In Palestine and Israel the course of fertility change over the second half of the 20th century might seem of negligible interest for the history of the demographic transition. However the exceptional political history of these populations in which demography played a major role for both sides of nation-building sheds a particular light on the political dimension of fertility change. It is noted that two extremes of fertility transition are found side by side in the area with total fertility rates ranging from barely above the replacement level among Jews born in Europe and among Christian Arab Israelis (2.13 and 2.10 respectively in 1992-96) to highest level recorded in the world among Palestinians of the Gaza Strip (7.73 in 1991-95). In this article it is argued that these extreme contrasts of fertility are a corollary of the long-lasting state of belligerence between Arab Palestinians and Jews that began in the wake of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It presents evidence showing that the Palestinian-Jewish conflict is associated with the fertility extremes experienced in Palestine and Israel.

Protracted National Conflict and Fertility Change: Palestinians and Israelis in the Twentieth Century

This paper is about place making in Jerusalem, an important city at the heart of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. It examines how place making in Jerusalem has had the consequence of shifting what...

Making Place: The Shifting Green Line and the Development of “Greater” Metropolitan Jerusalem

Israel is considered by many as a paragon of sound water management (eg, Postal, Last oasis: facing water scarcity, Norton, New York, 1997) Due to the severe water scarcity Israel faces and the relatively high levels of human and social capital it can muster, Israel has successfully implemented policies that are at the forefront of the water policy field These policies enabled Israel to develop an advanced postindustrial economy and to supply a burgeoning population with high-quality water at the tap on the basis of scarce and contested water resources Moreover, Israel has succeeded in providing water to an advanced agricultural sector whose product per unit of water has risen rapidly in the past 30 years

The Four Eras of Israeli Water Policies

In 1944, Robert Kuczynski, a demographer working with the Colonial Office, wrote a memo discussing plans for a postwar census of the British Empire. He called for the creation of a Colonial Demographic Service, arguing that Colonial Office programs “offer no guarantee of a decisive improvement unless there is an expert on the spot to make an effective use of these means.” Kuczynski's firm belief in the need for expert knowledge matched the growing willingness of the Colonial Office to call upon experts in a variety of fields to assist in the reshaping of colonial government. This article examines why demography came to be seen as useful for colonial governance in the interwar years and how officials attempted to make use of demographers and demographic information in the final years of the British Empire. At present, this topic falls between several existing literatures. Works by Richard Soloway, Daniel Kelves, and others document the domestic history of demography in Great Britain, particularly its involvement in debates over hereditarian views of population. At the international level, most recent studies deal with the United States and trace the origins of American support for programs of population control after 1945. Still another body of literature chronicles the unique nature of policy formation in Britain and its relationship with social science in the twentieth century. This article seeks to connect these literatures by focusing on the colonial and international role of British demography from the end of World War I to the postcolonial era of the 1960s.

Demography as Policy Science in the British Empire, 1918-1969

With a light touch and many wonderful illustrations, historian Anat Helman investigates "life on the ground" in Israel during the first years of statehood. She looks at how citizens-natives of the land, longtime immigrants, and newcomers-coped with the state's efforts to turn an incredibly diverse group of people into a homogenous whole. She investigates the efforts to make Hebrew the lingua franca of Israel, the uses of humor, and the effects of a constant military presence, along with such familiar aspects of daily life as communal dining on the kibbutz, the nightmare of trying to board a bus, and moviegoing as a form of escapism. In the process Helman shows how ordinary people adapted to the standards and rules of the political and cultural elites and negotiated the chaos of early statehood.

Becoming Israeli: National Ideals and Everyday Life in the 1950s

This article will shed light on the question of Palestines absorptive capacity as a geographic economic and political issue from the time that Zionism took in interest in the subject until the establishment of the State of Israel. It will examine the methods that were employed to evaluate the question the problems attendant upon these methods and how these methods were modified over the course of time. (EXCERPT)

The absorptive capacity of Palestine 1882-1948.

In December 1949 two significant decisions were taken regarding the issue of Jerusalem. The UN General Assembly reaffirmed its November 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine and the internationalization of Jerusalem and demanded the immediate commencement of international rule over Jerusalem; and the government of Israel decided to make West Jerusalem its official seat. The historical background to these two decisions has already been discussed in a number of studies. Most of the research has focused on the political aspects and international background of the decisions, generally presenting the Israeli government’s decision as a response, in the form of a “fitting Zionist reaction,” to the UN resolution that severed West Jerusalem from the State of Israel. As to the motive for the UN resolution, it was apparently prompted by the Vatican’s frustration at having the city that was supposed to be internationalized (i.e. Christian) ultimately divided between Muslims and Jews, and the feeling that the support given by the Vatican (through the Catholic states) to the partition plan and the establishment of the State of Israel had proved, in retrospect, to have been a “bad bargain.” However, an examination of the archival material and the minutes of government deliberations in 1948–49 dealing with the bond between the State of Israel and West Jerusalem (defined until the beginning of 1949 as an “area under military rule,” which at the time had around 100,000 Jewish inhabitants), and with the transfer of government ministries from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (or their return to Jerusalem, as some defined it), reveals a far different and more complex picture of the timing, background and motives of the transfer. It appears that the process had already begun in September 1948, with the end of the fighting in Jerusalem, well before the above-mentioned discussions at the UN, and initially without any connection to them. Nonetheless, this was a nonconsensual process accompanied by internal disputes of both a tactical and ideological nature. The purpose of this article is to present and analyze the intensive intragovernmental disputes over the transfer of ministries to Jerusalem that took

The Transfer of Government Ministries to Jerusalem, 1948–49: Continuity or Change in the Zionist Attitude to Jerusalem?

The quandary of how one measures a country's absorptive capacity has captured the scholarly attention of behavioural science researchers and dates back to the days of Thomas Malthus.' Researchers who pursued the issue during the first half of the twentieth century disagreed on the question of what factors determined the absorptive capacity and optimal density of a given country. Most, however, concurred that territorial area was not the exclusive factor in providing a solution to the problem. The sociologist A.B. Wolfe, who researched the question of population increase, determined in 1926 that the term 'optimal density of population' could vary between peoples and countries.2 W.S. Thompson, one of the United States foremost population experts during the initial half of the century, wrote in 1929 that the maximal population size which a country could support at a given standard of living was influenced by the given country's means of production coupled with its economic industrial and commercial potential.3 For his part, G. Huart had already deduced by 1934 that these factors not only exerted an influence but had become determining factors in this question.4 At the International Congress on Population which took place in 1937, the researchers elaborated a set of factors which influenced the productive capacity and absorptive capacity of a country including soil quality, hydrography, and climate, the country's location and its connections with other countries, the characteristics of the population, as well as the country's independent capital and its ability to raise external capital for development.'

The Absorptive Capacity of Palestine

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The absorptive capacity of Palestine 1882-1948.

The Transfer of Government Ministries to Jerusalem, 1948–49: Continuity or Change in the Zionist Attitude to Jerusalem?

The Absorptive Capacity of Palestine