Israelis leave their land

[JaGGa]

The promised land doesnt look so promising now for the Isrealis as they are exodusing the Zionist nation that they once felt was their homeland.
Palestineans feel that demographics may be their greatest weapon now and they can ask for vote instead of a separate state.

The results of a recent study by Israeli academics unnerved even the right-wing supporters of Mr Sharon. The study found that by the year 2020, in just 17 years, Palestinians will be the majority in the whole area of Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. That raises the possibility of the Israeli right’s worst nightmare: that Palestinians might stop demanding a state of their own and start asking for the vote. That could spell the end of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, something most Israelis want to keep.

760,00 Isreali citizens now live abroad. Even so, for a country of just 6,600,000, it is a large number. But the big surprise was the growth in the number of Israelis living abroad: in 2000, it was 550,000. That increase has undoubtedly been fuelled by the suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian militants over the past three years, and by the severe recession into which the Israeli economy has been plunged.

Israel is now said to be as crowded as India: those 6,600,000 people live in a small country. But the Israeli government continues to encourage Jewish immigration, offering generous financial incentives to new arrivals. The reason is that Israelis fear they are sitting on a demographic time bomb.

**Israelis leave their land, forced out by a battered economy and years of violence **

[ZaiN_12345]

well to accomodate the new immigrants, israel will kick palestinians out of gaza, west bank and other cities. this way they'll have much needed land for israelis. who cares for palestinians? do you? i don't.

[Malik73]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ZaiN_12345: *
well to accomodate the new immigrants, israel will kick palestinians out of gaza, west bank and other cities. this way they'll have much needed land for israelis.
[/QUOTE]

That's not the point. Some 77% of Israeli Jews (4 million people) live in just 14% of the territory (just some 1100 square miles) of the 'State of Israel' - area's A and B on the map. A further 0.4 million (8%) live illegally in the Palestinian territories.

[thumb=D]Israel.JPG[/thumb]

So 86% of Israel's land (some 6900 square miles - 3 times the size of the Palestinian territories) is inhabited by only 15% of Israel Jews (0.75 million people) - Area C on the above map.

Hence Israel could settle millions in all this sparse land, but the fact is that Jews are leaving Israel in their hundreds of thousands every year, to go back to where the recent forebears came from. In effect the whole Zionist project is going in reverse gear... :)

[Zabardast]

No wonder! The jews have been running for their lives for the last 5,000 years...I think, its in their nature to run and run and run only...so keep running...keep the momentum going... :)

[Malik73]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zabardast: *
No wonder! The jews have been running for their lives for the last 5,000 years...I think, its in their nature to run and run and run only...so keep running...keep the momentum going... :)
[/QUOTE]

I don't think anyone should run from Israel-Palestine, be they Jew or Arab Palestinian, because this land (Israel and the territories) is the land of both peoples. Today we have over 5 million Jews living alongside close to 5 million Palestinian Arabs (plus there are 5 million Palestinian refugees outside this land). In 50 years there will be 9 million Jews living alongside 25 million Palestinian Arabs (not counting the refugees). So it is imperative in my opinion for both sides to agree to live together in one state, confederal in nature i.e. cantonal-based system like Switzerland, and secular in nature. Only this can bring lasting peace, and the perpetual survival of both identities in this land...