Palestinian demographic manipulation
Yoram Ettinger
“Israel Hayom”, July 22, 2016
http://bit.ly/29YQPyR

The July 11, 2016 statistics, published by the Palestinian Authority -
claiming that Jews are a minority west of the Jordan River – is a classic
case of “lies, damn lies and statistics.” This practice – which manipulates
statistics in order to misrepresent reality and mislead observers - has been
employed, deliberately and systematically, by the Palestinian Central Bureau
of Statistics (PCBS), despite a powerful Jewish demographic tailwind and a
rapid Westernization of Muslim demography west of the Jordan River, and
throughout the Muslim World other than the Sub-Sahara region.

The misuse of statistics, by the Palestinian Authority, has afflicted Israel
and its supporters with unwarranted demographic pessimism/fatalism. The aim
has been to cajole Israeli policy-makers into a false assumption that
conceding the Jewish geography of the over-towering mountain ridges of Judea
and Samaria, is a prerequisite to securing Jewish demography.

In spite of Palestinian statistics, and the display of gross negligence by
the international establishment - which accepts the PCBS and all other
central bureaus of statistics at face-value without proper auditing – in
July, 2016, there is a solid, long-term, 66% Jewish majority in the combined
area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel, benefitting from an
unprecedented robust tailwind of Jewish fertility and migration. Moreover,
in July, 2016, there is a gap of 1.15 million people between the PCBS
contended number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria (2.9 million) and the
well-documented number (1.75 million).

How has the PCBS manipulated its population statistics?

The initial Palestinian smoke and mirror performance occurred during the
June, 1997 (first) Palestinian census in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with the
artificial addition of 648,000 people. The census was conducted by the
Palestinian Authority, which was concerned that the arrival in Israel of one
million Soviet Jews, could dispel the myth of “the Arab demographic time
bomb,” thus ending the Jewish nightmare of becoming a minority west of the
Jordan River.

The 1997 Palestinian population census in Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and
Gaza was puffed by the inclusion of 325,000 overseas residents, as
documented by the PCBS’ website; the double-count of 210,000 Jerusalem
Arabs, who were also included in the Israeli census; and the documented
inconsistencies (of 113,000 people) between the PCBS, on the one hand, and
the Palestinian departments of health, education and the Central Election
Commission, on the other hand.

Moreover, in 1996, the population data of the Palestinian Central Election
Commission (2.146 million) and Departments of Health and Education (2.270
million) were dramatically lower than the 1997 census (2.783 million), but
almost identical to those of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (2.111
million), which validated its numbers against the number of newly-issued ID
cards and the immunization of all ages.

Demonstrating the creativity of Palestinian statistics, the Head of the
PCBS, Hassan Abu Libdeh, admitted at a February 26, 1998 press conference in
El-Bireh that – in violation of international standards – “we counted
325,000 people (13% of the total population!) living outside the Palestinian
lands for more than one year.”

Furthermore, the inclusion of overseas residents in official counts has been
also practiced by other Palestinian agencies. For instance, according to an
October 14, 2004 press release by the Central Election Commission, 200,000
overseas residents were included in the (last) Palestinian election in 2005.
350,000 overseas residents were included in the Palestinian statistics,
according to a 1993 study by the World Bank.

Explaining the inconsistencies between the PCBS and other Palestinian
departments, Louie Shabanah, a former Head of the PCBS stated during a June
8, 2005 debate at Haifa’s Technion: “The Palestinian Health Department
accounts for less births because – unlike the PCBS – it excludes overseas
births….”

The aforementioned statistical bloats expand annually due to births, hence
the widening 1.15 million gap in Judea and Samaria in 2016, which consists
of:
+400,000 overseas residents, as reaffirmed by Hassan Ilwi, the Palestinian
Undersecretary of the Interior: “Since 1995, we have registered about
100,000 children born abroad.”
+300,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who bear Israeli ID cards are doubly-counted as
Israelis and as West Bankers.
+240,000 net-emigration of Judea and Samaria Arabs has been documented by
Israel’s Border Police since the 1997 Palestinian census.
+Over 100,000 (mostly Judea and Samaria) Arabs have married Israeli Arabs
since 1997, receiving Israeli ID cards, but are still (doubly) counted as
West Bankers. In November, 2003, the Knesset passed a statue, terminating
the automatic receipt of Israeli ID cards upon marrying an Israeli citizen.
+110,000 result from an inherent under-documentation of deaths (represented
by the inclusion of Arabs born in 1847 in the June 2007 census…) and
over-documentation of births (represented by a World Bank study, documenting
a 32% gap between its own births documentation and the PCBS’ births
statistics).

In 2016, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate (3.15 births per woman) is higher
than all Arab countries, other than Sudan, Yemen and Iraq, reflected in a
unique 75% increase in the number of births from 1995 (80,400) to 2015
(139,000), irrespective of the moderate decline in the fertility of the
ultra-orthodox women, but due to the unprecedentedly robust secular (Yuppie)
fertility. The norm of 1-2 births per woman among secular folks, twenty
years ago, has now shifted into a norm of 3-4 births!

Recent demographic trends expose the unreliability of Palestinian
statistics. They bode-well for Israel’s posture in the negotiation process
with the Palestinian Authority, but mostly for Israel’s economy and national
security, which will benefit from an exceptionally high natural growth
(quantitatively and qualitatively), compared to all other advanced
economies, which may have to rely on foreign workers in order to sustain
their economic growth.