The Politics of Palestinian Demography
by Yakov Faitelson
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009, pp.
51-59
http://www.meforum.org/2124/the-politics-of-palestinian-demography
With every generation, it seems, a new demographic panic
strikes Israel. Opening the Israeli Knesset (parliament) on October 8,
2007, after the Jewish New Year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of "a
demographic battle, drowned in blood and tears," if Israel did not make
territorial concessions.[1] As a new
administration in Washington seeks to revive the peace process, the
demographic question has again moved front and center. Citing Israel's
eroding demographic position, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen
urged Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton to try "tough love" to
force Israeli concessions.[2]
Proponents of the argument that demography mandates concessions might be
sincere, but they get the science wrong. Not only does demography not show
an imminent Jewish minority in Israel, but even a cursory look at
Palestinian numbers shows just how false and politically motivated recent
Palestinian surveys are.
On February 9, 2008, Luay Shabaneh, the new president of the
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), published the results of
a December 2007 Palestinian Authority population census.[3] According to the new data, since 1997, the Arab
population has increased to 1,460,000 in the Gaza Strip and 2,300,000 in
the West Bank (including 208,000 in East Jerusalem) to a total of
3,760,000 people—an increase of 30 percent in one decade. East Jerusalem
is under Israel's administration, but the Palestinian Authority
nevertheless counts its Arab population as part of the territory it
administers. Thus, the East Jerusalem Arabs are double-counted: once as
part of the Arab population of Israel, and again as a part of the
population of the Palestinian Authority.
The 30 percent population increase again caused renewed
demographic panic in Israel. According to a BBC news report, Israeli prime
minister Ehud Olmert said that failure to negotiate a two-state solution
with the Palestinians would bring the end of the State of Israel.[4]
But unlike what had happened during previous demographic
panics, Israeli experts began to raise serious questions about the
accuracy of the census. Such questions had been a long time in coming:
Most of the middle- and long-term demographic forecasts for Israel, the
West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—formulated by demographers over the last 110
years—have turned out to be unsound, often dramatically so. This is due to
the fact that long-term military, political, economic, and social changes
in the region particularly, and in the world in general, cannot be
accurately predicted; what is presented with a patina of scientific
legitimacy is often simply someone's best guess. Added to this problem is
a more troublesome one: Population statistics and birth rates play such an
important role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from the way that
foreign aid is allocated to Israel's decision to hold or relinquish
territory—that those attempting to manipulate the perceptions of both the
public and policymakers are irresistibly drawn to the field.
Those who questioned the new Palestinian census were
correct: The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' demographic data
arrived at its data not through objective scientific inquiry but rather by
overstating the size of the Arab population residing in the territories
administered by the Palestinian Authority.
The History of Demographic Forecasts
In a March 1898 letter, the famous Jewish historian, Simon
Dubnow, criticized Zionist ideas, writing,
During seventeen years of tense work to encourage
substantial emigration, after the expense of vast means and with the
help of millions donated by Rothschild, we managed to place on the land
of Palestine only about 3,600 settlers, which makes up approximately 211
people per year. Let us allow that the Western Zionist committees will
work with significantly larger capitals and energy and will move to
Palestine not two hundred, but one thousand settlers annually … then in
a hundred years the Jewish population of Palestine will reach one
hundred thousand men. Let's increase this number five times and add to
this the natural increase and inflow of the industrial population to the
cities, then we shall receive about a half million Jews in Palestine
after one hundred years … Certainly, all of us treasure the hope to see
at the beginning of the twenty-first century about a half-million of our
brothers living in our ancient homeland, but can it solve the problem of
10 millions Jews, who are dispersed?[5]
In May 1948, only fifty years after Dubnow's projections,
the Jews in Palestine already numbered 649,600 people.
Such mistaken projections, however, have been the rule
rather than the exception. At the end of 1944, Roberto Bachi presented to
the Jewish National Council, the main institution of the Jewish community
during the British Mandate, a secret demographic report[6] that included four forecasts: optimistic and
pessimistic, and with Jewish immigration as a variable. Bachi based his
forecasts on the existing demographic data for 1938-42 and on estimates of
trends that could be accepted as reasonable. He assumed that Arab
fertility for the ensuing sixty years would continue to be very high
(seven children or more per woman) or that it would decrease only slightly
(six children per woman). He also assumed that Jewish fertility would
remain at about two children per woman but might increase slightly to
three children per woman. He also predicted that Jewish immigration might
bring about one million Jews to Israel during the five to fifteen years
starting from 1946.[7]
These estimates could not be treated as prophecy, wrote
Bachi, since the differences between reality and forecast increase as the
projected time period lengthens. According to Bachi's pessimistic
scenario, by 1971, the population of Palestine would include 2,467,000
Arabs and 604,000 Jews without Jewish immigration[8] or 1,695,000 Jews should there have been one million
Jewish immigrants.[9] According to
Bachi's more optimistic forecasts, the population of Palestine in the same
year could consist of 2,186,000 Arabs and 698,000 Jews without immigration
or 1,898,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants.
Fast-forward to 1971. Israel controlled the whole territory
of the former British Mandate in Palestine, and 2,662,000 Jews already
lived in Israel—about half a million more than in Bachi's most optimistic
projection. The Arab population stood at 1,460,000,[10] about one million fewer than he had predicted.
Then in 1972, Bachi predicted, as he had in 1956,[11] that immigration to Israel would stop as the Jews
of the West were indifferent and the Jews of the Soviet Union were forever
trapped.[12] Nevertheless, over the
next seven years, more than a quarter million Jews migrated to Israel.
His projections for 2001 were similarly off-base: According
to the pessimistic forecast, the population of Palestine in 2001 would
comprise 5,871,000 Arabs and 563,000 Jews without immigration or 1,580,000
Jews with a million Jewish immigrants. Following his optimistic forecast,
the population of Palestine in 2001 should have been 4,415,000 Arabs and
831,000 Jews without immigration or 2,258,000 Jews with a million Jewish
immigrants.
The reality was quite different. The Jewish population
reached 5,025,010, nine times more than his pessimistic projection, and
2.2 times more than his most optimistic forecast. When combined with the
immigrant population from the former Soviet Union, the total comprised
5,281,300 people.[13] The total Arab
population reached 3,570,000, some 1,300,000, or 39 percent less than
Bachi's projection for 2001.
Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics forecast in 1968 that,
by 1985, the Jewish population would increase to 2,923,000, and the Arab
population would rise to 49 percent of Israel's total population.[14] In reality, there were 3,517,200
Jews in 1985, representing 62.7 percent of the total population.
Amidst the 1987 Palestinian uprising against Israeli control
in the West Bank and Gaza, demographic predictions—no matter how
sloppy—became the stuff of headlines. In 1987, the Israeli newspaper
Yedi'ot Aharanot quoted Arnon Sofer's bombshell forecast: "In the year
2000, Israel will become non-Jewish."[15] The New York Times' Thomas Friedman picked up
Sofer's prediction and ran with it in an 1800-word, page one story.[16] Sofer claimed that by 2000 there
would be "4.2 million Jews versus 3.5 million non-Jews. The 3.5 million
Arabs would include: 1.2 million Israeli Arabs within the Green Line, one
million Arabs in the Gaza Strip, and between 1.1 and 1.5 million in the
West Bank."[17] Sofer's tally
indicated for 2000 a range of between 2.1 to 2.5 million Arabs in the
Palestinian territories.
Putting aside the fact that the figures did not justify the
headlines proclaiming a Jewish minority, Sofer actually miscalculated the
Arab population twice: First, by using the 1986 Central Bureau of
Statistics forecast made for 2002 for all Arabs—defined officially as
citizens and permanent residents of the State of Israel, including East
Jerusalem and the Golan Heights—as the Arab population of Israel only
"within the Green Line," i.e., exclusive of East Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights; and, second, by folding the Arab population of East Jerusalem
into the forecast of the Arab population in the Palestinian territories.
Then, he presented the forecast for the West Bank and Gaza Strip including
East Jerusalem, as it was usually done by the U.N., CIA, and Palestinian
sources. In effect, this results in double counting the East Jerusalem
population, first as permanent residents of the State of Israel and then
as the residents of Palestinian territory.
A month later, Sofer explained his forecast: "Without even
considering birth rates, to make up one percentage point today, we need an
additional 170,000 Jews ...Who among us really expects that sort of
aliya (migration to Israel) in the near future?"[18] Two years later, though, just such a migration
occurred, underlining the inability of the demographers to forecast
political developments. Over the ensuing decade, more than one million
Jews were repatriated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Including
mixed Jewish families, this wave of immigration totaled 1.2 million people
and increased Israel's Jewish population by 31 percent. Demographic
prediction is such an uncertain science that even Israeli specialists get
it wrong repeatedly.
A Demographic Intifada
Palestinian Arab numbers have always been spotty. There is
very little historical data. As University of Illinois economics professor
Fred M. Gottheil has noted,
Palestinian demography of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries has never been just a matter of numbers. It has
always been—and consciously so—a frontline weapon used in a
life-and-death struggle for nationhood … The problem with staking so
much on so narrow a focus as past demography is that the data generated
by demographers and others since the early nineteenth century are so
lacking in precision that, in some matters of dispute concerning
demography, "anyone's guess," as the saying goes, "is as good as any
other."[19]
Justin McCarthy, a University of Louisville historian with a
specialization in demography, notes that Israel's 1967 census of Gaza's
population was the first in more than thirty-five years; before that
census, procedures were not rigorous. At best, McCarthy notes, pre-1967
counts of Palestinian Arabs are "estimations" although he also notes that
subsequent Israeli-conducted censuses were scientific and objective.[20]
In 1997, three years after the Oslo accords handed control
of large portions of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestine Authority,
the Palestinians conducted their first independent census, according to
which the Arab population numbered 2,895,683 people: 1,873,476 in the West
Bank (including 210,209 in East Jerusalem) and 1,022,207 in the Gaza
Strip.[21] It also included 325,253
Arab emigrants contradicting international standards regarding the
enlistment of only permanent residents in the population registry.[22] According to the "U.N. Principles
and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses," people to be
enumerated by the census are defined as "usual residents":
Usual residents may have citizenship or not, and they may
also include undocumented persons, applicants for asylum, or refugees.
Usual residents then may include foreigners who reside, or intend to
reside, in the country continuously for either most of the last 12
months or for 12 months or more, depending on the definition of place of
usual residence that is adopted by the country. Persons who may consider
themselves usual residents of a country because of citizenship or family
ties, but are absent from the country for either most of the last 12
months, or for 12 months or more, depending on the definition adopted,
should be excluded.[23]
Even without contesting the professionalism of the count
itself, the Arab population stood, in fact, at only 2,360,231 people when
the East Jerusalem and emigrant Arabs are subtracted.
Yet the numbers of the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics themselves seem improbably high. According to data released by
the Israeli census bureau at the end of 1993, the Arab population numbered
1,084,400 in the West Bank and 748,400 in the Gaza Strip, for a total of
1,832,800.[24] If the Palestinian
Central Bureau of Statistics census was accurate, the Arab population in
the Palestinian territories increased by an astonishing 527,431 people, or
29 percent, in only four years. In order to reach such phenomenal
population growth, the geometrical mean of the annual growth rate would
have to be an improbable 6.6 percent per year during this period.
U.N. data for 2006 indicate that the natural growth of the
Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was much smaller: an
annual average of 3.89 percent per year between 1990 and 1995, 3.7 percent
between 1995 and 2000, and 3.56 percent per year between 2000 and 2005.[25] Even these U.N. estimates may be
high, as they accepted Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data
uncritically.
In contrast, a 2003 study conducted by this author
demonstrated that the Palestinian population grew by about one million
people from 1990 to 2000.[26] By
coincidence, this figure seemingly offsets the mass immigration to Israel
from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s. The study found that
Palestinian data suggested that the Arab population had doubled and that
the Palestinian Arab population nominal growth was actually larger than
the Jewish population growth at the time of the migration of Soviet Jews
to Israel. Given the strain and management problem that a population
growth of 31.2 percent represented for Israel, it defies logic that
Palestinian growth could double without outside observers noticing. As
McCarthy noted,
It is difficult to see how the agricultural or industrial
base of Palestine can cope with the increased numbers that will result
from high Palestinian fertility … Possessing neither the agricultural
potential nor the economic base … Palestine can expect a demographic
crisis.[27]
This study prompted Haggai Segal, an Israel-based
Ma'ariv, Makor Rishon, and BeSheva columnist, journalist,
and commentator, to undertake additional investigation on this subject,
which he published in BeSheva.[28]
In 2005, an American and Israeli demography team headed by
Bennett Zimmerman and Yoram Ettinger confirmed the 2003 findings and,
again, criticized both the illegitimate inclusion of Arab emigrants from
the Palestinian Authority and the double counting of the East Jerusalem
Arab population.[29] The Zimmerman
and Ettinger study also revealed that, at the end of 2000, the Arab
population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip numbered 2,246,000
people—1,280,000 in the West Bank and about 966,000 in the Gaza Strip.
According to the data provided by the Palestinian Authority
at the end of 2005, in contrast, the population in the territories
numbered 3,762,005—2,372,216 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and
1,389,789 in the Gaza Strip.[30] The
Palestinian numbers get even stranger: According to estimates by the
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2006, the population of the
Palestinian Authority jumped to 3,952,354[31]—an increase of 190,349 over the previous year, or
more than 5 percent in a single year. Not only is this improbable but,
according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the rates of natural
population growth were half of this: 2.4 percent in 2003, 2.6 percent in
2004, and 2.5 percent in 2005.[32]
In February 2005, the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics released a study conducted by Yousef Ibrahim, a professor of
geography and population studies at al-Aqsa University in Gaza, which said
that the Arab population would reach 6.3 million in 2010, compared to 5.7
million Jews, provided that the current growth ratios continued along the
same pattern,[33] consciously
utilizing the words of Israeli demographic expert Sergio DellaPergola, who
said that "the direction is quite obvious. Before the end of this decade,
Jews will become a minority in the lands that include 'Israel,' West Bank
and Gaza Strip."[34] The Atlantic, a
widely read American monthly, asked shrilly, "Will Israel Live to 100?"[35]
Then, in December 2006, the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics issued a statement asserting that a "population dichotomy at
5.7 million is expected at the end of 2010," i.e., that in 2010 the number
of Palestinian would be equal to the number of the Jews,[36] a discrepancy of 600,000 in less than two
years.
In February 2008, the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistic, using data from the Palestinian Authority's December 2007
census,[37] found that the population
of the Palestinian Authority reached 3,760,000 people: 1,460,000 in the
Gaza Strip and 2,300,000 in the West Bank, including 208,000 in East
Jerusalem, an increase of 30 percent from 1997. But, according to these
data, the population in East Jerusalem is 2,209 less than it was in 1997.
This report provoked harsh criticism from the Palestinian Authority, which
demanded that these "distortions" be "corrected."[38] Hatem Abdel Kader, an adviser on Jerusalem affairs
to Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, said he did not believe the
Jerusalem figures were reliable and that the Palestinian Authority
believed that census takers had failed to visit many households.[39]
Once again, by coincidence, the results of the population
census for the end of 2007 were almost identical to the estimates of the
Palestinian Authority at the end of 2005. What happened to the 192,354
people that existed according to the estimates of the Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics at the end of 2006? Two answers are possible: During
2007, there was a massive emigration of Arabs from the Palestinian
territories, unprecedented since the Six-Day War, and the results were
registered in the population census; or this was a crude manipulation of
the data and estimates of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics,
especially the gaps in their data for 2005 and 2006. The latter is more
plausible. As Hassan Abu Libdeh, director of the Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics in the 1990s, told The New York Times, "In my
opinion, [the data] is as important as the intifada. It is a civil
intifada."[40] Indeed, such an
attitude explains why the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health has
erased from their Internet site official reports containing demographic
data since 2000, which might contradict the Palestinian leadership's
current line.
The 2007 census clearly shows that the yearly growth rate of
the Arab population, according to a calculation of the annual geometric
mean over the last ten years, should have been 2.66 percent. By extending
this 10-year period to fourteen years, and basing calculations on the data
of the Israeli census bureau for the population of the Palestinian
territories for the end of 1993, the population of these areas should, in
fact, stand at 2,646,871—1,113,129 fewer than the 2007 Palestinian census.
The difference between the likely actual Palestinian population and the
results of the two Palestinian censuses (1997 and 2007) is probably around
one million people, just as the Zimmerman and Ettinger study showed four
years ago. The major data distortion was made in 1997, and then the
overstated population number became the basis for the future
estimates.
Conclusions
On May 15, 2008, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
president Luay Shabaneh claimed that the Arab population in Palestine
would become equal to the Jewish population by 2016,[41] echoing similar predictions of an impending Jewish
minority by earlier generations of demographers and analysts: Bachi in
1944,[42] Patrick Loftus in 1947,[43] Bachi again in 1968,[44] Pinkhas Sapir in 1973,[45] Sofer in 1987,[46] DellaPergola in 2005, and the Palestinian bureau
in 2005 and 2006.
Then, three months after this last Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics statement, DellaPergola once again postponed his
previous projection of Arab and Jewish populations reaching equality from
2010 to 2020.[47] From DellaPergola's
statement, it seems that the gap of one million persons could be closed in
ten years, making necessary an additional annual yearly increase of
100,000 Arabs, more than double the current numbers. But, far from
doubling, Arab fertility and natural increase are decreasing following the
demographic transition rules.
Why fudge the numbers? There are two important reasons:
First, overstating the Palestinian population is good for Palestinian
morale, bad for Israeli morale, and heightens Jewish fears of the
so-called "demographic time bomb"; second, there is a significant
financial incentive, as the international community provides money to the
Palestinian Authority according to the number of its inhabitants. When the
Palestinian Authority pads its population numbers, the Palestinian
Authority receives more money.
Careful demographic analysis, however, should lead to a
conclusion in stark contrast to the demographic time bomb thesis. The
natural increase of the Jewish population in Israel—that is, its yearly
birth rate less its yearly death rate—stabilized thirty years ago and,
since 2002, has even begun to grow. The natural increase of the total Arab
population, comprising both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of the West Bank
and Gaza, continues to descend toward convergence with the Jewish
population, probably in the latter half of this century.
The data, moreover, point to rising levels of Arab
emigration, particularly among young people. According to the survey
conducted by Bir-Zeit University, 32 percent of all Palestinians and 44
percent of Palestinian youth would emigrate if they could.[48] The official Palestinian newspaper
Al-Hayat al-Jadida has reported similar numbers.[49] A public opinion poll conducted by the Near East
Consulting Corporation in the Gaza Strip reveals an even higher rate—47
percent of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. [50] Translated into numbers of people, as of 2006,
more than a million Arabs in the Palestinian territories wish to emigrate.
As journalist Amit Cohen noted in 2007, "Close to 14,000 Palestinians,
more than 1 percent of the population in the Strip, have left the Gaza
Strip since the implementation of the withdrawal program,[51] largely for financial reasons.[52]
In an interview reported in the pan-Arab daily Asharq
al-Awsat around the same time, Salam Fayyad, head of the Emergency
Palestinian Government, commented: "How will we be able to deal with the
problem of 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinians who have emigrated and many more
that are not emigrating just because they do not have the means? We are
losing in this respect."[53]
The misuse of demography has been one of the most prominent,
yet unexamined, aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Israelis
have so thoroughly absorbed the repeated claims of a diminishing Jewish
majority that they do not consider whether their conventional wisdom is
false. Before an accurate demographic picture of Israel and the
Palestinian territories trickles down to the consciousness of the
residents of the region, it must first be understood by Israeli and
Palestinian policymakers, academics, and journalists, who need accurate,
factual information to do their jobs. The impact on the conflict of such a
development would be substantial.
Yakov Faitelson is the author of Demographic
Trends in the Land of Israel, 1800-2007 (Israeli Institute for
Zionist Strategies (IZS), 2008).
[1] "Address by PM Ehud Olmert to the opening of the
Knesset winter session," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oct.
8, 2007.
[2] The New York
Times, Dec.
1, 2008.
[3] The
International Herald Tribune (Paris), Feb. 9, 2008; Associated Press,
Feb. 9, 2008; "Zionists Have Lost the War, Israel's Defeated in the
Demographic Battle: An Interview with Dr. Yousef Ibrahim," The
International Press Center (Palestinian territories), Feb. 14,
2005.
[4] BBC News, Nov.
29, 2007.
[5] Shimon Dubnow,
Pisma o Starom i Novom Evreistve (1897-1907) (St. Petersburg:
Obshchestvennaia pol'za, 1907), pp. 171-2.
[6] Robero Bachi, Maskanot politiot metoch hakirotaj al
hahitpathut hademografit shel ha'yehudim veha'arvim be'Eretz-Israel
(Jerusalem: Hadasa, 1944).
[7]
Ibid.
[8] Ibid, Table no. 1, p.
2.
[9] Ibid., Table no. 3, p.
5.
[10] "Population Estimates and
Sources of Its Growth," Israel Central Bureau of Statistics Yearbook
for Israel 1996, no. 47, Table 27.01, p. 573; "The Population by
Religion and Population Group," Israel Central Bureau of Statistics
Yearbook for Israel 2006, no. 57, Table 02.01, p. 85.
[11] Roberto Bachi, Encyclopedia
Ha'Ivrit, Ha'Ukhlusiya, vol. 6, 1956 ed., s.v. "a. demografia," p.
672.
[12] Encyclopedia
Judaica, vol. 9, s.v. "state of Israel, population," p. 472-93.
[13] Ibid.
[14] "Tahazit Ha'Ukhlusiya beIsrael ad 1985 (al basis sof
1965)," Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Jerusalem, 1968, Table 2, p.
2, Table 10, p. 10, Table 11, p. 11.
[15] Yedi'ot Aharonot (Tel Aviv), July 6,
1987.
[16] The New York
Times, Oct. 19, 1987.
[17]
Yedi'ot Aharonot (Tel Aviv), July 6, 1987.
[18] The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 16, 1988.
[19] Fred M. Gottheil, "The
Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931," Middle
East Quarterly, Winter 2003, pp. 53-64.
[20] Justin McCarthy, "Palestine's
Population during the Ottoman and the British Mandate Periods, Total
Population: The Quality of the Data," PalestineRemembered.com, Sept. 8,
2001, accessed Sept. 18, 2008.
[21] "Census Final Results—Summary (Population, Housing
Units, Buildings and Establishments)," Population, Housing, and
Establishment Census – 1997 (Ramallah: Palestine National Authority,
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 1998), "Table 1: Population by
Sex and Governorate."
[22]
McCarthy, "Palestine's
Population."
[23] "2. Usual
resident population count," Principles and Recommendations for Population
and Housing Censuses, Revision 2, Statistical Papers Series (New
York: U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division,
2008), ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/67/Rev.2., sec. 2.31, p. 115.
[24] "Population Estimates and Sources
of Growth," Israel Central Bureau of Statistics Yearbook 1996, no.
47 (Jerusalem: ICBS, 2006), Table 27.01, p. 573.
[25] "Demographic
Profile, Medium Variant, 1950-2050: Growth Rate," World Population
Prospects: The 2006 Revision Population Database, United Nations,
Population Division, New York, accessed Sept. 18, 2008.
[26] Yakov Faitelson, "Mispar sheelot
benose haba'aya hademographit," Dec. 8, 2003.
[27] McCarthy, "Palestine's
Population: Palestinians in the World."
[28] Hagai Segal, "The Demono-Graphic Problem: The
Faitelson Riddle,'" BeSheva, Jan. 22, 2004.
[29] Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid,
and Michael L. Wise, "The Million Person Gap: A Critical Look at
Palestinian Demography: Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza,"
BESA Perspectives, no. 15, May 1, 2006; idem, "The 1.5 Million
Population Gap," presentation at American Enterprise Institute,
Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005.
[30] "Population 2005," Palestinian Authority Ministry of
Health, Feb. 17, 2008; Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health Annual
Report 2005, MOH-PHIC. Population and Demography. Health Status in
Palestine 2005, Chapter 1, Demography and Population, Oct. 2006. All
Palestinian Authority demographic and health annual reports from 2001
until November 2007 have been removed from the Palestinian Authority site
after publication of comparisons by the author and by Bennet Zimmerman
showing the differences between the data presented by the PCBS and the
Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health.
[31] "Table 1: Estimated
Palestinian Population in the World by Reside [sic] Country,
End Year 2006," Palestinians at the End of the Year 2006 (Ramallah:
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2006), p. 31.
[32] "Population and Demography: Health
Status in Palestine 2005," Annual Report 2005 (Ramallah: Ministry
of Health-Palestinian Health Information Centre, Oct. 2006), p. 4.
[33] "Israel Defeated in the Demographic
Battle: An Interview with Dr. Yousef Ibrahim," The International Press
Center, Feb. 14, 2005.
[34]
Ibid.
[35] Benjamin
Schwartz, "Will Israel Live to be 100?" The Atlantic, May 2005.
[36] "1. Demography, 1-1 Projection of
Palestinians worldwide," Demographic and Socioeconomic Status
of the Palestinian People at the End of 2006 (Ramallah:
Palestinian National Authority, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics,
Dec. 2006), p. 3.
[37] The
International Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 2008; Associated Press, Feb. 9,
2008.
[38] The International
Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 2008; Associated Press, Feb. 9, 2008.
[39] Associated Press, Feb. 9, 2008;
Ynet.com, Feb.
9, 2008.
[40] The New York
Times, Dec. 11, 1997.
[41]
Arutz Sheva (Beit El and Petah Tikva), May 17, 2008.
[42] Roberto Bachi, quoted in Ezra
Zohar, "Demographia – sakana kiyumit o mitus?" Nativ, Nov.
2004.
[43] "The Elements of the
Conflict: A. Geographic and Demographic Factors, Population, (c)
Future Trends," Official Records of the Second Session of the General
Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Report to the General Assembly (Lake
Success, N.Y.: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine, 1947), vol. 1, chap.
II, p. 14.
[44] Roberto Bachi,
"Tahazit Ha'Ukhlusiya be Israel (al basis sof 1965)," Israel Central
Bureau of Statistics, Jerusalem, 1968, pp. 2, 10-11.
[45] Pinkhas Sapir, quoted in Shmuel
Fridman, "Al demographia ve kzavim," Ma'ariv (Tel Aviv), July 7,
1987.
[46] Yedi'ot
Aharonot, July 6, 1987.
[47]
DellaPergola, Tah
Ofek seminar, July 19, 2008.
[48] The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Nov.
20, 2006.
[49] Palestinian
Media Watch, Aug.
14, 2008.
[50]
IsraelNationalNews.com (Arutz Sheva, Beit El and Petah
Tikva), Oct. 5,
2007.
[51] Ma'ariv,
June 11, 2007.
[52] Gottheil, "Arab
Immigration into Palestine;" McCarthy, "Palestine's
Population: Migration After 1948;" Janet Abu-Lughod, "The Demographic War
for Palestine," The Link (Americans for Middle East
Understanding), Dec. 1986; The Globe and Mail, Nov. 20, 2006
[53] Arutz Sheva, July 2,
2007.
Related Topics: Palestinians Spring 2009
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