Reuters Posted online: Monday, February 02, 2004 at 1449 hours IST Updated: Monday, February 02, 2004 at 1500 hours IST
Jerusalem, February 2: Almost one in four Israeli children is Muslim, the government said on Sunday, reflecting fears among Jews they could be outnumbered by Arabs in the near future.
According to a Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) report based on figures from 2002, 24 per cent of Israelis under the age of 16 are Muslim. Seventy-one per cent are Jewish, while the rest are from other Arab sectors or are unaffiliated, the CBS said.
"The annual average growth rate of the Muslim population in Israel in recent years is 2.4 times higher than that of the Jewish population -- 3.4 per cent as opposed to 1.4 per cent," the report said, citing a record-high birth rate among Arab Muslims.
Data suggesting a population boom among Israeli Arabs, who now comprise 18 per cent of the 6.6 million population, have set off alarm bells in a government keen to see the Jewish majority -- with its electoral clout -- remain unchallenged.
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked a furore in December by calling Israeli Arabs a worse "demographic problem" than the Palestinians, saying that their growing numbers could transform Israel from a Jewish to a binational state.
Adding to Israeli worries over the population balance are the 3.6 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, many of whom now favour abandoning a more than three-year-old uprising and instead demanding full and equal citizenship.
Explaining the differences in population growth, the CBS cited the 20 per cent incidence of single-parent families among Israeli Jews as opposed to the more strictly traditional Muslim community which, it said, encourages child-bearing and child-rearing.
