Let’s See ‘Palestinian’ Genocide Under Israeli Occupation
Miraculous population growth rate recorded for a small town in Judea & Samaria. How is it possible? After all, Israel was suppposedly carrying out a ‘Palestinian’ genocide.
By chance I came across census statistics for the town of Idhna, near Hebron, in Judea & Samaria. I put the numbers onto a table and this is what I got (references for stats below the article):
This means that under the British, the town showed an increase of between 33 and 46 people per year (1922-1945) or 3.5%. Under Jordanian occupation (until 1967), this amounted to an increase of 80 people, or 1.9%, per year. We have no way of knowing what proportion of this was by migration to the town or natural growth, nor how many people left Idhna over those years.
Two population statistics sites (Index Mundi) quote a figure of 2-3% annual population growth up until 2014 for the entire Judea & Samaria region, which they call The West Bank, of course. According them, this rate of growth is currently one of the highest in the world. If you are interested, you can compare this to annual population growth rates in Jordan, Israel, the USA and China, on this graph put out by the World Bank or see the list of all countries of the world.
In any case, Israel conducted a census after the Six Day War in 1967, and the resultant annual population increase between 1945 and 1967 was about 3.7%.
Forty years later, the Palestinian Authority (PA) census data gives Idhna a population of 19,012 and that produces an annual growth rate of 10% between 1967 and 2007. If 2-3% is a high growth rate, then 10% is phenomenal. The discrepancy between the general J&S population growth rate and the growth rate in Idhna is mysterious.
Here are some possible ways to explain it:
- There is something special about Idhna that made people flow to the town in droves sometime after Israel won back Judea & Samaria from the Jordanians and some other poor neglected place is suffering a population loss as dramatic as Idhna’s population gain, balancing out the overall growth rate.
- Under Israel, Idhna’s infant mortality rate decreased and general longevity increased so dramatically that growth rates soared there and some other poor neglected place did not have access to the same resources and so their population loss balances out Idhna’s gain.
- The PA stats are false.
In 2014, YNet News quoted PA President Mahmoud Abbas as having said:
This is genocide – the murder of entire families is genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.
If a 10% annual population growth rate (or even 2-3%) is an example of ‘Palestinian’ genocide, then I am a donkey.
If the PA wants to deceitfully inflate population data in order to scare Israel with the “demographic time bomb” whereby Muslims will outnumber Jews if we declare sovereignty over all of Judea & Samaria, then let them do that. If they want to lie and accuse Israel of committing genocide against the Arabs living under the PA, let them do that.
Do they not realize, however, that these two lies cancel each other out?
For your information, it seems we Israelis are just as good at committing genocide as we are at maintaining a blockade of a neighbour who seeks to kill us off (i.e. to genocide us): for examples, here and here.
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1922 Census Data (page 10), 1931 Data (page 32), 1945 Data (page 23), 1967 Data (page 1), 2007 Data (page 118)
Re “By chance I came across census statistics for the town of Idhna, near Hebron, in Judea & Samaria.”
Can you add the sources for your census data (for the British Mandate, The Jordanian occupation, Israel, and the PA)?