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Doomsday demographer gets a hearing at the Prime Minister's Office
Eric Schecter
A scholar whose warnings that Israel is on a demographic slide to catastrophe, which have largely been ignored for years, has finally had a high-level official hearing.
Haifa University geographer Arnon Soffer was summoned to the Prime Minister's Office on October 15, to brief the committee of directors general of government ministries on his doomsday predictions. Soffer says he got a "sympathetic hearing," and believes his proposed solution � unilateral separation from the Palestinians, and from some of Israel's Arabs as well � may now be seriously examined for policy purposes. Government officials comfirmed the meeting, but would not comment on the content or implications.
Soffer claims dramatically that current population trends mean that Israel will "cease to exist" as a Jewish state by 2020, by when he's convinced that only 42 percent of the people in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be Jewish; today, the figure is 50.5 percent. He cites higher Palestinian birthrates � a Muslim mother in Gaza has 7.5 children, on average, while the West Bank figure is 5 (compared to the Jewish mother's average 2.8) � and the constant influx of illegal Arab migration into Israel. Other Israeli demographers estimate that 150,000 Arabs who are not eligible for Israeli citizenship already live within the Green Line; Soffer says that "Arafat knows this, and is in no hurry to see the doors to Israel closed."
In addition to sealing its borders to prevent more illegal migration and protect its Jewish majority, Soffer parts company with other advocates of separation when he proposes that, as well as much of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip, Israel should also redress the ethnic balance by turning over the Little Triangle, an area inside Israel proper adjacent to the northern West Bank with "several hundred thousand" Israeli Arab residents, to the Palestinians.
Separation from the Palestinians, concurs Hebrew University demographer Sergio dellaPergola, would assure Israel of an 80-percent Jewish majority, at least in the short run. But over 50 years, he says, that majority would be severely eroded by the Israeli Arab natural growth rate of over 3 percent (Israel's annual Jewish growth rate, including immigration, says dellaPergola, is 2.5 percent), bringing about a population mix that would generate more conflict, and possibly partition of what's left of Israel itself, like Cyprus.
Izhak Schnell, who chairs Tel Aviv University's Geography and Human Resources Department, dosn't think that 50-year prospect is so onerous. It's easy, he says, to imagine an Israel with a very substantial Arab minority, "provided we have good social relations."
And not everyone agrees with the population estimates. "Every demographic projection made about Israel since 1967 has been wrong," says Haifa University sociologist Sammy Smooha. For 25 years Israeli Arabs have remained a fixed 15 percent of Israel proper's population, he adds, with immigration and high birthrates among ultra-Orthodox Israelis maintaining the balance.
(November 5, 2001)
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