There has been a lot of doom and gloom over Muslim demographics. Especially in Israel. But there's proof once more than this is not an unsolvable problem. That a healthy society confident in its future and that also has a sizable religious and traditional population can match Muslim demographic growth.
The fertility rate among Jewish women matches that of Arab women for the first time in Israel’s history, figures released Tuesday show.
The average number of children born to Jewish women was 3.13 in 2015, the same as their Arab counterparts, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. The stats represent a fall in the Arab fertility rate in Israel and an increase in the rate among Jews.
In 2000, the Jewish fertility rate was 2.6 children per woman while the Arab rate was 4.3 children per woman.
Arabs in Israel are largely Muslim. And the Christian Arab birth rate is significantly lower than the Muslim one. That's a familiar problem in Western countries.
Arabs represent around 20 percent of Israel’s total population. In 2015, of the country’s population of 2.8 million children, two million (71.3 percent) were Jewish, 718,000 (25.7 percent) were Arab and 84,000 (3 percent) were grouped as “others.”
Which is to say that the growth represents a serious issue, but it's now becoming a manageable one. That is in stark contrast to some parts of Europe where Muslims are majority of the population of new children.
Yasser Arafat once referred to the womb of the Palestinian woman as his “strongest weapon.” There has been a further decline in the fertility rate of Palestinian women in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2014, it was 3.7 in the West Bank (down from 5.6 in 1997) and 4.5 in the Gaza Strip (down from 6.9 in 1997), according to official Palestinian statistics.
Israel now has the highest fertility rate of the developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Times of Israel reported. As of 2013, it also had the second highest youth population, after Mexico. This baby boom bucks the usual trend of fertility declining in nations as they grow wealthier.
It's all about the kind of society you choose to have. Israelis choose to have children. A lot of developed countries didn't have children and expected the state to take care of them. The state imported Muslims instead.