The data cited this week in the Knesset by a top Israeli official would hardly have generated the storm it did were it not for the push by the Israeli right, mainly the HaBayit HaYehudi party, to annex West Bank lands and thwart the two-state solution.
At the March 26 session of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Col. Uri Mendes reported that according to official data compiled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), some 5 million Palestinians are registered in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mendes is the deputy commander of the Israeli Civil Administration, tasked with administering the daily life of Palestinians in the areas under Israeli control. The figures he cited, along with the number of Israeli Arab citizens and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, some 1.8 million according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, bring the total to 6.8 million Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Israel’s Jewish population numbers slightly over 6.5 million.
These figures surprised Knesset members on the right. If implemented, their plan to annex West Bank lands to Israel would mean a clear Arab demographic advantage over Jews in a future binational state. It was therefore no surprise when Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi rushed to tweet, tongue in cheek, that the vision of an Arab prime minister in Israel was drawing closer. Tibi continued to joke at the expense of the right, saying that when he is prime minister, his government would “encourage Jews to flock to the ballot boxes in droves” — a reference to the scandalous warning by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the day of the March 2015 elections that "Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls." Tibi added that his government would also revoke the law allowing the screening of candidates for homes in certain communities, “so as not to hurt the Jewish minority.”
Committee Chair Avi Dichter of the Likud responded to the data by saying, “If the figure is correct, it is troubling. If it is not correct, we want to know what the precise number is, of course.” Committee member Moti Yogev of HaBayit HaYehudi claimed the figures were wrong and illogical. As far as he’s concerned, they are falsified or deliberately slanted. “In 2016, [the Palestinians] reported 80,000 births and 8,000 deaths — a life expectancy that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” he said.
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