Friday, January 12, 2007
On my recent trip to Israel, Yoram Ettinger was one of the most enthusiastic to approach me after my talk and put practice to my advice to take better advantage of the blogosphere. He gave me a hard copy of the report he was a part of writing concerning the demography of populations west of the Jordan River, and how the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza have been massively over-estimated. I don't consider myself capable of a serious deconstruction or examination of the findings, but it's all worth having as part of the debate. Here's a short op-ed by Ettinger that sums things up and includes a link to the full report at the end. A snip:
...Israel's "Prophets of Demographic Doom" have accepted, as a Gospel, the numbers and projections published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), although such data have been refuted annually by the documentation of births, deaths, immigration and eligible voters by the Palestinian Ministries of Health and Education, the Palestinian Election Commission, Israel's Border Police and Jordan's Bureau of Statistics. The "Prophets of Doom" did not scrutinize the data base of the PCBS numbers for Judea & Samaria and Gaza (the 1997 census). They did not know that the PCBS numbers for 1998-2006 constitute significantly-flawed projections and not tangible numbers. They overlooked the inclusion, by the PCBS, of some 400,000 overseas residents, in contrast with global demographic standards, which include only de-facto residents. They ignored the double-count of about 250,000 Jerusalem Arabs and additional 105,000 Israeli ID card carrying Palestinians, who are counted as "Green Line Arabs" as well as "West Bank Arabs". They were unaware that PCBS numbers included a projection of a 300,000 person net-immigration since 1998, while in fact a 100,000 person net-emigration has occurred, with an average annual net-emigration of over 10,000 since 1950. They embraced the PCBS numbers – blindly – in spite of the fact that the PCBS assumed a population growth rate twice as high as Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and Niger, which lead the globe in that category. The "Prophets of Demographic Doom" never mentioned such gross errors in their writings or lectures. If they were aware of such errors by the PCBS, but chose not to report it, then it would be doubly concerning...
