Jewish Population Outgrows The Arabs

Jerusalem – The Jewish population of Israel continues to grow faster than the Arab population.

The data came from from an analysis of data of the Central Bureau of Statistics for the first four months of 2007.

According to the analysis, which was conducted by the American-Israeli team for demographic studies headed by Bennett Zimmerman in California, 75.5 percent of all the births registered in Israel between January and April were from Jewish mothers, compared with 74 percent in 2006 and 69 percent in 1995.

There has been a significant decline in the difference between the number of births with Jewish and Arab women, although Arab women are still leading by 0.8 births per woman.

The change is due to the fact that the fertility rate among women from the former Soviet republics is now close to that of Israeli women (2.8 births per woman), compared with one birth per woman in the first year after they immigrated to Israel.

In Judea and Samaria too very significant demographic changes are

taking place. The negative migration from Judea and Samaria and the Gaza

Strip continues, and in 2006 it reached a total of 25,000 people.

According to records of the passport control police, 15,000 people left

Judea and Samaria through the international crossing points, and 10,500

persons were registered by the international inspectors as having left

the Gaza Strip in 2006. The annual average of negative migration since

1950, is more than 10,000, most of them from Judea and Samaria.

Up until the year 2000 most of the emigrants were Christians, but

since then most of them have been Muslims. The flow of emigration

increased after the Hamas election victory in 2006, and intensified when

the fighting broke out between Hamas and Fatah.

©The Bulletin 2007