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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
Figure 5. Jewish Population Distribution by Age, Sex, and Origin,
1986
Source: Based on information from Israel, Central Bureau of
Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1987, No. 38,
Jerusalem, 1987, 74-75.
Figure 6. Non-Jewish Population Distribution by Age, Sex, and
Origin, 1986
Source: Based on information from Israel, Central
Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel,
1987, No. 38, Jerusalem, 1987, 67.
Figure 7. Analysis of Jewish Population by Origin, 1948, 1972, and
1986
Source: Based on information from Israel, Central Bureau of
Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1987, No. 38,
Jerusalem, 1987, 73.
At the end of October 1987, according to the Central Bureau of
Statistics, the population of Israel was 4,389,600, of which
3,601,200 (82 percent) were Jews. About 27 percent of the world's
Jews lived in Israel. About 605,765 (13.8 percent) of the
population of Israel were Muslims, 100,960 (2.3 percent) were
Christians, and about 74,623 (1.7 percent) were Druzes and others.
At the end of 1986 the population was growing at a rate of 1.3
percent for Jews, 3.0 percent for Muslims, 1.5 percent for
Christians, and 2.8 percent for Druzes and others.
In 1986 the median age of the Israeli population was 25.4.
Differences among segments of the population, among Jews and Muslim
Arabs in particular, were striking. The non-Jewish population was
much younger; in 1986 its median age was 16.8, that of Jews was
27.6. The Jewish population was skewed toward the upper and lower
extremes of age, as compared with the non-Jewish age distribution.
This skewing resulted from large-scale Jewish immigration,
especially the immigration that accompanied the formation of the
state in 1948. Many of these immigrants were older individuals;
moreover, most of the younger immigrants were single and did not
marry and raise families until after their settlement. This
circumstance accounts in part for the relatively small percentage
of the Jewish population in the twenty to thirty-five-year-old age-
group
(see
fig. 5).
With regard to minorities, Muslim Arabs clearly predominated
over Christians, Druzes, and others. In 1986 Muslims accounted for
77 percent of the non-Jewish Israeli population. Together with the
Druzes, who resembled them closely in demographic terms, they had
the highest rate of growth, with all the associated indicators
(family size, fertility rate, etc.). Christian Arabs in 1986 were
demographically more similar to Israeli Jews than to Muslims or
Druzes
(see
fig. 6).
The Jewish Israeli population differed also in country of
origin; the population included African-Asian and European-American
Jews, and native-born Israelis, or
sabras (see Glossary). In the
oldest age-groups, those of European-American provenance, called
"Ashkenazim," predominated, reflecting the population of the
pre-1948 era. By the early 1970s, the number of Israelis of
African-Asian origin outnumbered European or American Jews. In
Israel, immigrants from African and Asian countries were called
either Orientals, from the Hebrew Edot Mizrah (communities of the
East), or Sephardim
(see Jewish Ethnic Groups
, this ch.), from an
older and different usage. It was not until 1975 that the sabras
outnumbered immigrants
(see
fig. 7).
Understanding the importance of
aliyah (pl., aliyot--see Glossary),
as immigration to Israel is called in Hebrew, is crucial
to understanding much about Israeli society, from its demography to
its ethnic composition. Aliyah has historical, ideological, and
political ramifications. Ideologically, aliyah was one of the
central constituents of the Zionist goal of ingathering of the
exiles. Historically and politically, aliyah accounted for most of
the growth in the Jewish population before and just after the
advent of the state. For example, between 1922 and 1948 the Jewish
population in Palestine grew at an annual average rate of 9
percent. Of this growth, 75 percent was due to immigration. By
contrast, in the same period, the Arab population grew at an
average annual rate of 2.75 percent--almost all as a result of
natural increase. Between 1948 and 1960, immigration still
accounted for 69 percent of the annual average growth rate of 8.6
percent. A significant group entering Israel since 1965 has been
Soviet Jews, of whom approximately 174,000 immigrated between 1965
and 1986. In the most recent period for which data existed in 1988,
the period from 1983 through 1986, immigration contributed only a
little more than 6 percent to a much diminished average annual
growth rate of 1.5 percent (see
table 2, Appendix A).
The practical political aspects of declining aliyot are
important in comparing the Jewish and non-Jewish population growth
rates; one must also consider emigration of Jews from Israel,
called yerida, a term with pejorative connotations in
Hebrew. It is estimated that from 400,000 to 500,000 Israelis
emigrated between 1948 and 1986. Emigration is a politically
sensitive topic, and statistical estimates of its magnitude vary
greatly. To take one possible index, the Central Bureau of
Statistics noted that of the more than 466,000 Israeli residents
who went abroad for any period of time in 1980, about 19,200 had
not returned by the end of 1986. Continued emigration combined with
falling immigration, together with unequal natural population
growth rates of Jews and Arabs, mean that by the year 2010,
assuming medium projections of Arab and Jewish fertility, the
proportion of the Jewish population within Israel's pre-1967
borders would decrease to 75 percent. If the occupied territories
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were to be annexed, by 2010 Jews
would become a clear minority in the state, comprising
approximately 45 percent of the total population.
These demographic facts have affected population and family
planning policies in Israel, but as of 1988 no consistent course of
action had emerged. Until the mid-1960s, Israel followed a policy
favoring large families, and family planning was not a priority. In
the early 1970s, as a result of unrest among Oriental Jews, the
Labor government under Golda Meir decided to support family
planning as a way of reducing the size of Oriental Jewish families
and narrowing the socioeconomic gap between them and Ashkenazim.
Nevertheless, most family planning consisted, unsatisfactorily to
most people concerned with the issue, of abortions performed under
a liberal abortion law that was opposed bitterly by Orthodox Jews
for religious reasons. (Orthodox Jews managed to restrict the
criteria for performing abortions after Menachem Begin came to
power in 1977.) Thus, because Jews feared being demographically
overtaken by Arabs and because of potent opposition by Orthodox
Jews, the development of a coherent family-planning policy was
stymied. In the late 1980s, Israel's policies on family planning
remained largely contradictory.
The dispersal of the population has been a matter of concern
throughout the existence of the state. In 1986 the average
population density in Israel was 199 persons per square kilometer,
with densities much higher in the cities (close to 6,000 persons
per square kilometer in the Tel Aviv District in 1986) and
considerably lower in the very arid regions of the south. The
population continues to be overwhelmingly urban. Almost 90 percent
resides in urban localities, more than one-third of the total in
the three largest cities (in order of population), Jerusalem, Tel
Aviv, and Haifa. Since 1948, despite calls throughout the 1960s to
"Judaize" Galilee, the population has been shifting southward.
Still, as of 1988, almost two-thirds of the population was
concentrated on the Mediterranean coast between Haifa and Ashdod.
In the mid-1950s, in an effort both to disperse the population
from the coast and settle the large numbers of immigrants coming
from Middle Eastern and North African countries, so-called
development towns were planned and built over the next fifteen
years. They were settled primarily by Oriental Jews, or
Sephardim (see Glossary)
and through the years they have often been arenas of
unrest and protest among ethnic groups. In 1986, about 77 percent
of rural Jews lived in kibbutzim and moshavim; still, these two
rather striking Israeli social institutions attracted a very small
percentage (3.5 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively) of the total
Jewish population.
The changing distribution of population was more pronounced
among Arabs. Whereas 75 percent of the Arabs lived in rural
localities in 1948, less than 30 percent did by 1983. This pattern
was not entirely because of internal migration to urban areas, but
rather resulted from the urbanization of larger Arab villages. For
example, in 1950 the Arab locality of Et Taiyiba near Nabulus had
5,100 residents; by 1986 its population had risen to 19,000.
Israeli Arabs were concentrated in central and western Galilee,
around the city of Nazareth, and in the city of Jaffa (Yafo in
Hebrew), northeast of Tel Aviv. Arabs resided also in Acre (Akko in
Hebrew), Lydda (Lod in Hebrew), Ramla, Haifa, and near Beersheba.
They constituted the majority in East Jerusalem, annexed formally
in July 1980.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of
1986 about 51,200 Jews resided in the the West Bank occupied
territories (called Judea and Samaria by Jewish Israelis), and an
additional 2,100 resided in the Gaza Strip (these figures
represented 1.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, of the 1986
Jewish population of Israel). They lived in 122 localities in both
areas, including 4 cities, 10 kibbutzim, 31 moshavim, and 77 "other
rural localities." This last category included more than fifty
localities of a kind called yishuv kehillati, a
nonagricultural cooperative settlement, a form new to Israel. Such
settlements were associated especially with Amana, the settlement
arm of Gush Emunim, and developed in the mid-1970s especially to
enhance Jewish presence in the West Bank. According to the Central
Bureau of Statistics, in 1985 about 7,094, and in 1986
approximately 5,160, Jews settled in the occupied territories. Some
did so for religious and nationalistic reasons, but many more were
motivated by the high costs of housing inside Israel, combined with
economic incentives offered by the Likud governments of the late
1970s and early 1980s to those who settled in the West Bank.
The Central Bureau of Statistics estimated the 1986 Arab
population of the West Bank to be 836,000, and that of Gaza to be
545,000, for a total population of close to 1.4 million. In 1986
the population increased at a rate of 2.5 percent for the West Bank
and 3.4 percent for Gaza--among the highest annual rates attained
during the Israeli occupation.
Data as of December 1988
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