Israel's Population: The Challenge of Pluralism.

This bulletin describes the interplay of demographic and sociopolitical processes in Israel since the state's founding in May 1948 and projects what it might be to 2015. Heavy Jewish immigration, especially during the "mass immigration" of 1948-51, has balanced the high natural increase of Moslems so that the proportion of Jews in Israel's population at the end of 1982 was little changed from June 1948. By 2015 the Jewish proportion could be only 50 percent in a "Greater Israel" if Israel annexes the Occupied Areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip where 1.2 million Arabs now live. "Oriental" Jews from less developed North African and Asian countries, who were only 15 percent of Israel's Jewish population in 1948, outnumbered European American Jews by 1970. This was an important factor in the 1977 shift of political dominance from the leftwing Labor parties, supported by the better-educated, socialist-leaning European-American Jews, to a rightwing bloc, espousing economic policies based on more private initiative and Israel's historic rights to the West Bank. Western-oriented Jews, although still the country's "establishment," comprised only 40 percent of Israel's population by 1981. By 2015, their share is likely to be down to 30 percent within Israel's present boundaries. The questions of whether or not Israel will be a Jewish state and remain a Western society will continue salient into the 21st century. (Author)