Kohelet Hosts Debate on Demographics: “The Jewish Majority Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River”

Dr. Shuky Blass

With the failure of the latest US-brokered effort to reach a “two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians, analysts and policy makers are considering alternative models that range from unilateral disengagement to annexation. Both disengagement and annexation are motivated by demographic calculations, yet demographic assessments and trends widely differ among experts.

On June 25, 2014 Kohelet Policy Forum hosted a debate on the question of the Jewish majority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The debate was held between two experts, Ambassador Yoram Ettinger and Prof. Ian Lustik, with the goal of generating a better understanding of the “demographic threat”:

Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a former Israeli diplomat who served as Minister for Congressional Affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC and as Israel’s Consul General to Houston. A founding member of the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), his writing and public speaking focuses on challenging the demographic data of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Prof. Ian Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a founder and past president of the Association for Israel Studies and the author of many books on the Arab-Israeli conflict. His article ‘What Counts is the Counting: Statistical Manipulation as a Solution to Israel’s “Demographic Problem” was published by the Middle East Journal in the Spring of 2013.

Moderating the debate was Dr. Emmanuel Navon, Head of the Political Science and Communication Department at the Jerusalem Orthodox College, and Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.

Former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, presented his research showing there is a stable Jewish majority between the river and the sea. Prof. Ian Lustick argued against the validity of Ettinger’s findings and claimed there is almost the same number of Jews and Arabs between the river and the sea.