Demographics of Israel and Palestine

  1. Population of Israel: 8,585,500 (2015)
    1. Jewish population: 6,119,000 (75%)
    2. Arab population: 1,688,600 (21%)
    3. Others: 349,700 (4%)
      1. This includes around 140,000 Druze
    4. Note: This equals 8,157,300 as data is from 2013 (I think).
    5. Annual growth rate: 2.0%
      1. Growth rate of Jewish population: 1.7%
      2. Growth rate of Arab population: 2.2%
    6. So Jewish population is around 8,585,500 times .75 = 6,439,125?
  2. Population of West Bank: 2,862,485
    1. Growth rate: 2.59%
    2. In 2014 population was 83% Arab, 17% Israeli Jewish and other
      1. 80-85% Muslim, 1 – 2.5% Christian, 12-14% Jewish.
    3. Jewish population is included in the Israeli figures
    4. So 2,862,485 x .83 = 2,375,863 Arabs?
  3. Population of Gaza Strip: 1,819,982
    1. Growth rate: 3.41%
    2. 98-99% Muslim, 0.7% Christian
  4. Population of East Jerusalem: (192,800)
  5. Total Palestinian Arab Population: 4,192,845 or greater (see below)

1. Total Jewish population in Israel and Palestine: 6,439,125

2. Total Arab population in Israel and Palestine: 5,884,445 or more

    A. Around 6.08 in 2014 according to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

    B. Around 6.2 million according to Israeli statistics

 

This is all drawn from two Wikipedia articles:

  1. Demographics_of_Israel

  2. Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories

  3. I will let you all sort out the details…as I am sure I made an error somewhere

Anyhow, the main point is in the areas of Israel, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip there are over 6 million Jews and a little over 6 million Arabs (of which 1.7 million are Israeli Arabs). At some point in the near future (2020 according to one article I saw), Israeli and Palestinian Arabs will outnumber Israeli Jews across the area of Israel and Palestine. Right now there are effectively three states covering this area: Israel, Palestinian Authority (West Bank) and Gaza (under Hamas).

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

2 Comments

  1. The canard that Palestinians will soon outnumber Jewish Israelis is a distortion. Everybody knows that Israel will never annex the Gaza Strip. Quite the contrary, all Jewish residents of Gaza were evacuated in 2005. And even among right-wing Israelis who want to annex West Bank territory to Israel, there is little support for annexing major Palestinian population centers such as Jenin and Ramallah. A Google search will tell you that the birth rate of Palestinians has plummeted in the past decade, and the Jewish birthrate has increased. There is no foreseeable scenario in which Jewish Israelis “lose” the demographic battle, with or without a 2-state solution.

  2. For 2015 I have the population growth rate for the Palestinian territories reported as 2.9%. This is 2.59% for West Bank and 3.41% for Gaza Strip. I have the population growth rate of Israel at 2.0% in 2015. Jewish Israeli were 1.7% while Arab Israeli were 2.1%.

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