Talk:Demographics of the Palestinian territories

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See Talk:Demographics of the West Bank. Tazmaniacs 19:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC) A recent article in the Washington Post entitled "'Doomsday' falshoods" suggests that based upon critical statistical analysis, the populations of both Gaza and the West Bank have been grossly overstated by the Palestinian Authority. Last year, an American-Israeli research team using statistical methods calculated the 2004 Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza at 2.5 million (1.4 million in the West Bank and 1.1 million in Gaza) instead of the 3.8 million forecast reported as fact by the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

That report as little or no support from professional demographers. See [1]. --Zero^talk 13:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually the study that was undertaken above was done by professional demographers. The plain fact is that there has been no legitimate census of the population for quite a while and it is politically expedient for the Palestinians to claim large population statistics when in fact, their population is probably stagnating due to immigration.

I'm pretty confused by the absence of objective data. I read in Ha'aretz that the week the Gaza pullout was announced, 'Arabs' became a majority in the land controlled by Israel (and I understand that this was a major factor in Sharon's decision). The demogaphic dimension of the great Israel-Palestine question has gone largely unreported in mainstream western media, but is clearly a very prominent dimension of the conflict. The 'revisionist' report cited as reference [6] in the article is clearly far from neutral. On a purely 'anecdotal' lvel, I can't square it, for example, with stories from Jewish friends who live in North London, that in the last few years there has been a major influx of Israeli Jews (pushing up house prices in the North London Jewish enclaves way faster than the average increase in London as a whole). Why doesn't the UN organize a scientific census of the 'territories', since accurate figures would clearly remove some of the already extreme tensions in the area between the River and the Sea?