Israel’s Disengagement: A Question of Numbers

By Sonja Pace

Ahmed’s shrieks rattle the windows in the hospital nursery. It hardly seems possible that the tiny lungs of this day-old Palestinian baby could make such a racket. But perhaps it is fitting, because the power in that tiny voice represents the greatest force that could shape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the years ahead—demographics. And there is no better illustration of that reality than Israel’s recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

A study published in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in August stated that Jews are now outnumbered by non-Jews, mainly Palestinians, in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. While the percentage points are not great, Professor Sergio della Pergola of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University says what counts is the trend, and that is undisputable. “The proportion of the Jewish sector of the population, which used to be a majority, is declining,” says della Pergola, whose research on demographics contributed to the Haaretz study.

Another recent study, by Arnon Soffer of Haifa University, warns that Jews will make up only 40 percent of the population within the next 10 years—unless Israel shrinks its borders.

Assessments such as these have many Israeli leaders worried, Ariel Sharon among them.

“Sharon talked about 8,000 Israelis living there [in Gaza] among 1.3 million Palestinians,” said former U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross. Speaking to journalists in Jerusalem just prior to the disengagement, Ross said demographics was one of the main underlying reasons for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Another reason, of course, was the ongoing conflict. Sharon acknowledged that the cost in money and lives of protecting the Gaza settlers was too high to sustain in a place where Jews had no realistic hope of ever outnumbering the Palestinians. And so, the man who once had been one of the staunchest proponents of settlements, ordered the dismantling of all 21 enclaves in Gaza and four small, isolated ones in the northern West Bank.

“True, they had a dream,” said Sharon of the settlers. “I did too, that we can hold on to all the territory, or most of the territory, but things have changed,” the prime minister acknowledged in a television address on the day thousands of Israeli soldiers and police went from settlement to settlement forcibly removing those illegal settlers who refused to leave voluntarily.

What had “changed” were the numbers, which could not be ignored.

Israelis are worried about the viability of their state.

Numbers are crucial. Indeed, a central theme in political discussions and the media is the argument over who owns what, who was here first and who has the most right to be here. For both sides, the issue is one of survival.

Just over 50 years ago, in 1948, there were approximately 650,000 Jews and over 1.3 million Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Israel’s Zionist founders had a dream—that all the Jews in the Diaspora would follow them to the new Jewish homeland and that they would keep coming. The weight of those numbers would secure the state, it was hoped, and make a strong argument for the need to acquire more Palestinian land.

It has not worked out that way, however. Jews—particularly those living prosperous lives in the West—did not flood into the new country. That fact, along with a significant drop in Jewish birthrates in the region, and a skyrocketing birthrate among Palestinians, has changed everything. According to U.N. figures, the average Palestinian woman in the West Bank and Gaza will have over five children in her lifetime, while an Israeli woman will have close to three children. Some experts argue that that figure would be even lower if it did not include the higher birth rates among Arabs living inside Israel.

Today, there are just over 5.2 million Jews and about 5.4 million Arabs (4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, 1.4 million Arab citizens of Israel) living in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In addition, there are 185,000 non-Jewish foreign workers and another 290,000 non-Jewish immigrants, mainly from the former Soviet Union.

Pulling out from Gaza helped Israel by shifting the population balance, since taking the Gaza population of 1.3 million Arabs out of the equation boosts the proportion of Jews in the remaining areas under Israeli control, namely Israel and the West Bank. In this new equation, says della Pergola, “Jews are once again in the majority and can probably stay that way for the next 20 years.”

Sharon has made it clear that he believes there is no point in fighting the losing demographic battle on all fronts. He repeatedly has pointed out that giving up Gaza would allow Israel to better hold on to major portions of the West Bank, assuring Israelis that President George W. Bush has given his nod of approval to certain “realities on the ground”—interpreted as a green light to hold on to the major Jewish settlement blocs such as Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim and Gush Etzion.

Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has strenuously denied reports that Israel only withdrew from Gaza so it could concentrate on expanding its claim to the West Bank. Within days of the Gaza pullout, however, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat said the withdrawal had opened a window of opportunity to expand settlements in precisely those places.

A few days after the last settler had been evacuated from Gaza, Israeli Interior Ministry spokesman Gilad Heiman said that the settler population in the West Bank had increased by nearly 13,000 in the past year, to a total of 246,000. He attributed the increase—which exceeded the number of settlers who had left Gaza—to new births in the settlements and an influx of new settlers.

Still, Israelis are worried about the viability of their state. When political leaders talk of maintaining a “Jewish and democratic state” they are talking about “reducing significantly the proportion of non-Jews within it,” according to della Pergola. And, predicted former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross, that means future shifts by Israel to “secure its demographic viability.”

Such shifts could involve a variety of actions, della Pergola said, ranging from a partial withdrawal from the West Bank to a total withdrawal—or even what he terms a more radical solution of a negotiated land swap with the Palestinians. Whatever action is eventually taken, the Gaza withdrawal was but a temporary measure to ease the population pressure. The demographics dilemma has been postponed, but it will not go away.

Sonja Pace has been covering the Middle East since 1989, and is currently Jerusalem bureau chief for the Voice of America network. Any analysis or views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of VOA.