Peres: West Bank withdrawal 'to keep country Jewish'

JERUSALEM – Israel must withdrawal from the West Bank, otherwise Arabs will soon outnumber Jews and threaten Israel's Jewish character, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres claimed in an interview.

"For us, [Israel must withdraw from the West Bank for] two reasons," said Peres, speaking with top American radio host Rusty Humphries. One we don't want to govern the lives of other people. The second one is we must be careful demographically to withdraw from some places or we may lose our majority."

Peres' statements come in spite of a new study presented to the U.S. Congress last month which contends Israel's withdrawal policy is based on erroneous Palestinian population data and predicts that in 20 years Jews will outnumber Arabs by two-to-one.

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced his new administration will seek to withdraw from most of the West Bank. Olmert said under his plan, Israel will maintain select security zones and some of the area's major West Bank Jewish communities, alluding to evacuating West Bank towns that fall outside Israel's security fence.

About 200,000 Jews live in the West Bank. The security fence, still under construction in certain areas, cordons off nearly 95 percent of the territory from Israel's pre-1967 borders. More than half the West Bank's Jewish residents reside on the side of the fence closest to Israel. About 80,000 more Jews live on the other side of the barrier.

Olmert, like Peres, said he is seeking a West Bank withdrawal to set "the permanent borders of the state of Israel to ensure a Jewish majority."

However, a new study led by American researchers, titled "Forecast for Israel and the West Bank 2025," states a West Bank withdrawal based on demography is groundless because Israel's Jews will more than double Arabs in 20 years.

The study found Palestinians have inflated their population by as much as 50 percent. It also said Jewish birthrates are far outstripping Palestinian rates, and Israel's own statistics fail to account for even low levels of Jewish immigration when calculating national demographic trends.

The new study placed the current Palestinian-Arab population of the West Bank at 1.4 million and Gaza 1.1 million, for a total of 2.4 million instead of the 3.8 million reported by the Palestinian Authority Central Bureau of Statistics and accepted by Israel.

Zimmerman's team found extreme faults in the methods used by the PA to determine its population, including counting the 230,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem twice and retroactively raising growth and birth rates, which the study contends have been declining.

The PA claims a population growth rate of 4 to 5 percent per year, among the highest in the world, but Palestinian Ministry of Health records published annually since 1996 contradict the PA's own claims by stating growth rates averaging around 3 percent.

Zimmerman's study documents the PA tampered with its own data, retroactively raising its growth numbers in 2002. The new study shows a steady pattern of growth decline leading to a natural growth rate in 2003 of just 2.6 percent.

The PA projected a net population increase of 1.5 percent per year as a result of immigration from surrounding countries. But Zimmerman's researchers found that except for 1994, when the bulk of the Palestinian leadership and their families entered the territories from Tunis, Palestinian emigration from the area has outweighed immigration by a net negative of about 10,000 to 20,000 per year.

The study also found a dramatic and growing decline in the number of children per Palestinian mother and says Palestinians actually have been moving away from the West Bank and Gaza in contrast to PA claims of large immigration numbers.

At the same time, Zimmerman's team has shown birthrates among Israeli Orthodox Jews are at the highest rates ever, and general Israeli Jewish fertility over the past five years has risen above top scenarios first considered by Israel's Bureau of Statistics. The study states Israel did not account for a likely continuation of Jewish immigration trends over the next 20 years.

Under Zimmerman's mid-case scenario, Israeli Jews maintain current fertility rates and immigration averages of 20,000 per year or 400,000 over two decades. Israeli Arab fertility rates, meanwhile, fall slowly over a 20 year period. The result is a Jewish majority in Israel in 2025 of 63 percent.

According to other likely scenarios contained in the new data, Jews could outnumber Arabs by 71 percent if Jewish fertility rates continue to rise and immigration increases further.

"It is ironic that just as we now find Israel is in the best position ever with regard to population, Olmert announces a plan to run away and give up the West Bank, claiming Israel's Jewish character is threatened," said Zimmerman.

Zimmerman's study has been gaining steam in academic and media circles in Israel. It also was presented last month to a House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East.

"Recent studies show that the PA numbers were grossly inaccurate," subcommittee chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., told WorldNetDaily. "I found the new study raises a whole host of questions that must be answered."

Still, Israel continued to push ahead with a West Bank withdrawal based on the PA demographics.

The West Bank is considered landlocked territory not officially recognized as part of any country. Israel calls the land "disputed," while the United Nations says the West Bank is "occupied" by Israel. The Jewish state maintains overall control of most of the area while the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction in about 40 percent.

The territory is within rocket-firing range of Jerusalem and borders most major Israeli cities. Military strategists long have estimated Israel must maintain the West Bank to defend itself from any ground invasion. Terrorist groups have warned if Israel withdraws, they will launch rockets from the West Bank into Israeli cities.

Many villages in the West Bank, which Israelis commonly refer to as the "biblical heartland," are mentioned throughout the Torah.

The book of Genesis says Abraham entered Israel at Shechem (Nablus) and received God's promise of land for his offspring. He later was buried in Hebron.

The nearby town of Beit El, anciently called Bethel meaning "house of God," is where Scripture says the patriarch Jacob slept on a stone pillow and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. In that dream, God spoke directly to Jacob and reaffirmed the promise of territory.

And in Exodus, the holy tabernacle rested in Shiloh, believed to be the first area the ancient Israelites settled after fleeing Egypt.