Ignore the Cassandras. Israel is not facing a potential Arab demographic time bomb.
In 2017, Israel is the only advanced economy and Western democracy endowed with a relatively high fertility rate, which facilitates further economic growth with no reliance on migrant labor.
Moreover, Israel’s thriving demography provides for bolstered national security (larger classes of recruits) and a more confident foreign policy.
In contrast to conventional demographic wisdom, Israel is not facing a potential Arab demographic time bomb. In fact, the Jewish State benefits from a robust Jewish demographic tailwind.
At the outset of 2017, for the first time – and in defiance of projections made by Israel’s demographic establishment since the early 1940s – Israel’s Jewish fertility rate (3.16 births per woman) exceeds Israel’s Arab rate of fertility (3.11). Actually, in 2017, Israel’s fertility rate is higher than most Arab countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia – 2.1 births per woman, Kuwait – 2.4, Syria – 2.5, Morocco – 2.1, etc.).
The Westernization of the Arab fertility rate has also been in effect in Judea and Samaria: from 5 births per Arab woman in 2000 to about 3 in 2016; from a median age of 17 in 2000 to 21 in 2017.
The substantial, systematic Westernization of Arab fertility – from 9.5 births per woman in 1960 to 3.11 in 2016 – has been a derivative of the accelerated integration of Israeli Arabs into modernity, in general, and the enhanced status of Israel’s Arab women, in particular.
For example – as it is among the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, whose fertility rate is similar – almost all Israeli Arab girls complete high school, and are increasingly enrolling in colleges and universities, improving their status within their own communities. This process has expanded their use of contraceptives, delaying wedding-age and reproduction, which used to start at the age of 15-16, to the age of 20 year old and older.
In addition, Arab women are increasingly integrated into Israel’s employment market, becoming more career and social-oriented, which terminates their reproductive process at the age of 45, rather than 50-55 as it used to be. Furthermore, an intensified urbanization process has shifted an increasing number of Israeli Arabs from self-reliant agricultural to urban jobs, and from private rural homes to urban apartments, which has reduced the need for – and the convenience of raising– many children.
At the same time, since 1995, there has been an unprecedented rise in the rate of Jewish fertility – especially in the secular sector – resulting from a relatively-high level optimism, patriotism, attachment to national roots and collective/communal responsibility.
From 80,400 Jewish births in 1995, the number surged to 139,400 in 2016, while the annual number of Arab births remained stable at around 41,000. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the 73% rise in the number of Jewish births took place despite the mild decline of haredi sector fertility (due to expanded integration into the employment market, higher learning and the military) and the stabilized modern-orthodox fertility, but due to the rising fertility of the secular Jewish sector.
The unprecedented tailwind behind Israel’s burgeoning Jewish demography is documented by the proportion of Jewish births in the country: 77% of total births in 2016, compared with 69% in 1995. Also, in 2016, there were 3.2 Jewish births per Arab birth, compared to 2.2 births in 1995.
Moreover, while Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) persists in higher numbers than forecasted by Israel’s demographic establishment (26,000 in 2016), it has a dramatically higher potential, which obliges Israel to reintroduce the pro-active Aliyah policy – in France, throughout Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, etc. – as it was prior to the Aliyah of one million Jews from the former USSR during the 1990s.
A September 7, 2006 World Bank study documented a 32% inflated number of births claimed by the Palestinian Authority.
Simultaneously, an annual Arab net-emigration has been documented, persistently, from Judea and Samaria (about 20,000, annually, in recent years), while the annual net-number of Israeli emigrants (staying abroad for over a year) – total departures minus total returnees – has decreased substantially: from 14,200 in 1990 to 8,200 in 2015. At the same time, the population of Israel almost doubled from 4.5MN in 1990 to 8.4MN in 2015.
In 2017, the total number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is 1.8MN, not 3MN as claimed by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The latter includes in its count over 400,000 Palestinians who have been away for over a year; over 300,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who are doubly-counted (by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority); and 100,000 Palestinians who married Israeli Arabs and received Israeli ID cards, who are also doubly-counted.
Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority claims zero net-migration, ignoring the annual net-emigration (from Judea & Samaria) of 20,000 Arabs in recent years, and the systematic net-emigration since 1950, which has been on the rise since the year 2000. A September 7, 2006 World Bank study documented a 32% inflated number of births claimed by the Palestinian Authority.
In March 1898, the leading Jewish demographer and historian, Simon Dubnov, ridiculed the Zionist vision, claiming that by 1998 there will be no more than 500,000 Jews in the Land of Israel….
In October 1944, the founder of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Prof. Roberto Bachi, contended that under the best-case-scenario, in 2001, there will be 2.3MN Jews in the Land of Israel, a 34% minority….
However, in 2017, in defiance of demographic conventional “wisdom,” there are 6.8MN Jews in the Land of Israel (including Judea and Samaria), a 66% majority, benefitting from a robust demographic tailwind.
@ Edgar G.:
Some Bedouin by their simple manner of “divorce”, have had as many as 18-20 wives. Ibn Saud had 32. When I travelled from Karmiel to Akko or Haifa I passed the house of an Arab who had 26 children. I wonder did they drop from the sky….. How could he have got them in monogamous Israel. …..?????
8 successive sets of triplets and just one set of twins…….maybe….???
@ watsa46:
The Bedouin are polygamous so by natural causes they spread out and take over land they are not entitled to. The govt. seems to be doing nothing about it the FIRST thing would be to exact heavy penalties for polygamy. because in another 50 years there will be so many Bedouin at the rate they’re increasing, that combined with the other Israeli Arabs and YESHA Arabs, will be a HUGE minority close in numbers to the Jews, and impossible to manage as they will undoubtedly be radical and turn to terrorism. Their religion INSISTS on it.
Jut look at the pusillanimity of the Jews…… For 70 years the muzzeins have been blaring out with loudspeakers at impossible hours waking everyone up from sleep. The Israelis are only now feebly trying to do something about it.
The imams have been preaching donner und blitzen against the Jew, and they are afraid to stop them, inciting terrorist obscenities to be carried out; whole young families have been wiped out by these monsters. We own the Temple Mount, and the Jews pass laws forbidding any Jew from praying or even moving his lips whilst they restrict ingress to Jews so ridiculously.
12 gates are for Moslems and one…yes ONE…strictly policed and minimally allowed to be used, for all others.
The Jew, in his own Land is reverting to his ghetto nature. Cowardice and subservience to both the EU, Britain and the US. To anyone in fact.
They are afraid to completely wipe out Hamas when they have them helpless, the same with Hezbollah when they so suddenly withdrew from Lebanon after so many young lives had been sacrificed uselessly.
Too busy basking in the glory of being “The Startup Nation”….and angling for invitations to tea on the White House lawn. But they remind me more of that old shanty “The Wreck Of The Nancy Lee”….
Better known as ….”He Played The Ukulele As The Ship Went Down”.
But as Sherman stated, they are expanding their control over lands.
I’m glad that someone is telling the truth at last. The demographic advantage for Jews has just begun, 2017 is the first year that the ratio has exceeded the Arabs. And will it continue…??? who knows, and then will the Arabs start again to bear more children. …? who knows.
It seemed to me right from the beginning to be more euphoric than factual.
Is Ettinger forgetting about the Bedouin, once only in the Negev but now all over the country, including the Galil. They were about 8,000 in 1948, and they,being nomadic happened to be there at that time. A few months earlier there were many more, and these just happened to have been caught there.
But TODAY, there must be about 350-400,000 Bedouin in Israel. The are Black “Hebrews” are also polygamous….;, from a hundred or so in the 70s, there are now literally thousands. They arrived on tourist visas, and then refused to leave, just refused, and the Israelis after years of trying to deport them, afraid of being labelled racist, caved in and gave them residence., then citizenship.