There are few issues in the current debate on the future of Palestine that evoke more passion than demographics--the distillation of ethnic politics into the realm of raw procreative strategies. And there are fewer issues with more false assumptions.
On the Israeli side the so-called demographic-territorial dilemma (that is, the need to devolve Israeli control over the occupied territories in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state) has been the central tenant of Labor Zionism. For the last three decades it has represented the essence of what distinguished Labor from the straightforward colonial policies of the Likud and its allies. For the latter, there has been no demographic dilemma since keeping the West Bank and Gaza entailed no potential enfranchisement of the Arab population ("they can vote in Jordan"), and therefore no infringement on conventional Zionist hegemony. That is, until Sharon's recent abandonment of this paradigm with his Gaza withdrawal plan.
For the Labor Party and its allies, on the other hand, an overriding motivation for reaching an accord with the Palestinians has been to reduce the Arab population in Israel to a minimum, creating optimal conditions for a manageable Palestinian minority. One can say that demographic hegemony, and not anti-colonial sentiment, has thus been the central factor driving the Israeli peace camp.
The Palestinians have adopted a reverse notion of demographic nationalism, in which procreation is seen as a weapon of the weak. Israel was envisioned as a crusading state which would be overwhelmed by Palestinian fertility. In the mid-seventies the Israeli government and the Ramallah-based In'ash al Usra Society both promised social aid to families with more than ten children. Golda Meir, then prime minister, was shocked to learn that the main beneficiary of such public largesse was Arab families in the Galilee. The scheme was thereafter abandoned.
The fact is that high fertility, despite appearances, has little to do with nationalism or ideological struggles. Only in the literary imagination of zealots do people procreate for the nation. High fertility is rather rooted in the perception of children as an economic and social asset, especially in agrarian societies. Demographic nationalism is often added later as an explanation for such mundane factors. Conversely the two main factors leading to dramatic falls in fertility have been women's education and female employment outside the household.
The consequences of high fertility, however, are devastating. In Israel today, the irrational fear of Arab birthrates has led right-wing and left-wing governments to import a huge number of gentiles (mostly Russians and other East Europeans) as well as putative Jews (Falashas and others) to balance Arab growth rates--even if doing so undermines the notion of Israel as a Jewish state.
Nevertheless it is useful to recall the false assumptions behind these demographic policies:
- The conventional wisdom
that families procreate out of national duty has no basis in reality. They
produce children because they need them.
- The assumption, held by
many Palestinians, that eventually "we will overwhelm them with numbers"
could be a self-defeating strategy. Except for the Palestinian citizens of
Israel, who have made a dubious dent in the demographic balance, the high
fertility of Palestinian families is more of a threat to Palestinians than
to Israelis, since it contributes to large undereducated households, keeps
women in conditions of virtual servitude, and contributes to poverty and
ignorance. Even radical critics of the population control policies advocated
by the IMF and the World Bank have now abandoned this perspective in favor
of a more realistic examination of unfettered fertility and family planning
schemes.
- The assumption by Israelis that they can solve the problem by importing more Jews (putative and "real") from the western hemisphere will simply delay by less than a decade the day when parity arrives between Jews and non-Jews in Israel. It would be much better to prepare Israelis to accept the idea that we live in a world in which ethnic hegemony is no longer permissible within the parameters of democratic principles and cultural diversity.
Most intriguing about this debate is the largely-ignored fact that Arabs already constitute a majority among Israeli citizens. This is one of the best kept secrets in the annals of contemporary Zionism. If we add the Palestinian Arabs to the vast number of Jews who come from Morocco and other Arab countries, we can see that Arabs constitute a plurality of any ethnic group in the country. Obviously those Arab Jews (Mizrahim) hardly identify with Palestinian independence and tend to be among the most vociferous supporters of right-wing parties and fundamentalist religious groups. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, they are self-hating Arabs. Nevertheless, they eat the same food, listen to the same music, and have cultural affinities similar to Palestinian Arabs. The systematic attempt by dominant Ashkenazi culture to de-Arabize this community has succeeded ideologically, yet failed to obliterate their "oriental features". Although it is false to think of the Mizrahim as potential allies of the Palestinian minority in Israel, their ambivalent cultural status undermines the whole edifice of demographic nationalism; the largest of Israel's ethnic groups is at the same time Arab and Jewish. Faced with a choice between an historic peaceful accommodation to the increasing proportion of Palestinian Arabs and Mizrahim in their midst, or continued Europeanization of the Jewish state through encouraging non-Jews to settle in Israel and the occupied territories, the Israeli leadership has opted for the latter possibility.
Salim Tamari is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies.
