Marcus Says There Is No Ethnic Cleansing in Israel — Jerusalem Post
In Israel, Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, wrote in an opinion column for The Jerusalem Post that claims of an alleged policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel are not supported by demographic data. He referred to a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics chart showing growth in the Arab population in Israel and the West Bank.
Demographic data
According to the data cited by Marcus, between 1948 and 1967 the Arab population in the West Bank declined from 1.42 million to 1.36 million people, or by 4.2%. The author claims this was the only period since 1914 in which the Palestinian statistical agency's chart recorded a population decrease.
Marcus writes that after the 1967 Six-Day War, the number of Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel, according to the chart's data, increased from 1.36 million to 7.41 million people. He estimates this growth at 445%. For comparison, the author cites population growth of 7.7% in Germany, 25% in the United Kingdom, 164% in Lebanon, and 281% in Syria in 1967–2026.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
The author's assessments
The column's author links demographic growth to the development of healthcare and agriculture in the West Bank. According to his data, infant mortality there fell from 152 cases per thousand births to 29 in 1996, while life expectancy, as he notes citing the UN, rose from 48 to 72 years.
Marcus also states that the number of Arab citizens of Israel increased from 150,000 in 1948 to 2.15 million people, while the country's Christian population grew from approximately 35,000 to nearly 190,000 people. At the same time, he claims that the number of Christians in the Gaza Strip fell from approximately 3,000 to 1,000, and that the share of Christians in Bethlehem's population declined from 50% to less than 10% after the city was transferred to the administration of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
The column also mentions that UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke this week at the UN General Assembly about Israel's actions which, he said, could create a risk of ethnic cleansing.
