During its 68 years of existence, Israel has changed from a sparsely populated country to one of the most densely populated in the Western world. That is how Prof. Alon Tal, chairman of Tel Aviv University’s public policy department, opens his latest book, “The Land is Full: Addressing Overpopulation in Israel” (Yale University Press).
Israel’s population density, he writes, is 1,000 percent higher than the OECD average. Conservative forecasts say that Israel will have 23 million inhabitants by 2050. Less conservative forecasts predict 36 million inhabitants by then. And well before then, in 2030, Israel will have doubled the population it has today. [...]
It’s no accident that Tal stresses his Zionism. In the introduction to his book, he cites numerous examples of the denunciations heaped on anyone in Israel who raises the demographic issue. Among other things, he mentions the advice given by one of Israel’s leading demographic experts, geographer Prof. Arnon Soffer, to anyone who wants to deal with this issue: “Be prepared to be condemned simultaneously both as ‘anti-Zionist’ by Israeli right-wingers and ‘fascist’ by left-wingers.” [...]
In his book, Tal writes that “Israel’s population growth is driven more and more by high ultra-Orthodox fertility rates.” Thus, if ultra-Orthodox fertility “doesn’t drop significantly, the social and environmental indicators by which quality of life in Israel is measured will deteriorate. In general, ultra-Orthodox parents have more children than they’re capable of supporting, so they have to rely on subsidies to survive. Given the poverty into which most ultra-Orthodox children are born, they don’t enjoy equal opportunities for a prosperous future.”
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