A Jewish demographic state
Having lodged itself close to the top of the national agenda, the issue of
demography is forcing both the right and the left to grapple with the
difficult dilemma at the heart of the state's character. Can Israel be a
Jewish and democratic state? Is there any such animal?
About three months ago Prof. Arnon Sofer sent an urgent letter to Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. The subject was the need for separation from the
Palestinians. "Most of the inhabitants of Israel realize that there is only
one solution in the face of our insane and suicidal neighbor - separation,"
wrote Sofer. "You should have known this months before they did, as the
grave demographic data were put on your desk many months ago. In the absence
of separation, the meaning of such a majority (of Arabs - L.G.) - is the end
of the Jewish state of Israel. You should remember that on the same day as
the Israel Defense Forces is investing efforts and succeeding in eliminating
one terrorist or another, on that very same day, as on every day of the
year, within the territories of western Israel, about 400 children are being
born, some of whom will become new suicide terrorists! Do you realize this?"
Prof. Sofer is not one for understatement. Behind his back he is called
"Arnon the Arab-counter" (in Hebrew his surname means, among other things,
"he counts"), because of the obsessiveness with which the geographer from
the University of Haifa is engaged in counting the Arabs in order to prepare
demographic forecasts. This nickname, which has also been brought to his
attention, does not really offend him.
"Because I'm worried about the Jews - they say I'm a racist? I think I
deserve a medal," he says. "Anyway, if I say that, for the sake of the
demographic balance, it is necessary to dismantle 50 Jewish settlements in
the territories and separate from 219,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem -
am I a right-winger at all?"
Sofer links the issue of separation to the demographic issue. This is one of
the earmarks of the new discourse on both these issues. During the past
year, ever since the talk of separation began, especially as a security
necessity, the discussion of demography has also increased. The left enlists
demography to give validity to its call to end the occupation by means of
separation; the right and the Jewish settlers in the territories argue that
the demographic problem is so big that in any case it cannot be solved by
giving back territories or by building a fence.
There are those who come to separation straight from demography, like
Minister Dan Meridor, who has even gone so far as to create a link between
the two. "Had Jabotinsky known that 6 million of the Jewish people would
perish in the Holocaust, perhaps he would not have said `both banks of the
Jordan,'" remarked Meridor sadly in a conversation this week.
Demography, as the science that examines changes in the make-up of the
population, has always existed. But there is no doubt that the sense of the
threat that has been felt by the Jewish population of Israel during the past
two years has removed it from the academic realm to daily discourse. From
it, transfer has now sprouted as a legitimate outlook; it is part of the
infrastructure that has given rise to the thinking about a binational state
and it is one of the elements upon which the plans for separation are
growing. Sometimes the demographic debate accompanies the question of
separation. Sometimes it stands on its own.
In recent months a permanent team has been meeting at the Van Leer Jerusalem
Institute, headed by Dr. Shimshon Zelniker and run by lawyer Gilead Sher and
Major General (res.) Uri Saguy. Had the Jewish underground operated with the
same degree of secrecy as the team that meets at Van Leer, it is doubtful
that it would ever have been exposed. Appearing before the group are experts
from various disciplines - among others, demographers, geographers and
Jewish settlers from the territories. The team is examining the various
separation plans with the aim of forming a crystallized joint opinion.
Toward the end of the prolonged deliberations, it is clear that the
demographic issue is the most important element in determining the lines of
separation.
During the work process, the team has conducted what is called "sensitive
examinations" of the various separation lines. On the basis of the
assumption that a Jewish majority inside the State of Israel is a balance of
80 percent Jews and 20 percent Arabs, every dunam that is added to Israel
should preserve this balance of eight to two.
"The place where it is necessary to cut is the demographic line," confirms
Yiftah Spector, a businessman, former pilot and member of the team. "In
paving the current route some basic mistakes have already been made. Thus,
for example, it left inside it a number of Palestinian villages in the
northern part of the Triangle. Thus, by merely drawing a line, they have
added 11,000 Palestinians to our camp. There is a constant tension between
separating territories and separating populations. Separation has to be
between populations. If we continue to hold on to the territories, we will
be a minority that is ruling a majority, like it was in South Africa.
Alternatively, the new majority could, through democratic means, eliminate
the Jewish state."
Van Leer is not the only place where they are discussing demography. They
are also examining it at universities, at the National Security Council and
even in home discussion circles throughout the country. Reports indicate
that men tend to go more for the security argument; women are more sensitive
to demography. The U.S. State Department and the CIA are also taking an
interest. The demographic calculations that have been gathered there are
similar to those that are being analyzed in Israel.
Richard Harris, the head of the planning department at the U.S. State
Department, some time ago asked Arnon Sofer what percentage of his
separation map is based on security and what percentage on demography. "One
hundred percent demography," replied Sofer.
At the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, a team of academics and senior
security people has met several times to discuss the issue of demography in
the State of Israel. Among other things, they discussed the idea of moving
Umm al-Fahm into the Palestinian state. A similar idea was proposed by
Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh on the basis of a proposal formulated
by Arnon Sofer about a year ago. The idea came to Sofer after he got annoyed
by some remark by former MK Abdelwahab Darawshe. Thus Sofer decide that it
was worth separating from the Triangle. "This isn't expulsion, it's
irredentism," is how he explains the idea of handing over tens of thousands
of Israeli citizens, with their homes and possessions, to another country.
The difficulty in the discussion of the demographic issue is not in
recording the data or forecasting the trends. On these, there is nearly
complete agreement among the researchers. The difficulty lies in the
inevitably racist tone of the discourse. The definition of non-Jewish
Israeli citizens or even Palestinians in the territories as a "problem" or a
"demographic threat" makes use of racist language.
The new interest in demography touches the core of the state's being - its
definition as a Jewish state. For the first time in the history of public
discourse here, even the most devout leftists are being required to confront
their inner truth. It is no longer possible to seek refuge in banal
statements like "there is no contradiction between a Jewish and a democratic
state," or hollow slogans about coexistence. Anyone who clings to the
concept of a Jewish state cannot ignore the demographic figures laid out in
black and white in dozens of publications on the subject. The character of
the state, its identity card, now depends on the definitions derived from
these figures. The fact that the vast majority of Jewish citizens cling to
the definition of Israel as a "Jewish state" leaves no way out.
At Bar-Ilan University there has been an examination, in a series of
surveys, of attitudes toward basic values like peace, democracy and a Jewish
state. At various points in time, the Jewish state has been perceived as the
value of supreme importance. Peace and democracy alternate among themselves
in secondary places after this value, in accordance with events in the
background of the particular survey. This is no doubt the reason so many
people avoid discussing the issue, as they are aware of the fact that behind
"the demographic issue" there are masses of people whose very existence is
defined as a problem.
One of those who is put off by the discussion of demography is Prof. Ehud
Sprinzak, the head of the school of government at the Interdisciplinary
Center. "I don't like the concern with this issue," he says. "Those guys,
the demographers, think that demography explains everything. Sofer has been
making those calculations for 25 years now, but during a time of conflict
this frightens people. For me,demography is an abstract concept that should
be dealt with only in the context of additional concepts. A narrow
perspective cannot explain the reality, I refuse to go into a bunker because
of numbers."
Sprinzak's anger derives in part from the image that has clung to the
Interdisciplinary Center after a comprehensive discussion of the demographic
issue at the last Herzliya Conference. At that conference Sofer presented
his data and Major General (res.) Shlomo Gazit from the Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies responded by saying: "Democracy has to be subordinated to
demography."
In a conversation with him this week, Gazit reiterated this, stressing that
this is a time of emergency. Sprinzak calls Gazit's remark "a miserable
statement," and explains that "Gazit was upset by the numbers and
exaggerated." Sprinzak disassociates himself from Sofer - "He's from the
University of Haifa, anyway," he stresses repeatedly, as if to call
attention to the fact that the racist talk about the demographic issue did
not spring up at his school.
In a pamphlet entitled "Israel, Demography 2000-2020" put out by the chair
of geostrategy at the University of Haifa, Sofer defines the demographic
changes in the region as an "existential threat." He formulates the plethora
of implications in three processes that will take place in this region: a
decline toward becoming a Third World country, a flight of the strong and an
"existential threat." No less. According to updated figures that Sofer
presents, in the year 2020 the population of the land of Israel (including
the territories) will reach 15.5 million; 40 percent of them will be Jews.
Within the State of Israel in 2020, the proportion of Jews will be 64
percent.
According to figures presented by Dr. Yitzhak Ravid of the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya, in 2020 the population of the land of Israel will reach
15.1 million, of whom 6.5 million will be Jews. Sofer says that in 2020 the
number of Arab citizens of Israel will reach 2 million, and the Jewish
majority will shrink to 65 percent. According to Ravid the number of Arabs
will come to about 1.9 million. Prof. Sergio della Pergola presents
identical numbers. According to demographic assumptions that are accepted
throughout the world, a minority of more than 30 percent defines a state as
binational. There are also demographers who are following the foreign
workers, as well as the non-Jews, particularly among the immigrants from the
Commonwealth of Independent States. Certain demographers put these in the
category of "Others," as an additional demographic threat to the Jewish
majority; others see them as reinforcements for the Jewish majority, as they
are "non-Arabs."
Lutfi Mashour, the editor of the newspaper Al-Sinara that is published in
Nazareth, took up the issue of the growth in the number of non-Jews in
Israel in a lecture he delivered this month at the University of Haifa.
There too - how could it be otherwise? - they are looking into the
demographic issue. Mashour argued that it is not the Arabs, but rather "a
demographic solution in the style of the non-Jewish immigration from Russia
or other immigrations like it, which are planned as a demographic solution
for the Jews - that are the demographic danger to the state."
Mashour sounded upset by the obsessive concern with the subject. "If you
move Umm al-Fahm to Palestine, the border will be at the village of Musmus,"
he said. "Then you will get a little more annoyed, and give back all of the
Triangle and the Galilee, and thus we will go back to the Partition lines of
1947. Do you really want all of Israel to be one big Masada? And altogether,
what is this craziness? After all, until October, 2000, your biggest
demographic problem was the ultra-Orthodox. In your democratic-demographic
game, we won't be the factor. If you keep on this way, emigration from
Israel for security and economic reasons will be your problematic
demographic factor."
Dr. Aziz Haider, a sociologist at the Truman Institute of Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, disagrees with the nature of the concern with demography. "In
the past, very few Arabs dealt with the demographic issue, because they did
not feel that it was a threat to them," says Haider. "Recently, when there
has been talk of exchanges of populations and territories, they are also
beginning to talk about this, because they are feeling an existential
threat. I am not sure about the figures people are presenting. Even
supposedly objective data can be biased. All the estimates are based on the
current birthrates in the Arab population. As a sociologist, I take into
account social and cultural processes as well, for example processes of
modernization that change trends. The development of a society is not a
linear process; the ideological discussion of demography is a big lie that
people create to serve their interests."
The manipulative use of the "demographic threat" was manifested in the
television appearance last week by the director-general of the Zionist
Council, Moshe Ben-Attar to explain the Council's recommendation to cut the
National Insurance Institute's child allowances starting from the fifth
child, to limit the birth rate. As it is clear to everyone that the
ultra-Orthodox who have large families will find some arrangement,
especially in the age of the demographic struggle, this is obviously an
attempt to limit the birth rate in the Arab sector. From Ben-Attar's remarks
it could have been understood that all his concern is about the sixth
Bedouin child, who will not have a personal computer.
The Zionist Council is not alone: all kinds of proposals are being tossed
around in the Knesset and elsewhere. One of these is National Union-Yisrael
Beiteinu MK Avigdor Lieberman's plan to expel from the country any Arab who
refuses to sign a loyalty oath to Israel when he gets his identity card.
There are also proposals to cut National Insurance Institute allowances and
to change the Law of Return, all of them having to do now with the
demographic issue.
"Transfer Now," a placard that is now posted on every empty wall throughout
the country - is the decisive answer from one side; a binational state is
the less popular answer from the other side of the political fence.
"It's frightening when Jews talk about demography," says Dr. Amnon
Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "There were those who
believed that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 solved the problem. Now they are
discovering to their dismay a reality in which the Jews will always be a
minority in the Middle East." By "they," Raz-Krakotzkin means the Israeli
left. As he sees it, the left's view of the world is based on a demographic
principle, just like the worldview of transfer.
"The peace discourse of the Israeli left in fact proposes getting rid of the
Arabs, and therefore it sounds exactly like the talk of transfer," he
argues. "I share the sense of anxiety among the Jewish public in Israel. It
is justified. I am in fact thinking about Jewish existence, but I refuse to
think about it in demographic terms. The binational framework is the only
one that allows the separation of Jewish existence from the demographic
issue. In demography, the Jews are losing. It exposes all the internal
contradictions of Zionism. The binational approach is aimed at solving this
problem, and there really are Arabs who accuse me of supporting
binationalism in order to preserve the Jewish people."
Throughout the conversation, Raz-Krakotzkin calls Israel a
"Jewish-demographic state," usually as a slip of the tongue. In the
atmosphere of the past months, this is perhaps the most accurate definition.
By Lily Galili
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