By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine

Israeli leaders and strategists readily admit that the Palestinian demographic growth in mandatory Palestine (between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean) constitutes an existential long-term peril for Israel and Zionism.

It is widely believed that within this proscribed geographical area (mandatory Palestine), Palestinian population is either equal or will soon be equal to the Jewish population.

In fact, some reliable Jewish demographers have argued that there are already more Palestinians than Jews in Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials adopt dismissive tactics to downplay and underestimate the clear Palestinian advantage.

This includes scandalously manipulating statistical data such as dividing the Arab population mass into numerous categories and sub-categories.

Thus, the Palestinians are Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, Bedouins, etc., while the Jewish population is treated as one mass despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews are not considered bona fide Jews, either because they are not Orthodox or because they fail to prove they have Jewish ancestry.

More to the point, the bulk of the estimated 450,000 residents are counted as Jews in most Israel censuses when in fact these people are neither Arab nor Jews.

This segment includes some 346,000 individuals, who are neither Jewish nor Arab but classified as “other,” a category that includes about 4,000 Circassians, 3,000 Armenians, 1,000 Samaritans, perhaps 5,000 African Hebrew Israelites, several thousand Roma and Vietnamese, plus about 335,000 or 430,000 people who appear to be immigrants, mostly Russians, who entered the country under the Law of Return (which includes anyone with a single Jewish grandparent) but are not considered Jewish, along with various foreign-born spouses of Israeli Jews.

Indeed the fact that these people are counted in the Jewish population enables Israeli officials to claim that Israel still has a Jewish majority.

It must be recalled, though, that the Israeli government does not actually formally view them as Jews, especially in light of the ascendancy of right-wing and ultra-religious parties to power in Israel.

The scandalous manipulation of scientific data ought to be viewed as no more than a desperate attempt on the part of the Zionist establishment to produce an artificial assurance that things are alright and that Jews would continue for many years to come to be an overwhelming majority in Israel.

A few weeks ago, an Israeli journalist asked me if I thought that the demographic issue reached an irreversible point. I referred the journalist to data and projections by Israeli demographers.

I told him rather tersely that only Israel was capable of defeating Israel at this point of time and that Israel was actually doing this job quite effectively on behalf of the Palestinians.

The journalist asked me to elaborate. I told him that things were crystal clear and needed no more clarification or elaboration.

Table:

Here are the numbers (updated since 2013):
Palestinian Arabs, West Bank: 2,720,940
Palestinian Arabs, Gaza Strip: 1,802,387
(Total Palestinians, Israeli military-administered territories: 4,523,327)
Israeli Arabs (citizens): 1,680,800
Total Arabs under Israeli sovereign administration: 6,204,127
Israeli Jews: 6,120,100

Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/184245/jews-now-minority-in-israel-and-territories/#ixzz3ftHbL3V2

Reducing the size of the Palestinian family

Israeli officials are boasting about their success in reducing Palestinian birth rate in Israel proper into five children per household.

However, it is clear that this dimension ought to be viewed as a minor textual detail rather than a contextual reality.

Israeli officials realize this fact, but always seek to manipulate facts to reassure themselves and to make the Israeli Jewish public feel better.

It is generally true that a higher standard of living and a higher level of education often lead to a lower birth rate. But it is also true that these two factors make it harder for the Israeli state to marginalize the Arab community as this community is reasserting its national credentials, especially in the face of rising trends of Jewish racism and fascism.

As to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where the hard mass of the Palestinian population exists, the prevailing abject poverty is contributing to maintaining the current high birth rate. Indeed, within a few years, the combined population of the two regions will reach the five-million figure.

Israel hopes that hard economic conditions facing Palestinians in the two areas will force many young Palestinians to leave for good, thus alleviating the "demographic peril" for Israel.

However, it is clear that 90% of Palestinian expatriates in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states maintain their residency rights and never sever their umbilical cord to their homeland.

There is no doubt though that Israel is adopting every conceivable nefarious tactic to get as many Palestinians as possible to immigrate.

The main Israeli tactics to achieve this criminal strategy are focused on making the daily life of every Palestinian unbearable, so much so that Palestinians would contemplate leaving the country for good.

The enduring Nazi-like blockade of Gaza, the policy of narrowing Palestinian horizons in the West Bank, and cutting off the two regions from each other, are only examples of what Israel is doing to make Palestinian life unbearable and force as many Palestinians as possible to leave.

Moreover, the existence of a notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) that consciously or otherwise carries out Israeli designs doesn't militate against paramount Palestinian national interests.

That is why Palestinian national forces ought to concentrate their efforts on expediting Palestinian steadfastness in order to enable our people to withstand Israeli pressures and PA stupidity.

More draconian measures foreseen

There is no doubt that Israel will not sit idle and watch the Zionist enterprise being overrun by Palestinian demography. In the final analysis, Israel is too cunning and too evil to allow the forces of nature to reverse or undo this enterprise.

Indeed, Israel could eventually embark on the unthinkable to safeguard Zionism from what would appear as ultimate historical demise.

That is why the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and their friends must enlist every effort to make "the unthinkable" even more unthinkable.

But this is easier said than done. This is why Palestinians ought to utilize their finest brains for the purpose of devising and preparing a strategic salvation plan with historical proportions. This plan must make sure that the blunders of the past are not repeated and that no excuses are given to Israel to embark on Nazi-like policies, including mass expulsion of our people from their ancestral homeland.

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Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist and current affairs political commentator living in occupied Palestine.