Professor Sergio Della Pergola is widely considered Israel’s leading specialist in demography. He is the Shlomo Argov professor of Israel-diaspora relations, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. On March 16, while on a work visit to Los Angeles, he sat for an interview at Jerry’s Deli in Westwood with professor emeritus Murray Fromson of the USC Annenberg school for communication and journalism.
Murray Fromson: What was your evaluation of the dispute over Ramat Shlomo which happened while you were in Los Angeles?
Sergio Della Pergola: Anger and frustration. It was another example of the Israeli government’s total inability to grasp the need to exercise public relations. It could easily have explained the issue well before it became a story in the international press. That would have headed off universal criticism of a bureaucratic decision affecting a relatively insignificant piece of land in a neighborhood that was an orthodox Jewish settlement, begun shortly after the Six Day War ended in 1967. It was by no means a new settlement.
MF: What’s a coherent explanation for decisions like it?
SDP: Procedures to improve land usually are undertaken by the local planning department. Generally, these are decided. Not as political issues, but planning ones. They are time-consuming. This one apparently reached the Minister of Interior, Eli Ishay, a politician who is the chairman of the ultra-orthodox Shas party and a member of Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet. But it does not mean that a routine planning decision like this would necessarily have been brought to the prime minister’s attention. It probably was not, so the notion that Bibi wanted to put pressure on Biden or the United States seems absurd.
MF: Beyond this minor matter that has overshadowed the major one, which is a resolution of an Israeli-Arab peace accord, how would you first describe the differences between the Palestinians on the West Bank and those in Gaza?
SDP: While they are both part of the larger Palestinian population, they have different dialects, different family structures. Different political and religious orientations.
The West Bank is mostly secular. Gaza is principally Muslim and religious. Gaza is less developed and more influenced by ties with Egypt and Bedouins in the Sinai Peninsula. A high percentage of the population lives in poor neighborhoods that are little more than refugee camps financed by the United Nations. The U.N. rescue service plays an important role there. The West Bank, on the other hand has more links with Israel, a higher educational standard and lifestyle.
I find the international political attitudes toward Israel and Palestine quite uninformed and affected by a double standard. There is, for instance, a lot of misunderstanding of the Jewish democratic state, but widespread understanding for smaller, weaker ethnic territories like the West Bank and Gaza. The result is a civil war is going on between the leaders in the two territories that simply is ignored.
MF: What is the prospect for the future?
SDP: Demography is changing rapidly. The Arabs are multiplying twice as fast as the Israelis. The Israeli majority over the whole territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is shrinking so that they may have at the moment an advantage of 52%, but they cannot govern effectively with such a slim majority. It was as if the democrats in America were trying to govern the U.S. with a 52% majority in the congress.
If we limit our geography to Israel plus the West Bank—Gaza, having been effectively evacuated in 2005—the Jewish majority in Israel overall would still be slightly above 60%. There is no way that Israel might call itself a Jewish state with a Palestinian minority of 40%. But if we consider Israel within the 1967 boundaries, plus east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the Israeli majority would be less than 79%, a significant difference.
The demographic question continues to loom high, and only some territorial sacrifice (beginning with the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem) on the Israeli side will guarantee that Israel remains Jewish and democratic. By denying the right of Palestinians who are under Israeli control to vote, might eventually generate unbearable international pressure on Israel, causing damage to both its image and economy.
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