Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in 2016 – report

Report published by Palestinian Bureau of Statistics says even as the average Palestinian family decreases in size, number of Palestinians living in both Israel and territories will exceed that of Jews beginning in 2016.

HAARETZ

Starting in 2016, the number of Palestinians living in Israel and the Palestinian territories captured in 1967 will exceed the number of Israeli Jews, even as the average Palestinian nuclear family decreases in size, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics summary for 2014.

The number of Palestinians in the entire world is 12.1 million, about half of whom (6.08 million) live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Some 4.62 million live in what the statistics office calls the State of Palestine, reflecting 2.83 million in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and 1.79 million in the Gaza Strip.

Another 1.46 million Palestinians live in Israel; 35.4% of them are under age 15 and 4.3% are 65 or older. About 5.34 million Palestinians live in Arab countries and 675,000 in other countries.

Of the residents of the State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 43.1%, or just under 2 million, are refugees. That refugee number includes 38.8% living in the West Bank and 61.2% in Gaza.

From 1997 through 2013, births among Palestinian women fell to an average 4.1 from 6. The averages are 4.5 in Gaza and 3.7 in the West Bank.

These averages are still higher than those of Palestinians in other countries: 3.3 in Jordan, 2.5 in Syria and 2.8 births per woman in Lebanon.

In Israel, the fertility rate of the average Palestinian woman is 3.4 births compared with 3.1 births for Jewish women.

The Palestinian statistics bureau forecasts that if these fertility rates remain stable for both communities, in 2020 the number of Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be 7.14 million, compared with 6.87 million Jews.

The Palestinian crude birth rate is 32.3 births for every 1,000 people. This reflects rates of 29.4 in the West Bank and 36.8 in Gaza Strip. The overall rate is expected to decline to 29 by 2020.

The crude death rate is 3.7 deaths for every 1,000 people, including 3.8 in the West Bank and 3.5 in the Gaza Strip. The overall rate is expected to decline to 3.4 by 2020.