TEL AVIV — The fertility rate of Palestinians and Jews in the West
Bank has converged, a report said.

A report by a former Israeli diplomat who organized a major demographic
study said the Arab birthrate in the West Bank has fallen to three per
woman. In contrast, the Jewish birthrate was rising in both the West Bank
and in pre-1967 Israel.

“The Arab fertility rate in Judea and Samaria [West Bank] is declining
faster as a derivative of modernity,” Yoram Ettinger said in a report titled
“The Westernization of Muslim Demographics.”

In a report dated June 1, Ettinger cited research that the Palestinian
birthrate declined far faster than previously assumed. A former Israeli
consul in the United States, Ettinger, whose research was not based on
figures released by the Palestinian Authority, said urbanization, education,
career and a higher divorce rate have contributed to a significant decline
in Palestinian fertility.

“The dramatic Westernization of Muslim demographics contrasts
conventional wisdom,” the report said. ” It requires the re-thinking of
economic, social and national security assumptions and the re-evaluation of
related policy.”

The report said 75 percent of Palestinians now lived in urban areas,
compared to 30 percent in 1967. In addition, the median age of marriage,
decline in teenage pregnancy and rise in the divorce rate in West Bank
society have reached a record high.

Ettinger said the Palestinian fertility decline reflected a trend
throughout the Middle East. He cited United Nations and other research of a
sharp drop in the birthrate in countries such as Iran and Morocco.

In 2012, the Jewish fertility rate in Israel was three births per woman,
which Ettinger said assured a Jewish majority. The report said this was
higher than any Arab country other than
Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen. Israel and the United States were said to be
the only advanced countries to retain a high fertility rate.

“Moreover, Israel’s robust demography yields uniquely promising
economic, social, technological and national security ramifications,” the
report said. “Anyone suggesting that Jews are doomed to become a minority
west of the Jordan River, that there is a demographic machete at the throat
of the Jewish state and that the Jewish state must concede Jewish geography
in order to secure Jewish demography, is either grossly mistaken or
outrageously misleading.”