What Does Israel’s “Demographic Balancing Act” Hold in Store for Palestinians?

By Samah Jabr

Various odd phrases are being used to describe the perfectly natural desire of Palestinians to procreate: “demographic threat,” “biological bomb,” “fertility weapon,” and “growth cancer” are just a sampling of the paranoid phrases emanating from the mouths of some Israeli politicians and their foreign supporters when referring to a normal and healthy Palestinian fecundity.

The Palestinian woman’s womb is the only womb I know of that has been inhumanely described as a “dormant explosive bomb.” These and similar descriptions are being applied to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as to those with Israeli citizenship. The “birth clock is ticking,” Israeli leaders and their advisers repeatedly warn. This obsession constitutes a unique element in the debate about the future of the two nations and the prospect of peace in the holy land.

For Palestinians, as for other cultures, childbearing is a sensitive issue. It is regarded as a very private matter, to be discussed only in close family settings. In democracies, talk of racial, ethnic or religious purity, or of demographic preference, is viewed as a racist outlook damaging to the fabric of any civilized society.

Attempting to influence the Palestinians’ natural population growth, therefore, appears to be a genocidal ideation, a desire for ethnic cleansing. Perhaps that is indeed the wish underlying the behavior of the Israeli occupation forces when they deny women in labor access to medical care, often shooting at them as they try to reach the nearest hospital. It may also explain why Israeli snipers target so many of our children, aiming at their heads and vital organs with a clear intent to kill.

From Ideology to Implementation

In fact, Israeli planners and decision makers have moved from the stage of ideology to that of implementation. Today, the laws and strategies formulated to combat Palestinian natural human growth appear designed to facilitate turning these concepts and wishes into concrete actions aimed at “defusing the Palestinian demographic bomb.” Such strategies are even more vicious than the daily violence we experience—yet so insidious and subtle that they don’t make international headlines.

Palestine is neither China nor Bangladesh. The 3.3 million people who continue to live in Palestine comprise 40 percent of the Palestinian nation. Palestinians used to have one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Today, the fertility rate has dropped to 7 in Gaza, and 4.7 in the West Bank—double or triple that of the Israelis. Israeli statistical projections suggest that if this pattern continues into the next decade without any “management,” Palestinians are likely to outnumber the Jewish population in the land.

For years foreign non-governmental organizations have been working, in the name of women’s rights, to promote family planning in Palestine. Of the many reproductive problems and women’s health issues they addressed, their singular significant achievement has been a decreased fertility rate. Despite their efforts, little, if any, success has been achieved in combating the high and increasing incidence of maternal mortality, maternal cancers, women’s anemia and poor general health, post-natal complications or any of the other challenging problems.

Nor has “managing the Palestinian growth problem” been restricted to these tactics. The Israeli Supreme Court has legalized discriminatory laws concerning residency, citizenship and marriage for non-Jews. One example is that, for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, living outside the city jeopardizes their residency and denies them their basic rights to health insurance and social security—and, at a later stage, their right to enter Jerusalem. Another recent measure stipulates that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship cannot pass their citizenship on to their children and spouses.

Furthermore, Palestinians living in Israel “proper” who marry Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza run the risk of not being able to have their families live with them. By contrast, Jewish Israelis can live wherever they want for as long as they want and still retain their citizenship; they can pass their Israeli citizenship on to their non-Jewish or international spouses, and the latter will have more rights and access to the land they come to than its own indigenous people—the Palestinians.

Under the pretext of giving the Palestinians a state and allowing them some level of self-determination, the Israeli agenda includes creating ghettos that consist of small, overcrowded and isolated geographical areas. These bantustans contribute to the strangulation of the economy and of the ability to find employment to the point where the average Palestinian will have one of only two choices: to leave “voluntarily,” or to starve in his own land under an illegal occupation. So far, many have chosen the latter, which naturally leads to an even greater dwindling of resources, to increased competition and conflicting interests, and to the undermining of Palestinians’ fabled steadfastness.

Since the beginning of the current intifada, the decline in Palestinian well-being has been rapid and profound. This is directly linked to the violence and restricted mobility we experience daily—including death and injury to family and friends, damage to our property, and the frustration, humiliation and poverty we endure through stifling closures, curfews and confinement. Those conditions will worsen in the coming three to five years as a result of Israel’s monstrous wall that is fast nearing completion.

Officially, the Jewish population in the land today is nearly 6.2 million. This does not include foreigners who hold Israeli citizenship and live abroad—those who are willing to live in the land during periods of ease but who leave for gentler climes during times of hardship. Over the past 55 years Israel has denied our refugees the right to return home, while welcoming Jewish immigrants with open arms. Crucially, if it were not for the flood of immigrants, the Jewish population in occupied Palestine would be only a mere fraction of what it is today.

While “peace-loving Israelis” feel compelled to cede land and isolate the Palestinians in order to avoid the demographic“threat,” Jewish settlers in the territories have called for government policies to encourage Jewish births, promote religious conversions, and stimulate Jewish immigration. They insist that Israel should not relinquish its hold on the land, but should keep alive the dream of a Greater Israel reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. They openly speak about the forced expulsion of “Arabs” to Jordan and the Sinai should the Palestinians try to resist.

What can the Palestinians do against the rising tide of pro-transfer sentiment being freely expressed in Israeli Jewish society, and against the ongoing plans to suffocate them? We will, of course, steadfastly remain in what they perceive to be their exclusive homeland. In order to resist and counteract Israel’s genocidal strategies, the Palestinian community at home and in the Diaspora should be aware of the challenges facing them and should work to raise international awareness of Israeli intentions and actual criminal practices.

We should campaign for assistance to meet Palestinians’ basic survival needs and enhance their economic independence and natural population growth in the occupied land. I am not suggesting that Palestinians should have dozens of children, but we should know our reproductive rights and be aware of all components of reproductive health care, including giving people choices and the necessary education to hold them responsible for their choices.

It is not natural growth and development that we should fight, but poverty, disease, ignorance, oppression, and gender and racial differences. This means we should pay special attention to Palestinian orphans and the children of prisoners who are increasing in number as Israeli violence mows down more and more of our fathers and mothers. Those children are our children, and we should find the appropriate channels to link them with adoptive parents from within or from the Diaspora who can finance their education, provide their daily sustenance and try to build an emotional connection with them across time and distance. This kind of project also can help to mobilize the national commitment of the Palestinians in the Diaspora and improve the moral qualities of our people—which might be as important as our numbers.

Israel’s Pathological Fear

As I reflect on Israel’s fear of our mere existence, I understand that Israel’s pathology lies in its claims of democracy as much as its Jewish exclusivity. If it were not for the former, our presence wouldn’t be perceived as threatening. Democracy, in theory, is understood as a system to protect the basic rights of minorities from the tyranny of the overwhelming majority. In the case of Israel, however, democracy is manipulated to maintain the power and privilege of the Jewish majority, not to protect their cultural identity, heritage and religious practice, which might be equally protected and enhanced in a multiethnic, pluralistic society where freedom of religion, speech and association are guaranteed to all.

Israeli “democracy” has been used as a ploy to gain acceptance by the international community. It is always evoked to consolidate a superior Jewish position and to preserve Jewish supremacy—the reason behind and the tool used to attain the goal of our expulsion.

Today, Israel is taking advantage of international ignorance and apathy. As it quietly executes its plans, it proclaims to the world that our presence is a threat from which it has the right to defend itself. In so doing, Israelis are propagating their own ethno-nationalist views on the world, while at the same time labeling people of similar mentality in Europe as “neo-Nazis” and ”anti-Semites.”

Dr. Wouter Basson, a well-known South African chemical and biological warfare specialist during the apartheid years, described plans to poison the water supply to black townships in order to curb the birthrate of black South Africans. Today I hold my breath in horror at what Israelis are capable of doing in the name of “demographic balancing acts” as the tipping point in the land of my birth approaches.

Samah Jabr, M.D., a native of Jerusalem, is currently studying psychiatry at the Cité Universitaire de Paris.