is no longer simple to rely on immigration." But how can the state ensure that its birth incentives motivate the Jewish sector and not the Arab one?
According to DellaPergola, the answer lies in the size of family the state wants to encourage. "If the incentives are not given to large families, but actually for the third and fourth children, this will affect mainly Jewish families, because they consider that to be the optimal size, and because the average Arab family already has four or more children." Bedouin fertility, he says, might be affected by two factors: "Accelerating the urbanization and modernization processes - mainly improving the status of Bedouin women - and enforcing Israel's monogamy laws" - that is, the legal interdiction against polygamy.
Soffer, by contrast, stresses the importance of the political process. As a leading strategist of the unilateral disengagement policy (mainly for demographic reasons), he sees separation as a major variable that will affect the demographic balance. The policy, he argues, should include parting with East Jerusalem, "except for the Holy Basin, which alone has historic importance for us." Moreover, he believes that disengagement and building the separation fence will have an indirect effect on the demographic picture. "It will not only prevent West Bank and Gaza Arabs from being included in our demographic balance, and greatly reduce the entrance of Palestinians from the territories into Israel; building the fence is expected to have a favorable effect on both security and the economy, and this in turn will make Israel more appealing to potential immigrants, especially among the threatened Jews of France."
Even DellaPergola, given to low-key predictions, estimates that by 2050 Israel's Arab sector may grow to nearly 30 percent of the population, "and although the Jewish majority remains stable with such a ratio, such numbers are more typical of a binational state, with all that the term implies. When those are the numbers, the minority no longer settles for individual civil rights, but demands a collective expression. Cyprus, for example, broke up when the Turks amounted to only 18 percent of the population."
This is why he does not hesitate to urge radical political steps, such as "swapping heavily populated areas - annexing the Jewish population clusters in the West Bank, in exchange for annexing to the Palestinian Authority areas with a dense Arab population, especially if they are already adjacent to the PA.
|
