The demographic bomb

At the annual Herzliya conference Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans to speed up the building of the separation wall, a move intended to assuage the fears of Israeli Zionists that they will soon be outnumbered by Palestinians. By 2020 the majority of inhabitants living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean will be Palestinian, something many Israelis view with trepidation.

According to Israeli statistics by 2020 the Jewish population in Palestine will comprise no more than 44 per cent of the total inhabitants. By 2050, even without Palestinian refugees returning from abroad, the figure will fall to 37 per cent.

The Herzliya conference, which held its last meeting under the slogan "The Balance of Israel's National Security", has been vociferous in promoting a policy of transfer, a euphemism for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel- Palestine.

The Palestinian "demographic bomb" explains the haste with which the government of Sharon is building the segregation wall which will effectively annex 25 per cent of the West Bank and leave the Palestinians isolated in cantons linked by narrow corridors policed by Israel. The wall is clearly designed to preclude the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. Israel was not exactly pleased with recent remarks by the Palestinian prime minister on the establishment of a Palestinian state on all pre-1967 land, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Will the Palestinian demographic bomb succeed in overturning the balance of power in a country that possesses the largest conventional and non-conventional military arsenal in the region? Or will reason and peace efforts, inside and outside Israel, succeed in promoting coexistence on the basis of the roadmap and the Arab peace initiative approved by the Beirut Summit in 2002?