February 18, 2014
By KARIN LAUB and DAN PERRY
Source: Yahoo News
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) —
Palestinian construction worker Nael Yassin and his wife, Wafa, are the
proud parents of a new baby girl — the fifth child for the couple in
their early 30s.
Such fecundity
is usually a private affair, but in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a
broader issue is in play. A race for "demographic" prominence — and the
fact that Israel may be losing it — has become critical to the current
peace effort led by John Kerry.
The
U.S. secretary of state himself has started warning Israel that it
stands to become a binational state unless it ends the occupation of the
lands it captured in the 1967 war. Kerry, who is expected to present a
framework for a deal soon, said last month that failure "will make it
impossible to preserve (Israel's) future as a democratic Jewish state."
The idea — emphasized as never before — is being listened to in Israel.
In
a speech Monday, Finance Minister Yair Lapid presented the issue as the
main reason Kerry must succeed: "Every moment we don't separate from
the Palestinians is a clear threat to the existence of Israel as a
Jewish state."
The
"demographic issue" is focusing Israeli minds in a way that moral
arguments against occupation have not, particularly when they are
weighed against forgoing the West Bank's strategic hinterland and
Jerusalem with its unrivaled religious and historic sites.
Some
experts are predicting Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel plus the
areas it captured in 1967 — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east
Jerusalem.
Continued
occupation, they say, would force Israel into a hard choice: Formalize
Jewish minority rule over disenfranchised Palestinians — or give them
the right to vote and end the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland in
historic Palestine.
In this
context, those arguing for a pullout on these terms are essentially
trying to save Israel as a "Jewish state" — where the degree of
Jewishness is a function of the size of the majority.
In a century
of Arab-Jewish conflict, the population balance shifted because of
Jewish immigration and war-driven displacement of Arabs.
About
750,000 people lived in historic Palestine at the beginning of British
rule after World War I, including 78 percent Muslims, 11 percent Jews
and 10 percent Christians, said Joseph Chamie, former head of the U.N.
Population Division. The Christians and Muslims were generally both
Arabs.
In 1947, the United
Nations voted to end British rule and partition Palestine into
"independent Arab and Jewish states." At that time the population of 1.8
million was 60 percent Muslims, 31 percent Jews and 8 percent
Christians.
In the war that
followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled
from what became Israel, and many Jews then immigrated to the new
country. Jews made up 87 percent of Israel's population in 1950, Chamie
said.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were seized by Jordan and
Egypt, respectively — but when Israel captured those areas in 1967, the
demographic equation changed again.
Currently,
just over 12 million people live in the combined territory, according
to figures from the Israeli and Palestinian statistics bureaus.
Israel's
population stood at some 8.1 million in 2013, said Pnina Zadka of
Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. That includes West Bank settlers,
Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, captured in 1967
from Syria. The figure breaks down to 6.1 million Jews, or roughly 75
percent, and 1.68 million Arabs, or 21 percent, she said.
The
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics put the number of Palestinians
in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem last year at just over 4.4
million.
Subtracting some
300,000 Palestinians in east Jerusalem from the Palestinian bureau's
total because Israel already counted them, the result would still
indicate near-parity in the Holy Land — 6.1 million Jews and close to
5.8 million Arabs, including those with Israeli citizenship.
Without
a partition deal, Jews will eventually become a minority because of
higher Arab population growth, said demographer Sergio Della Pergola of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Arnon Soffer, a geographer at
Haifa University.
Some Israelis would like to exclude Gaza from
the count, since Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005 and it is
now controlled by the Hamas militant group. But Palestinians see it as
an integral part of Palestine and argue that Israel's sea blockade and
continued control of airspace mean the occupation continues in another
form.
If Gaza residents are
removed from the count, then Jews would make up 61 percent of the
population in Israel and the West Bank, but would still end up as a
minority in 20 to 25 years, Della Pergola said.
In
Israel itself, the higher Arab and lower Jewish growth rates will
converge in about a generation, said Zadka of the Israeli statistics
bureau.
So if Israel gives up most of the West Bank, it can assure a Jewish majority at home "for eternity," Soffer said.
On the other hand, Della Pergola said, keeping the West Bank means "you must give up on a Jewish state."
Several
former right-wing Israeli politicians, most prominently prime ministers
Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, seem to have come to the same conclusion
despite past support for the occupation. Sharon oversaw Israel's pullout
from Gaza while Olmert pursued a partition deal in talks with
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that broke down in 2008.
Current
premier Benjamin Netanyahu, long a hard-liner, now seems to be at least
a partial convert as well. He speaks of a two-state solution and vows
to prevent a binational state.
But
his Likud Party still formally opposes a Palestinian state and his
messages can appear halfhearted and mixed. Palestinians especially
distrust him, pointing to his refusal to freeze the settlement effort
that has complicated partition by placing 550,000 Israelis on occupied
land.
Much of Israel's current
thinking involves how to keep as much as possible of the West Bank — to
minimize the number of settlers that will have to be moved — while at
the same time incorporating as few Palestinians as possible. The
Palestinians bristle at significant changes to the pre-1967 border.
Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman caused a stir in recent weeks by proposing
to swap parts Arab-populated parts of Israel proper for areas of the
West Bank with Jewish settlements.
Some on the Israeli right still argue that the demographic threat is overstated.
The
American-Israel Demographic Research Group, a private initiative led by
Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli consul in Texas, claims Palestinians
in the West Bank number only about 1.5 million — or about 1 million less
than the Palestinian count.
Ettinger's group alleges that two
Palestinian censuses, of 2007 and 1997, were flawed. He argued that in
1997, Palestinian demographers counted some 325,000 Palestinian emigres
and presumed large-scale immigration that didn't materialize.
Ola
Awad, the chief Palestinian demographer, said the 2007 census was based
on a detailed head count, with advice from the U.N. and Norway. Anders
Thomsen of the U.N. Population Fund backed her up, saying the census was
"done according to international standards," with support by his and
other U.N. agencies.
Yacov Faitelson, a member of Ettinger's
group, also argued that Arab fertility is falling in much of the region
while Jewish fertility — already exceptionally high for a developed
country with three children per woman — is on the upswing.
Della
Pergola said he factored declining Arab fertility rates into his
forecasts, and charged that his critics ignore that Palestinian society
is younger, with more people of reproductive age.
The Yassins, who
live in the Qalandiya refugee camp north of Jerusalem, illustrate some
of those trends. Like others in their generation, they tend to have
smaller families than their parents, but still have more children, on
average, than Jewish couples.
Nael Yassin, 34, who was one of
seven siblings, said he hopes baby Rahaf will be his last. At his wife's
bedside, he objected to the idea of a demographic race, calling it
unsustainable.
"Where would everyone go?" he said.
___
Perry reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed reporting.
