Predictions of Israel pop.

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 9

Predictions of Israel pop.

NZPA-AP Jerusalem Palestinians will make up close to half the population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 20 years time, according to predictions in a report. The 1986 report of the West Bank data base project, an independent study team, estimated that Jews would make up only about 55 per cent of the total population of the area in the year 2005, compared with about 63 per cent at the end of 1984. Government statistics showed that 717,000 of Israel’s 4.2 million citizens at the end of 1984 were non-Jewish, while there were 787,000 Palestinians on the West Bank, and 510,000 in the Gaza Strip. The report said the proportion of Palestinians would grow because the Palestinians, including Israel’s Arab citizens, were more fertile than Israeli Jews.

It also said the economic crisis in the Gulf States had almost stopped Palestinian emigration from the West Bank and Gaza. The Prime Minister’s Labour Party believes Israel must give up its occupation of these areas, to avoid the dilemma it perceives in the near future: either maintaining the Jewish nature of the State by discriminating against a large Palestinian population without voting rights, or maintaining its democratic nature by giving all the Palestinians the vote, but destroying its Jewishness.

The Foreign Minister’s Likud bloc wants to keep the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty while giving the Palestinians local autonomy rather than Israeli citizenship. He also wants to expand Jewish settlement in the area.