Few issues affect geopolitics more than the violent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The suicidal implosion of Western birthrates, including that of Israeli Jews, is one of those few. We currently see the intersection of these two problems as Israel unilaterally abandons her settlements in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank in the absence of any concessions from the Palestinian side, even in the absence of any serious attempt by the Palestinian Authority to stop the Islamic terrorists so prevalent and celebrated among Palestinian Arabs. Why has Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel “Bulldozer” Sharon, who is often called the father of the settlements, decided to abandon the “land for peace” formula and instead adopt “land for nothing” now?
Open Israeli Citizenship
Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the one who cut a lasting peace deal with Egypt, used to talk about offering Israeli citizenship to all “residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip” — the occupied territories — in the 1970s. He thought Israeli Jews would continue to outnumber Palestinians, and could outvote the Arabs and maintain control of a Greater Israel without depriving them of basic civil rights. On Dec. 28, 1977, Begin proposed, “A resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who asks for Israeli citizenship will obtain it in compliance with the citizenship law of the State of Israel. Residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who freely choose Israeli citizenship will be eligible to vote, and be elected to the Knesset, in accord with Israel’s election law.”
Now such an offer would be too risky. Some experts have predicted that the number of Palestinians in Greater Israel will exceed the number of Jews by 2015. Others think it could happen as early as 2010, Then, Palestinians could call for a “one-state solution,” saying that they want to take up Begin’s offer while knowing they would end up taking control of this Greater Israel. (They couldn’t do so immediately, since so many Palestinians are so young and below voting age.) In fact, then-Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia threatened to ask for one state in January 2004 if a two-state solution could not be negotiated. “We will go for a one-state solution,” he asserted.
Jews a Minority
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper estimates that Jews became a minority in Greater Israel this very year of 2005. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is the year that Israel is pulling out of Gaza and ridding herself of approximately 1.3 million Palestinians. Given that no peace settlement for a two-state solution with the Palestinians was anywhere near, Sharon had two choices: Unilateral disengagement, or somehow deny the coming calls for voting rights for the majority of people in Greater Israel. The latter was untenable, so he chose the former.
How did Palestinians come to outnumber Jews despite massive immigration into Israel from the former Soviet Union? And how come divesting herself of Gaza has gained Israel only 20 years, according to a demographic expert cited by AP on August 14?
Israel’s low birthrate and the Palestinians’ relatively normal one has led to this major decision of unilateral withdrawal, one that affects not only Israel and the Palestinians, but the entire Middle East and the entire world. A specific territorial action with major local and geopolitical consequences has been prompted by a disastrously low birthrate — just as low birthrates in Western European nations have in part prompted them to import millions of Muslim workers, leading to another situation having enormous local and global consequences.
The Future of Israel
Sharon himself used to dismiss the demographic issue. Not anymore. According to Haaretz Diplomatic Editor Aluf Benn in an August 14 article, Sharon told a group of French Jews during his recent trip to Paris, “The future of the Jewish people depends on the nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. In this spirit, we initiated the disengagement plan .… That would secure the Jewish majority in the land of Israel.”
Benn says that the demographic issue could become the next big one in Israel, and could even drive her to offer bits of her own territory to the Palestinian Authority in order to dump some of her most populous Arab towns (1.2 million Arabs live within Israel proper). Israel might receive in return pieces of the West Bank where her settlements lie. Predicts Benn, “Once disengagement from the Gaza Strip is complete, this will become the next frontier of Israeli politics.”
The total fertility rate of women in Gaza averages 5.9 over the course of her lifetime, according to the CIA World Factbook. Among Palestinians in the West Bank, it’s 4.4. Among Israeli Jews, it’s 2.4, though Ben Wattenberg in Fewer says it was 2.6 in 2002 and has been stable since 1990 — but he also says the Muslim rate in Israel was 4.6. There are about l.2 million Arabs in Israel, 1.3 million in Gaza, and 2.4 million in the West Bank, or 4.9 million total in Greater Israel while there are 5.3 million Jews total (some estimate these numbers a little differently). Jewish immigration into Israel has dropped to tiny numbers.
Different experts have slightly different numbers, but all agree: Palestinians are out-reproducing Israeli Jews by a large margin. Palestinians’ relative immunity to contemporary anti-family and anti-life dogmas has served them well.
Arafat’s Best Weapon = Palestinian Babies
It’s now become commonplace for commentators to cite the demographic aspect to the Gaza and West Bank pull-outs. Victor David Hansen wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 26, 2005, “In Sharon’s thinking, it no longer made any sense to periodically send thousands of soldiers to Gaza to protect less than 10,000 Israeli civilians abroad, when a demographic time bomb of too few Jews was ticking inside Israel proper.” Georgie Anne Geyer wrote on Aug. 18, 2005, “This, to me at least, means that [Sharon] may have actually given up his lifelong vision of a ‘Greater Israel.’… Why would a man like Gen. Sharon so pare down his dreams? The answers are found no longer in military might, but in demographic might.”
As the late Yassir Arafat said, “The womb of the Arab woman is my best weapon.” But no one should blame Palestinians for having children; they do what comes naturally. It’s the self-inflicted refusal to nurture the Israeli Jewish people that has been Arafat’s best weapon.
