Demographic Argument For Surrendering Land to Arabs Is a Crock

For over thirty years, advocates of surrender of portions of the Land of Israel, for incorporation into a Palestinian Arab state, have argued that the demographics of Arab population growth demand such concessions, if Israel is to remain a democratic state with a Jewish majority. That was the rationale behind the disastrous Oslo Accords and the Gaza withdrawal. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert still cites the "demographic threat" to justify further territorial concessions to the Arabs in Judea and Shomron, the historical heartland of the Jewish people.

In the Jerusalem Post, David Rubin writes that the "demographic threat" is a chimera, a fantasy wielded by the Israeli left to silence their opponents:

"The demographic argument of those who advocate Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, whether unilateral or negotiated with our peace-loving neighbors, ignores both the steady high birthrates of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria and the ongoing and increasing emigration of the Arab population from those areas. Furthermore, the media rarely notes that the reports of massive Arab population growth have been deliberately exaggerated to serve Arab/Muslim political interests. By closing our eyes to these simultaneous trends, we are simply supporting Hamas/Fatah propaganda and lies, intended to destroy the Jewish state.

"YORAM ETTINGER, who headed the Israeli research team in a major demographic study carried out in 2005, has pointed out that Israel is not losing the demographic race and emphasized that "there is no need to retreat from Jewish geography in order to secure Jewish demography." Furthermore, the true demographic threat for Israel is not in Judea and Samaria, but in regions like the Galilee, with its large and growing Arab majority, or in secular Tel Aviv, where large families are unfortunately not the norm. As Prof. Dan Meyerstein, president of Ariel College, has pointed out, the birthrate in Judea and Samaria is "crazily higher than the rest of Israel" - 4.4 children, as opposed to the national average of 2.8. "

So there you have it. The Arabs are not going to overwhelm their Jews of Israel with their birthrate. The only relevant demographic risk is that posed by the very leftist societal elites that scream for territorial concessions--they are not having babies. The much maligned settlers who populate the towns of Judea and Shomron are the very people who are most contributing to the preservation of a Jewish majority in Israel.

Maybe there are some sound arguments for the creation of a Palestinian State in Judea and Shomron (although the likely outcome will be a terrorist state within easy shelling and rocket range of all of Israel's major cities). But the "demographic threat" is not one of them.