Demographic warfare and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Guest Post by Aslak Berg

With the Obama administration making a renewed effort to bring about peace in the Middle East, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the conflict on this blog since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, more than any other conflict today, revolves around demography. Demography has been at the core of the conflict ever since Zionist immigration to Palestine began around a hundred years ago since the core of the Zionist vision is a democratic, Jewish state. Now, for Israel to be both Jewish and democratic, it must necessarily have a Jewish majority, which makes the large and growing Palestinian population rather inconvenient from a Zionist perspective. From a Palestinian perspective, a Palestinian majority would signify some sort of victory either in the form of an end to the Jewish state or forcing Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Thus, in this conflict, demography really is destiny and has been used so consciously by both sides (on the Israeli side by promoting immigration of Jews and emigration of Arabs, on the Palestinian side simply by relying on high fertility rates. Arafat declared once that the Palestinian womb was his most powerful weapon, and birth rates actually ticked up a bit during the first Intifada in the late 80’s) . This article will focus on the demographic situation “between the river and the sea” as they say in the region, i.e. in Israel proper and the occupied territories. You should note that by focusing on this area, I exclude the Palestinian diaspora living as refugees in surrounding countries. Including them would obviously give us a large Palestinian majority. In the end, I hope to use the demographic data to give indications of what underpins Israeli policy and in particular religious Zionist plans for the area.

Israel

After the 1948 war (Israeli War of Independence/the Nakba, depending on your preference) and the Palestinian exodus, there was a large Jewish majority with about a million Jews and about 160 000 non-Jews which at the time meant mostly Arabs. However, the Palestinians had an extraordinarily high fertility rate, in particular, Muslim Palestinians had a fertility rate approaching 10 in the 60’s. Thus, despite millions of Jewish immigrants since 1948 the Arabs increased their percentage of the population from 15% to 20%. There are currently 1.5 million Arabs in Israel, 5,6 million Jews (including West Bank settlers) and about 300,000 “others”, who are mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union that are affiliated with Jews but not Jewish according to religious law (e.g. Jewish father, but not Jewish mother, spouses etc.). With the reservoirs for potential Jewish immigration now largely dried out, one might think that the Arab percentage would increase.

However, Israeli Jewish fertility is exceptional in the Western world in that fertility has stabilized at a very high level and now actually increased, mostly due to the ultra-Orthodox and other religious Jews. Meanwhile, Palestinian fertility and Muslim fertility in particular has plummeted. If current trends continue (always a big if), Jewish fertility rates will actually surpass Palestinian fertility rates in five years or so.



Since the Palestinian population in Israel is still young and there are therefore more and more Palestinian women in fertile ages, the effect of declining fertility rate on births has been that the number of Arab births in Israel peaked at 41 400 in Israel and has since stabilized around the 39 000 mark since. In the same period, the number of Jewish births increased from 91 200 in 2001 to 112 800 in 2008 (this number increases to 117 800 if you include the other category, which perhaps one should). Thus, the percentage of Jewish births bottomed out in 2001 at around 66% and has now increased to 72%, not including others, and the percentage of Arab births peaked the same year at 30% and has now declined to around 25%.




Thus the Arab population within Israel is likely to peak below 25% and the Jewish majority inside Israel seems secure. Now let’s see what happens if one includes the occupied territories.

West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Because of the division between Hamas and Fatah, the 2007 Palestinian census was only conducted in the West Bank. It found that the population of the West Bank was about 2.3 million, not including Israeli settlers. Now, add the 1.5 million Arabs within Israel at the time and subtract the about 200 000 Arab inhabitants of East Jerusalem that are included in both counts you end up with 3.6 million Arabs in Israel and the West Bank or about 39% of the total population. Unfortunately, for Gaza there is only an estimate of around 1.5 million that is based on a projection of the 1997 census made by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The same projection proved wildly optimistic for the West Bank, projecting 2.6 million inhabitants in 2007 instead of 2.3. Since there is no reliable estimate, we can set the estimate at 1.4, which is more likely than not to be on the high end. The total Palestinian population in the occupied territories for 2007 is thus 3.7 or 5 million Palestinians including Israel, i.e. 46% of the total population of around 11 million.

Like inside Israel, Palestinians in the occupied territories have in the past had extraordinarily high fertility rates, although population growth has been to some extent reduced by very high rates of emigration to Jordan, the Gulf Countries and the West. Total fertility rates were estimated to be 7 and 5.6 in Gaza and the West Bank respectively. There is fairly conclusive evidence that fertility rates have declined since then. A 2006 survey estimated rates of 5.4 in the Gaza strip and 4.2 in the West Bank. Also like in Israel, the reduction in fertility rates have been compensated by increasing numbers of fertile women, leading to a stabilization in the number of births. The 2007 census indicates that the number of births have stabilized at in the low 60,000’s while school records from the Palestinian ministry of education seems to indicate a stabilization in the low 40’000’s in the Gaza strip. Add in the 39,000 or so Arab births in Israel and you get about 140,000 Palestinian births annually between the river and the sea compared to 117,000 “Jewish and other” births, with the former number stabilizing and the latter number rising.

Population growth ultimately depends not only on births and fertility, but also on deaths and the Jewish death rate is much higher than the Palestinian one because the Jewish population is much older. But I’ve focused on births because in the very long run it is more important, coupled with migration numbers.

Implications for the peace process

So what does all of this mean for the peace process? Well, for one thing, it means that a (slim) Palestinian majority seems almost inevitable, perhaps as early as in the next decade. It also means that this majority may not last forever if Palestinian emigration continues, the Jewish fertility rate continues to hold up and the Palestinian fertility rate continues to decline, although for the Israelis to count on all of these assumptions to hold would be dicey at best. I’ve not mention Jewish immigration here because it seems that Jewish net migration is now more or less zero, but that could obviously also change. However, if I were a religious Zionist (I’m definitely not), focused on grabbing as much of Eretz Israel as possible while maintaining a Jewish majority., I would do more or less precisely what Israel has been doing

• Withdraw from Gaza as much as possible since without the Gaza strip, the Jewish majority in Israel and the West Bank seems secure (again if emigration and fertility decline continues)
• Continue supporting the settlements to secure as much land as possible and help encourage Palestinians to emigrate.
• Delay a solution as much as possible in order to see if the demographic winds continue to turn in Israel’s favour.
• Encourage Palestinian division and the gap between Gaza and the West Bank
• If demographic trends do not continue, and there is an uptick in Palestinian births, only then give up most of the West Bank to secure a Jewish majority

Now, most Israelis aren’t religious Zionists, but in the end, these are the only ones in Israel who know exactly what they want and how to get it so they end up setting the agenda for all of Israel.

If the gap between Gaza and the West Bank is cemented and demographic trends continue, one could imagine a city-state of Gaza and an Israeli absorption of the West Bank. This is not what the Palestinian people want and is probably not what most Israelis would prefer, but the Palestinian leadership have never missed an opportunity to let their people down and the religious Zionists always seem able to set the agenda in Israel. In the end, if no peace agreement is made soon, Israel might be able to perpetuate and normalize their hold of the West Bank, leaving only a poor and overcrowded Gaza strip as the Palestinian state.


If not specified, all numbers are from the Israeli and the Palestinian Central Bureaus of Statistics.

Go read "The World's New Numbers"

I'd like to point people to the latest article of The Wilson Quarterly, which includes Martin Walker's article "The World's New Numbers,", as sober an analysis as any of global population trends and their implications.

Walker's article is quite busy. After debunking the Eurabia thesis--"European" fertility rates are higher than Eurabianists say and Muslim fertility rates tend to converge to national levels after two generations--Walker goes on to discuss the implications of Iran's sub-replacement fertility, the ongoing shift upwards of fertility across western and northern Europe, the relatively moderate population declines in central Europe, the frightening collapses of populations the former Soviet Union. In regards to Russia in particular, Walker concludes that Russia's membership in the BRIC group, at least insofar as it's a powerful emergent economy, is tenuous thanks to its hypermortality.

Walker's more sanguine about the prospects for European welfare states; given certain adjustments, like raising the retirement age of 60 to much higher levels and increasing the work force participation rates, they could even survive. It's not, Walker argues, as if Europe hasn't gone through this before.

[T]he total depen­d­ency ratios of the 21st century are going to look remarkably similar to those of the 1960s. In the United States, the most onerous year for dependency was 1965, when there were 95 dependents for every 100 adults between the ages of 20 and 64. That occurred be­cause “dependents” includes people both younger and older than working age. By 2002, there were only 49 dependents for every 100 ­working-­age Americans. By 2025 there are projected to be 80, still well below the peak of 1965. The difference is that while most dependents in the 1960s were young, with their working and saving and contributing lives ahead of them, most of the dependents of 2009 are older, with more dependency still to come. But the point is clear: There is nothing outlandish about having almost as many dependents as working ­adults.

Walker also makes the interesting observation that exceptionally rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa will shift the demographic centers of Islam and Christianity towards that region of the world.

One striking implication of this growth is that there will be a great religious revolution, as Africa becomes the home of monotheism. By ­midcen­tury, sub-Saharan Africa is likely to be the demographic center of Islam, home to as many Muslims as Asia and to far more than inhabit the Middle East. The ­non-­Arab Muslim countries of ­Africa—­Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal—constitute the one region of the Islamic world where birthrates remain high. In several of these countries, the average woman will have upward of five children in her lifetime.

Christianity will also feel the effects of Africa’s growth. By 2025, there will be as many Christians in ­sub-­Saharan ­Africa—­some 640 ­million—­as in South America. By 2050, it is almost certain that most of the world’s Christians will live in Africa. As Kenyan scholar John Mbiti writes, “The centers of the church’s universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa, and Manila.”

(Buenos Aires has little much in common with the other four cities, the demographics of the city and wider Argentina not to mention the culture being rather more like those of the North Atlantic than not, but let's let that pass.)

This article is really quite a good one, the sort of article that should be required reading for anyone interested in population trends. I encourage our readers to head over to the Wilson Centre website and take a look.

On Tonga and the Pacific islanders

Hello again!

Recently, I came across the Radio Australia report "Reassigned Tonga guest workers upset local balance". The article describes how Tonga guest-workers, while economically productive and satisfied with their own earnings, are unpopular among native-born residents of the region where they're working.

ADAMS: With harvest over, they begin pruning the almond trees. Wielding the chainsaws are Tonga men who are in Boundary Bend in Victoria on a 7-month temporary work visa.

FANGALOKA: Basically there is no work in Tonga. They don't starve. They are all big healthy boys but there is no... there's a lot of bartering. Most of the guys that have come over are subsistence farmers.

ADAMS: Alf Fangaloka's family migrated in the 1980's, looking for work. They run Tree Minders, employing the Tongans and Australians to manage the region's millions of almond trees. Mr Fangaloka says this pilot program is as much about alleviating labour shortages as it is about helping our Pacific neighbours.

FANGALOKA: Basically the average wage in Tonga would be about $AUD1.50 an hour. The GDP per capita is less than $1000 a year, so it is huge to what they earn here. During the harvest the boys were grossing $1200 to $1300 a week, so its a huge difference to them.

ADAMS: Piliu Kailahi - one of the oldest of the Tongans - smiles broadly as he reveals most of his wage is sent home.

PILIEU: The pay here is more than 8 or ten times the pay in Tonga, so we are so grateful.

ADAMS: All the men have families in Tonga - that's part of the requirement. Some have already put new rooves and extensions on their modest homes.

Emigration from the Pacific islands, especially from the islands of the Polynesia culture region in the South Pacific, is one of the major unsung movements of our time. Yes, the absolute numbers of migrants are relatively small, numberings in the tens of thousands, but relative to the population of these islands the number is huge. Low living standards and a connection to Anglophone countries, especially to New Zealand, has produced a huge diaspora. Smaller countries like Niue and Tokelau have several times as many co-ethnics living in New Zealand as in their homeland, while even in the larger nations like Tonga and Samoa emigration is a major phenomenon. Even now, New Zealand sets aside places in its immigration program for Pacific island migrants.

As I blogged back in 2004, Tongan emigration is a durable phenomenon, motivated by low standards of living, the ability to send vital remittances back to the homeland, cultural traditions of mobility, and a stagnant social and political environment. As Small and Dixon show in their 2004 Migration Information article, migration has radically changed this island nation.

The results of three decades of migration were apparent in the last Tongan census. Of Tonga's population of 97,784, almost seven of 10 Tongans now reside on the main island of Tongatapu, and practically one-quarter of the entire population lives in the capital, Nuku'alofa. Outer island areas are depopulating rapidly, leading to new government policies aimed at stemming the tide of internal population movement. Although recent population estimates suggest that migration overseas may be slowing, today half of the estimated 216,000 Tongans in the world are abroad, and almost every household has a relative resident in another country. About two in 10 of Tonga's expatriates are residents of Australia, while four out of every 10 overseas Tongans live in the US, and another four out of 10 live in New Zealand. The connections between migrants and their homeland have created a new global village of Tongans, with profound implications for their homeland.

[. . .]

Like many other Pacific island nations, Tonga has become a so-called MIRAB economy, that is, an economy dependent on migration, remittances, foreign aid, and government bureaucracy as its major sources of revenue. Despite efforts to diversify, Tonga has a limited export sector, consisting of agricultural exports including squash, fish, root crops, vanilla, and kava, and a fledging tourist industry. Since the 1960s, imports have exceeded exports, resulting in a consistent pattern of negative trade balances. In 2002, total imports to Tonga were more than six times its exports. Building materials, agricultural chemicals, fuel, and imported food (despite the fact that 65 percent of the work force is in agriculture) make up the bulk of imported items.

It is migration, along with the remittances of cash and goods from migrants who live and work overseas, that keeps the Tongan economy afloat. At the national level, remittances are the major source of foreign exchange and accounted in FY2002 for about 50 percent of GDP. At the village and household levels, remittances are an integral part of income and consumption. In addition to receiving shipping containers filled with appliances, clothing, toys, and building materials, villagers are regularly sent cash remittances from their relatives overseas. Seventy-five percent of all Tongan households report receiving remittances from overseas, making remittances the single most widespread source of income in Tonga. Remittances also comprise a sizable proportion of total household income, second only nationally to "wages and salaries" as the largest income source. At a national level, reported remittances—and there is ample evidence that much more is received than formally reported—comprise 22 percent of income derived from all cash sources, including wages, salaries, and sales of produce. In some villages, remittances account for as much as 50 percent of all household income.

As they go on to note, as doors for Tonga emigrants close and their remittances dry up, challenges to the Tonga monarchy and its monopoly on political power have grown. Where it will end up, nobody can say for certain. What can be said is that globalization in the form of migration has certain hit this supposedly idyllic South Pacific monarchy.