Israel Population

While the world is focused on the Persian Gulf, and on President Bush, U.S. forces and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, events are occurring in Israel that may bring a better future to the Middle East. This year, Israel expects to take in between 100,000 and 200,000 immigrants from the Soviet Union. And the flow could reach 350,000 next year, says Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Nissim, who is also Minister of Trade and Industry. Indeed, Israel's 4.

Israel in 1990 received the highest number of immigrants in one year since 1949 and expects new records to be set in 1991, immigration officials said Monday. Approximately 187,000 immigrants, the majority of them Soviet Jews, have arrived in Israel since January, 1990, immigration officials said. Their number is expected to reach 200,000 by Dec. 31, the highest number since 1949--a year after independence--when 239,964 Jews arrived in Israel in a one-year period, officials said.

During his tour of Nazi death camps in Poland, Aharon Renaan found things much as he expected. He had read about the cramped bunkhouses for Jewish prisoners, the stark horror of the gas chambers and the cruel efficiency of the crematories. Everyone in Israel is educated about these things. Not a few know about them from experience. So what Renaan, a high school principal, saw was nothing new.

It was a relatively slow day in the maternity ward of the Arab Aliya Hospital here. Two new Israeli-made incubators stood in the hall still partly unpackaged, and several beds were empty. Maliha Debabsiyh, 45, had just given birth to her 11th child, a girl, and a roommate who would identify herself only as Bassema, 29, had had her fifth. But it was clear that the hospital would fall short of its daily average of about 13 births, much less match the hectic night of March 5-6.

Israel's population rose 1.7% to 4,375,000 in 12 months, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. Nearly 18%, or 785,000, are non-Jews. The figures do not include some 1.5 million Palestinian Arab residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Middle East War. About 12,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Israel during the period, compared with 9,200 the previous year, the bureau said. No figures were given for emigration.

When people talk these days about Israel's economy, they use words like booming, resilient, even "miracle." Weaning itself off socialist-influenced policies that once brought 400% inflation and 60% income-tax brackets, Israel's economy is now growing despite the international financial slowdown. Debt is manageable, the currency is strong; Israel's high-tech sector is admired worldwide. But one Israeli economist is warning that beneath Israel's back-patting lurks a hidden peril — fueled by demographic trends and political choices — that could eventually mean an end to the country.

Israel's Jewish majority is gradually shrinking due to a drop in Jewish immigration and a high birthrate among the country's Arab minority, according to a report released by Israel's Statistics Bureau. Israel has long feared that its Jewish population could some day be outstripped by its Arab citizens, who now make up 18% of the population. The report said Israel's population now totals 4.3 million--3.55 million Jews and 760,000 Arabs.

JERUSALEM — Israeli medical student Mohammad Hijazi seems the ideal candidate to alleviate the country's looming doctor shortage. He graduated first in his high school class, scored in the top 5% of Israel's version of the SAT and rounded out his resume by founding a grass-roots organization that encourages blood donation. Yet for the four years he applied to all five of Israel's medical schools, Hijazi was repeatedly rejected. Officials told him he kept failing the pre-admission personality interview, but the 25-year-old Arab Israeli suspects another reason: He believes that recent changes in the enrollment process are designed to discourage non-Jewish applicants.

Almost two-thirds of Israel's Jewish population favors a full, immediate military withdrawal from Lebanon, the independent newspaper Maariv said in a poll published Tuesday. It showed that only 1.7% favor staying in Lebanon for the foreseeable future. In January, Maariv said, 22% favored staying or until obtaining peace with Syria or Lebanon. In the new survey, 63.3% of those polled favored a complete withdrawal immediately, 15.3% backed a phased pullout and 16.