Ian S. Lustick

Lustick: The Red Thread of Israel’s “Demographic Problem”

The Red Thread of Israel’s “Demographic Problem” Ian S. Lustick

Dr. Lustick is at the University of Pennsylvania.

n the spring and early summer of Israel”) explains much about the history of 2018, Israeli forces shot or gassed Zionism and Israel. It also explains Israel’s more than 16,000 people. The ferocity unblinking use of violence against thou- of this response to the massing of Pal- sands of men, women and children and Iestinians near the barrier surrounding the why Israel’s inability to sustain a Jewish Gaza Strip is striking but not astonishing. majority is accelerating its adoption of less It reflects a fundamental truth and springs and less deniable forms of apartheid. from a deep fear. The truth is that the es- The longest and bitterest unresolved sential aspiration of the late nineteenth conflict within Zionism is the territorial and early twentieth century architects of question. If Zionism requires a Jewish the Zionist movement was to ensure that majority, should Zionists forgo options somewhere in the world — and that place for territorial expansion in Palestine/the came to be Palestine — there would be a Land of Israel in order to protect Jewish majority of Jews. The fear is of Jews losing demographic preponderance? Or should the majority they achieved. the movement’s commitment to “liberat- For centuries, said the founders of Zi- ing” the whole land and faith in the growth onism, Jews lived as a minority everywhere of the Jewish population be strong enough and as a majority nowhere; everywhere as to seize and keep as much as possible? In guests, nowhere as hosts. This unnatural the 1930s, the World Zionist Organization condition they identified as the taproot of split over this question. In 1937, David anti-Semitism. Gentile fear and hatred of Ben-Gurion and the Labor Zionist leader- Jews would end, or at least diminish, to ship of the movement, using arguments of safe levels once Jews could point to a land demography, desperate need and realism, where they, like other “normal” peoples, was barely able to convince his associates were a majority and among whom lived to at least negotiate with the British about others as minorities and as guests. their offer to partition Palestine into Jewish Demographic predominance in Pal- and Arab states. The British withdrew the estine thus became Zionism’s categorical offer, but Ben-Gurion was astounded and imperative. The contradiction between this gratified to learn that, with partition, the objective and other Zionist goals (includ- British had imagined evacuating most of ing settling and ruling the “whole Land of the Arab population of the Jewish state.

The image of attaining so purely Jewish a reasserted itself with a vengeance after state fired Ben-Gurion’s imagination and the June War. Not only did the “Revision- helped lay the groundwork for his excite- ist” Zionist right wing — founded by ment about accepting the UN partition plan Vladimir Jabotinsky and led by Menachem 10 years later.1 Begin — find new public excitement and Demographic considerations weighed support for its traditional irredentism, so heavily in Ben-Gurion’s decision to accept also did radical fundamentalist elements a truncated and divided Jewish state, as within Jewish orthodox circles and groups outlined in the UN partition resolution of within the “activist” wing of the Social- November 1947. But as it stood, the state ist Zionist movement affiliated with the would still have as many Arabs as Jews powerful Hameuchad kibbutz movement living in it. Having judged that his forces and a variety of land-development and would prevail in the fighting that engulfed settlement-building institutions. From the country, that international intervention 1967 to 1977, Labor Party-led coalition would not occur, and that a Jewish state governments found themselves paralyzed would emerge, what became crucial was by the conflict between those who wanted to ensure that the “liberation” of additional the occupied territories (especially the territories did not threaten the imperative West Bank and Gaza Strip) more than they of Jewish demographic predominance. were concerned about the Arabs who lived Under Ben-Gurion’s direction, the Haga- there, and those who were so opposed to nah (the Zionist movement’s main under- the possibility of absorbing more non-Jews ground army) and its strike force, the Pal- into the state that they favored quickly re- mach, then acted to systematically reduce linquishing the “administered areas” — or the Arab population of the areas the state at least the most densely inhabited regions came to control. This was accomplished within them. This paralysis appeared very by expulsions and by refusing to allow quickly, resulting in the Eshkol govern- refugees to return to their homes. The ment’s famous “decision not to decide” same demographic imperative also helps to and the dominance of Defense Minister explain Ben-Gurion’s decision to overrule Moshe Dayan’s approach of tightening his commanders and refuse permission to Israel’s control of and presence on the land extend the war by conquering the West while holding the Arabs living there at Bank. Ben-Gurion wanted the territory, but arm’s length. he feared the demographic implications of To be sure, in June 1967, Israel did its large Arab population more. extend the enforcement of its laws to a In the decade prior to the June War of 71-square kilometer chunk of the West 1967, Labor Party governments, whether Bank that included East Jerusalem (al- under Ben-Gurion’s leadership or not, de- Quds). But even this act was meticulously emphasized irredentism, characterized the implemented according to the demands of West Bank as “foreign territory,” and more the demographic imperative. The expanded or less accepted a small Arab minority as boundary of what Israel announced as the a permanent feature of the State of Israel. municipality of Jerusalem twisted and But the question of balancing the rule of turned to maximize vacant land while min- more of the Land of Israel against increas- imizing the number of Arab inhabitants. ing the country’s non-Jewish population Deliberately avoiding formal “annexation”

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or the declaration of Israeli sovereignty rael living in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza over the area (something that was also District” if Israel’s sovereignty over these avoided in the 1980 “Basic Law: Jerusa- areas were recognized. But this provision, lem, Capital of Israel”), the government contained in the hand-written version of issued a complex collection of amend- Begin’s original “autonomy plan,” was ments to existing laws and ministerial quickly removed. Even for the Cabinet of decrees. Their a government effect was to Despite substantial political and dominated extend the by territorial boundaries psychological support for such drastic maximalists, of the Israeli measures, the mass removal of Arabs awarding municipality from the country no longer appears in citizenship of Yerusha- Israeli political discourse as an explicitly to millions layim, rather of Palestin- than the advocated formula for solving the ians was too boundaries of “demographic problem.” direct and the State of dangerous a Israel. One crucial reason for this subter- contradiction of Zionism’s demographic fuge was that it made the 60,000 Arab in- imperative. habitants of al-Quds and its environs “per- Accordingly, instead of declaring manent residents” but not Israeli citizens, Israeli sovereignty over the portions of thereby softening the political consequenc- the country under Israel’s control (an act es of adding to the demographic burden of that would have implied or strongly risked the country’s non-Jewish minority.2 citizenship for millions more Arabs) the During the first decade of the occupa- Begin government used the autonomy tion, the discourse in Israel over the dis- negotiations that were part of the Camp position of the territories was most com- David peace process as camouflage to monly expressed and depicted as a struggle massively expand settlement and rapidly between “annexationists” and “anti-annex- advance processes of de facto annexation. ationists.” But when the Likud formed the This was a slow and unofficial incorpora- first non-Labor-party-led government in tion of the territories that would not entail 1977, under its enthusiastically irredentist change in the political status of their and explicitly annexationist leader, Men- Arab inhabitants. The Israeli “left,” what achem Begin, it did not annex the territo- became known as “the peace camp,” pan- ries or declare sovereignty over them. The icked, believing that a “point of no return” single most important factor explaining would soon be reached beyond which the why Begin refrained from implementing Arabs of the territories would, willy-nilly, the principle that had been his life-long become part of the State of Israel. The passion was demography. primary argument it offered to ordinary In 1977, during the ramp-up to the Israelis in support of territorial compro- Camp David summit with Anwar Sadat mise appealed to their fear of and distaste and Jimmy Carter, Begin offered an Israeli for Arabs and to the Zionist imperative of citizenship option for the population he protecting Israel’s Jewish majority, which referred to as “the Arabs of the Land of Is- would be imperiled if the West Bank and

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Gaza were permanently incorporated. of Arabs to the state’s population, and as But stoking Jewish hatred of Arabs Arab citizens attained at least a modicum led many Israeli Jews in a very different of national political influence, right-wing direction, toward support for the “transfer” politicians amplified explicit calls for or expulsion of Arabs out of the territories expulsion of Arabs, through either “vol- and even out of the country. From the early untary” or “involuntary transfer.” These days of the Zionist movement, most of its appeals emanated from Rehavam Ze’evi’s members rejected mass expulsion as a way “Moledet” (Homeland) Party, which made to fulfill the demographic imperative, for encouragement of “voluntary transfer” of moral or practical reasons or both. Nev- all Arabs from the Land of Israel its central ertheless, the idea was regularly if quietly objective. discussed. In his diary, Theodore Herzl Outright expulsion was advanced fantasized about trying to “spirit the penni- most vehemently by Meir Kahane’s Kach less Arab population across the border.” As Party. Kahane was an American rabbi noted, Ben-Gurion’s 1937 epiphany, that who founded the violent Jewish Defense a large-scale transfer of Arabs was some- League. After immigrating to Israel, he thing the international community could ran for Knesset on a platform of imposing tolerate, paved the way for the removal of strict segregationist and discriminatory seven-eighths of the non-Jews living in the laws against Arabs, including laws against portions of Palestine that became the State miscegenation. But his fundamental of Israel in 1948. Instructively, the fact that demand was to rid the country of Arabs, mass expulsion occurred in 1948 and was by intimidation if possible, and by force violently enforced all along the Armistice if necessary. His slogan was, “I say what Lines in the early 1950s, was denied by Zi- you think!” and it resonated strongly with onist and Israeli propagandists for decades. disadvantaged sectors, the young and the This avoided the need to justify it but also poorly educated, Mizrahi Jews (Jews from implied that, had it occurred, it would not Muslim countries or whose parents immi- have been justified. grated from Muslim countries). In August This changed in the 1980s. Israeli 1984, 15 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed historians, with access to state and army agreed that “the Arab population across the archives, proved that demographically green line should be deported.”3 In 1985, motivated forcible transfer had occurred the New York Times described Kahane as in 1948. Along with the need to respond the most talked about politician in Israel. to the demographic argument of Israeli At one point that year, polls showed his doves, this more honest account of the past party winning up to 12 seats if new elec- encouraged many on the right to embrace tions were held. In September 1986, 38 the truth of past expulsions and the cor- percent of Jewish Israelis said they sup- rectness of this approach for meeting the ported those working to “make the Arabs demographic challenges of the 1980s. As leave Judea and Samaria.”4 it became clear that even governments Prior to the 1988 election, the Likud ideologically committed to annexation leadership concluded that the Kach Party would not implement it because of the could ruin its chances of forming a new demographic problem or the fear of being government by depriving it of at least two punished by voters for adding millions or three seats in the Knesset. Accordingly,

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it promulgated an “anti-racism” law that immigration and absorption efforts target- barred Kach from competing. Although the ing the former Soviet Union, deployed eruption of the Palestinian Intifada intensi- a network of settler activists and other fied Jewish fears and encouraged “trans- “shlichim” (immigrant recruiters) to scour ferist” talk in some right-wing and settler the former Soviet Union for recruits, and circles, the tenacity of the revolt, the Israeli successfully pressured the United States military’s definition of it as a political to prevent Jews leaving the Soviet Union problem requiring a political solution, the from “dropping out” to settle in America. logistical challenges of arranging demo- However, the number of Jews in the graphically significant expulsions, explicit former Soviet Union, though large, was warnings from left-wing figures that Jews not large enough to change frightening would actively work to thwart orders to de- demographic projections. By the early port masses of Arabs, and Prime Minister 1990s, it became necessary to depend on Shamir’s participation in the Madrid con- attracting non-Jewish immigrants. By ference, combined to drain “transfer” of its taking advantage of an amendment to the public appeal and its discursive resonance. Law of Return from the 1970s, anyone However, in recent decades the idea of with a relationship by marriage or blood removing masses of Arabs from the country to a Jewish grandparent or spouse was has again increased. According to a series deemed “eligible to enter Israel under the of surveys conducted by the Pew Founda- Law of Return.” As a result of this policy, tion in 2014 and 2015, 48 percent of Jewish it is estimated that 35 percent of the more Israelis agreed or strongly agreed with the than 900,000 immigrants who came to statement that “Arabs should be expelled Israel from the former Soviet Union after or transferred from Israel,” including 87.5 1989 were not Jewish. This reality was percent of those describing themselves suppressed for many years but is now well as right wing. On the other hand, despite known. In effect, to solve the demographic substantial political and psychological problem, the right was willing to mea- support for such drastic measures, the mass sure the number of Jews in the country, removal of Arabs from the country no lon- not against the number of non-Jews, but ger appears in Israeli political discourse as against the number of Arabs. They would an explicitly advocated formula for solving protect Israel’s status, not as a “Jewish the “demographic problem.” state,” but as a “non-Arab state.”5 Toward But if expulsion as a solution disap- this end, tens of thousands of Ethiopian peared from view, the problem remained. Jews and those who claimed their ances- While the left continued to use demogra- tors were Jews, were brought to Israel (the phy to insist on the need for withdrawal first groups of them were secretly settled from most of the West Bank and Gaza, in Kiryat Arba, the large Jewish settlement what became known as “the national on the outskirts of Hebron in the West camp,” offered an “old-new” solution. Bank). More controversial were worldwide Latching onto the rapidly changing situa- searches by immigration recruiters desper- tion in Moscow, it promised a flood of new ate to combat the Arab demographic threat Jewish immigrants. The government and by discovering “lost tribes” of Jews (or at the Jewish Agency (an arm of the World least non-Arabs) in southern Africa, Cen- Zionist Organization) poured money into tral and Latin America, and South Asia.

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In the early 2000s, Jewish immigration day of the year, within the territories of into Israel dwindled while alarms were western Israel, about 400 children are be- raised about relatively high rates of Jewish ing born, some of whom will become new emigration. Indeed, annual calculations suicide terrorists! Do you realize this?”6 revealed that in some years more Jews With talk of expulsion receding from the were leaving than entering the country. discourse and most Israelis losing faith in In this context, demographic concerns the prospect for decisively large waves of intensified, and a new “solution” emerged: Jewish immigration, policy experts began disengagement from the densely populated intensive discussions of how to draw a Gaza Strip. “separation” line between Jews and Arabs. In 1973, Golda Meir’s government The line that could be drawn most easily had declared the Gaza Strip “an insepa- and have the most consequential impact on rable part of the demo- Israel,” and The line that could be drawn most graphic bal- by the second ance was the intifada easily and have the most consequential line around 8,000 Jew- impact on the demographic balance was the Gaza ish settlers the line around the Gaza Strip. Strip. Hence were living was born Sha- there. But as the Strip’s desperate and ron’s policy of unilateral Israeli disengage- rapidly increasing population moved past ment from Gaza. the 1.5 million mark, and as dozens of In the face of furious settler and bloody suicide attackers struck civilian and right-wing opposition, Israel did withdraw military targets in Israel, extricating Israel its forces and its settlers from the Gaza from Gaza presented itself as the next big Strip in 2005. It is an important question idea for alleviating demographic anxieties. whether — in light of regular military in- In 2002, noted Israeli political geographer, cursions into the Strip by the Israeli Army; Arnon Soffer, wrote a letter to Prime Min- countless rocket, tunnel, kite and balloon ister Ariel Sharon referring to “the grave attacks into Israel from Gaza; Israel’s tight demographic data” that he had provided land and sea blockade of the area; constant him months earlier. “Most of the inhabit- surveillance of the Gazan population by ants of Israel,” wrote Soffer, “realize that drones and other means; the delicate and there is only one solution in the face of our uncertain connection between Gaza and insane and suicidal neighbor — separa- Egypt; and the intimate infrastructural, tion.” In its absence, he wrote, was “the water, sewage and health relationships end of the Jewish state.” between Israel and Gaza — it is appropri- Arnon framed the issue in specific ate to think of the Arabs of Gaza as living demographic terms, but linked it directly outside of Israel or not. But whether one to the security fears that were peaking considers Gaza still to be within the power during the second Intifada. “You should re- of the State of Israel or not, it was cer- member that on the same day as the Israel tainly not easy to accomplish the extent of Defense Forces are investing efforts and separation from Gaza that Israel achieved succeeding in eliminating one terrorist or by the disengagement. Deserted by half another, on that very same day, as on every the Likud, Sharon formed a new party

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(Kadima) to lead his government and was ish majority. The effort received a boost forced as well to rely on support from the in early 2005, during the final months of opposition Labor Party, whose voters were struggle against the Gaza disengagement, decisively convinced by the demographic when the American Enterprise Institute payoff of disengagement. As the last Labor hosted a presentation by Bennet Zimmer- Party prime minister, Ehud Barak, had put man, Michael Wise and Roberta Seid. it, “We here, and them there.” The “findings” of their study were widely By removing Israeli military forces publicized and used to support dramatic from within the Strip, Israel subtracted claims that there was no “demographic approximately 1.7 million Palestinian time bomb” set to explode as the leftists Arabs from the non-Jewish population claimed, no “demographic machete” held living in areas it claimed as sovereign over the neck of the Jewish state. Accord- territory or as occupied under the terms of ingly, there was no need to abandon either the Hague Regulations of 1907. The fact Gaza or the West Bank. that the main impetus for this move was The Ettinger argument was ridiculed the demographic imperative was under- by professional demographers but widely lined by a new right-wing argument that accepted as truth among settler activists official population statistics were false and their supporters, who claimed that both and drastically misleading. The argument the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and became very prominent as the Jewish the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statis- public became aware that, even without tics had conspired to demoralize Israeli counting the burgeoning Gaza population, Jews and justify policies of territorial an intolerably large cohort of Arabs within withdrawal. In February 2006, the lead- Israel and the West Bank was projected to ing right-wing think tank in Israel at the develop during the coming decade. time, the Begin Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan The argument was launched after the University, published a 73-page mono- second intifada, as a political gambit by an graph by Zimmerman, Seid, and Wise, The organization calling itself the American- Million Person Gap: The Arab Population Israeli Demographic Research Group of the West Bank and Gaza,7 adorned with (AIDRG) — a dozen researchers, settler multiple appendices and 129 footnotes. activists and right-wing publicists, none Experts scoffed at the text’s willful and with demographic training. The group was intricate misrepresentations of demo- funded by businessman Bennet Zimmer- graphic data and concepts. However, for man and most prominently represented those committed to keeping the Palestinian by a former Israeli diplomat with experi- territories under Israeli rule — sensitive ence in the United States, Yoram Ettinger. to the demographic imperative of Zionism Ettinger proved himself an indefatigable and worried by the “peace camp’s” ability promoter of the false claim that there were to invoke this imperative to justify territo- up to 1.6 million fewer Arabs in the West rial compromise — the claims advanced Bank than was generally believed. Ettinger by AIDRG were as irresistible as they were and his collaborators sweetened this argu- unfounded. ment by manufacturing statistics to suggest Indeed, the loyalty Ettinger’s argu- that demographic and immigration trends ment has commanded among settlers and would ensure a stable and even rising Jew- their supporters has sufficed to force many

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journalists to treat it as an “alternative” The struggle to respond to the de- understanding of the nature of Israel’s mographic imperative has run like a red demographic challenge. But the attempt thread through the history of the Zionist to solve the “demographic problem” by movement and the State of Israel: from voodoo demographics failed. The authors partition, to transfer, to mass immigration of the BESA study never responded to of non-Jews, to disengagement from Gaza, detailed critiques of their work. AIDRG to statistical manipulation. Now there are was disbanded without convincing most signs of a new approach to the problem, an Israelis that the demographic problem was approach asserting the centrality, not of a smaller than they thought, or that rising Jewish majority capable of democratically Jewish fertility rates and sustained high enforcing Jewish rule over the country, levels of immigration made it unnecessary but of a Jewish state strong enough to to be concerned about absorbing the Arab rule a non-Jewish majority. That is the population of the occupied territories. In a real meaning of the Knesset’s passage of content analysis of the Israeli press in the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of 20 years between 1994 and 2013, Uriel the Jewish People.” It is also the meaning Abulof showed demographic concerns of the increasing readiness of Israelis and peaked prior to the Israeli withdrawal from Israeli politicians to discuss and embrace Gaza in 2005 and dropping significantly the legal incorporation of the West Bank for several years after that, but demo- on terms that would ensure that the masses graphic anxiety rising again in 2011 and of Arabs living there would never become 2012, even as other threats (specifically, equal citizens. Instead they would fit into perceived dangers associated with Iranian the Israeli state as lower-caste subjects nuclear technology) took center stage. In of a ruling apparatus controlled by and the last year of Abulof’s survey (2013) ap- for Jews. Within this regime of domina- proximately 40 percent of all articles about tion, West Bank Palestinians might aspire threats to the state’s survival were focused to some sort of status higher than that of on demography. The “demographic de- Gaza Arabs, but lower than that of either mon,” wrote Abulof in 2014, was “omni- Arabs living in expanded East Jerusalem present” in Israeli political discourse.8 or those born within the pre-1967 boundar- In recent years, its salience has in- ies. In other words, apartheid — a minority creased even more. As the plausibility of controlling others according to different a negotiated two-state solution has disap- rules in a hierarchy of privilege and sub- peared, the reality of Israel’s permanent ordination — is most probably the next at- entanglement with the entire Arab popula- tempt to exorcise the demographic demon. tion of the country, from the Jordan River Levi Eshkol was prime minister in to the Mediterranean Sea, has triggered 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza Strip waves of demographic panic. Fevered dis- were occupied by Israeli forces. For Esh- cussion of the issue was ignited in March kol and his Cabinet ministers, the “demo- 2018, when an Israeli military official graphic danger” posed by their 1.5 million made public what had been believed by Palestinian inhabitants was recognized and demographers for several years: that there openly discussed as soon as the fighting were more Arabs living in Israel, the West ended. “We won the war and received a Bank and Gaza, than Jews.9 nice dowry of territory,” Eshkol quipped,”

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“but it came with a bride whom we don’t have other strategies for evading the impli- like.”10 For 130 years, the Zionist move- cations of the irremovable presence of six ment and the State of Israel have tried million Arabs, it may finally be required to desperately to resolve the dilemma posed try to make the marriage work, even if that by its desire for the dowry (as much of the means that each partner becomes some- Land of Israel/Palestine as it can get) and thing very different from who they are now its dislike of the bride (the Arab population and what they thought they would be. of the country). When apartheid fails, as

1 See Ian S. Lustick and Matthew Berkman, “Zionist Theories of Peace in the Pre-state Era: Legacies of Dissimulation and Israel’s Arab Minority,” Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privilege and Equal Citizenship, Nadim N. Rouhana and Sahar S. Huneidi’s, eds., (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 63-5. 2 For legal details on the incorporation of expanded East Jerusalem in the absence of actual annexation, see Ian S. Lustick, “Has Israel Annexed East Jerusalem?” Middle East Policy 5, no. 1 (January 1997):34-45. 3 Poll conducted by Dahaf, reported by Yoram Peri in Davar; August 3, 1984. 4 Poll conducted by Hanoch Smith, reported in Davar, October 2, 1986. 5 For details see Ian S. Lustick, ““Israel as a Non-Arab State: The Political Implications of Mass Immigration of Non-Jews,” Middle East Journal 53, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 101-17. 6 Lily Galili, “A Jewish Demographic State,” June 28, 2002, Haaretz. 7 An earlier version of the monograph appeared with the title The Million and a Half Person Gap: The Arab Population of the West Bank and Gaza. For a detailed analysis of the fraudulent methods and conclusions of this study see Ian S. Lustick, “What Counts is the Counting: ‘Statistical Manipulation’ as a Solution to Israel’s “Demographic Problem.’” Middle East Journal 67, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 185-205. 8 Uriel Abulof, “Deep Securitization and Israel’s ‘Demographic Demon,’” International Political Sociology 8, no. 4 (December 2014): 408. 9 Yoram Berger, “Figures Presented by the Army Show More Arabs than Jews Live in Israel, West Bank, and Gaza,” Haaretz, March 26, 2018; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/army-presents-figures-showing-arab- majority-in-israel-territories-1.5940676. 10 Avi Raz, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War (Yale University Press, 2012), 39.

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