Demographic threat a myth

An opinion from Ynet News 9/2/06 by Yoram Ettinger ....

The Jewish majority west of the Jordan River will remain strong

Here's an earthshaking fact: Now that Israel has pulled out of Gaza, there is a clear, firm Jewish majority in the territory west of the Jordan River. 67 percent, in fact. In contrast to popular notion, this majority is assured to continue well into the future, in light of a shrinking Arab population in Judea and Samaria (1. 8 percent), a rising Jewish population in Israel (2.1 percent), large scale Arab emigration since 1950 and Jewish aliya (immigration to Israel) that began in 1882.

Hamas' victory will spur on Arab emigration (especially amongst PA employees and their families), and growing anti-Semitism in France and the former Soviet Union will spur aliya (Jewish immigration).

False predictions
Israel's demographic establishment is based on predictions released by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics in 1997, according to which there are currently 2.4 million Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria. In reality, there are 1.4 million.

The Bureau claimed there would be a population explosion of some 170 percent in the 14 years between 1990-2004, from 1.5 million people according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics to 3.8 million according to the Palestinians, but not one demographer agreed.

How does one come up a million short? A new American-Israeli study presented at last month's Herzliya Conference by California researcher Bennet Zimmerman proves that the Palestinian predictions bore no semblance to the facts on the ground. For example:

• 325,000 Palestinians who reside abroad are counted in the 1997 statistics, according to the head of the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, February 26, 1998. This is similar to counting the 800,000 Israelis who live in the United States.

• 210,000 Jerusalem Arabs are counted twice – as "green line" Arabs and West Bank residents.

• 300,000 births never actually happened, as we see if we compare the Palestinian's 1997 prediction with subsequent birth records kept by the Palestinian health and education authorities.

• 236,000 Palestinians (total) were supposed to have moved to PA territory between 1997-2003 according to the Palestinian Bureau, but just 74,000 left the PA during that (310,000 difference).

• 105,000 Palestinians received blue Israeli identity cards in 1997, and they continue to be counted twice.

The Palestinian Election Committee says there are 760,000 eligible voters in Judea and Samaria, which points to 1.4 (not 2.4) million total residents. In other words, the ministries of health and education have documented a 70 percent exaggeration in the bureau of statistics prediction that forms the basis for Israel's demographic assessment.

Logical conclusions
How did a million Palestinians "disappear"?
Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, the Washington-based demography expert that appeared at the Herzliya Conference, praised the study: "The conclusions are logical and overwhelmingly convincing. This study caught the demographers sleeping on guard duty," he said. And so, the demographic establishment ignores the quick drop in natural growth in the third world, the Muslim world (1.9 children per woman in Iran), and the Arab world (2.9 children per woman in Egypt).

. . . . And so it turns out that the demographic knife is not really hanging over our heads. In 1900 Jews constituted just eight percent of the population west of the Jordan, in 1948 it was 48 percent, and today we are 60 percent. Without Gaza, the Jewish majority is stable at 67 percent within the "green line", Judea and Samaria.

Only Palestinian immigration to the West Bank – and from there over the "green line" – will upset the demographic scales. Fateful policy decisions must be based on facts, not on statistics provided by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, and certainly not on superficial assumptions about demography that bear no relation to reality.

Yoram Ettinger is a regular contributor to Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth