TEL AVIV (Realist English). Over the past 75 years, the population of Israel has grown tenfold, the Jerusalem Post reports.
On November 29, 1947, when the United Nations General Assembly resolved to partition Mandatory Palestine into two states – one Jewish and one Arab – slightly more than a million people were assigned to live in the Jewish state. They were split between 630,000 Jews and about 400,000 non-Jews, allowing a modest Jewish majority of 63 percent.
Finally, the Jews of Israel constituted a mere six percent of world Jewry in 1948. Today, in contrast, more than four out of every ten Jews in the world live in the Jewish state. And while around seven percent of the Jewish population lived in kibbutzim when Israel was established, only 2.5 percent do so today.
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War provoked the forced exodus of a large number of Arabs, including from the territories recently annexed by Israel in the Galilee, as well as in the south and western part of Jerusalem. Therefore, the share of the Jewish population increased to 82% — 717 thousand Jews against 156 thousand Arabs.
Over time, the population of Israel has increased to just over two million in 1960, about four million in 1980, nearly six and a half million at the turn of the current century, and nine and a half million today.
The Jerusalem Post compares the tenfold increase in the population over 75 years with Western countries. For example, the population of Australia has tripled over the same period, the United States has doubled, and France and England have increased one and a half times.
