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Questioning the "Demographic Time-Bomb"

(Newsweek) Dan Ephron - According to what's known as "the demographic time-bomb," the Palestinian population will eventually outstrip the Jews in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Yet a growing number of Israelis are asserting that the demographic balance is more favorable to Jews than previously thought: that Palestinians actually number far less in the West Bank than the official figure of 2.5 million - and that they are growing more slowly than the traditional projections. Yoram Ettinger, a retired diplomat, spent the past several years poring over data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and other sources, and discovered what he says are miscalculations in (among other things) the Palestinian birthrate and migration figures. Ettinger says that Palestinians have substantially inflated their numbers in the West Bank by continuing to count people long after they've taken up residence abroad; that the Palestinian fertility rate both in the West Bank and in Israel has been declining faster than projected; and that Jewish births have grown significantly over the past 15 years. "The demographic trend is Jewish," Ettinger concludes. "Anyone claiming that Israel must concede geography in order to secure demography is either mistaken or misleading."
2010-08-20 08:51:29
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