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Israelis have wondered at times whether they would be outnumbered by Palestinians and become a minority in the world’s only Jewish homeland.

The fear of a “demographic time bomb” has often been cited by those who support the two-state solution, in which Palestinians would get an independent state alongside the Jewish state. An independent Palestinian state, they say, is the only way for Israel to remain majority Jewish.

The fear may be unwarranted. A 2025 demographic study by an Israeli-American group shows the Jewish population growing more rapidly than the Arab Muslim population, particularly in Judea and Samaria—Israel’s historical names for what other nations refer to as the West Bank.

The study, which has traced the population question for two decades, found that the number of annual Jewish births increased by 73 percent from 1995 to 2024, while those among Arabs in Israel increased by only 18 percent.

Jewish births in 2024, about 139,000, were 76 percent of about 182,000 total births, compared with 69 percent of total births in 1995, according to the study, titled “2025 Israel’s Demographic Update Defies Conventional Wisdom.”

Study co-leader Yoram Ettinger, a retired ambassador who published the study in his online “The Ettinger Report,” told The Epoch Times that his group does not accept the statements of either the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority at face value. It takes hard looks at as many figures as possible to audit the official numbers, he said.

Ettinger acknowledged that his group’s work lessens the impetus for Israelis to agree to a two-state solution that few of them still favor after the Hamas terrorist group’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war.

Its principal intent, he said, is about “pessimism and optimism [for Jewish Israelis].”  “If you think you’re going to become a minority, pessimism overtakes you,” he said.

“The study suggests the demographic scene is very optimistic.

“A byproduct of the study is the realization that annexation of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria is sustainable demographically.”

Moshe Elad, professor and former military officer, has extensive experience in Judea and Samaria. He has served in the Israel Defense Forces as military governor of both the Jenin and Bethlehem districts and as head of security coordination with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He has 40 years of experience in affairs there.  He said he is familiar with Ettinger’s work and does not think that it supports a case for Israel annexing Judea and Samaria.  “That’s an aspiration of [some] rightists,” Elad said. “Most Israelis don’t want to see it.” About a quarter of Israel’s population is presently non-Jewish, he said, and most Israeli Jews think that that is enough.  “I know this area,” he said. “I ruled it. It’s a hole in the head. We don’t need it.”

Not only is the Jewish birth rate keeping pace, but also, there is evidence that Arab population numbers are significantly inflated.

The Arab population in Judea and Samaria, stated by the Palestinian Authority as 3.25 million, is closer to 1.5 million, Ettinger told The Epoch Times. His group determined that by digging into what went into the original number.
According to the study, the Palestinian Authority’s figure included 500,000 people who had been away from the region for more than a year.
It included 428,000 people whose emigration the authority did not recognize. It included 380,000 East Jerusalem Arabs that Israel counts as Israelis, a double count. It also double-counted 200,000 Arabs from Judea and Samaria who are married to Israeli Arabs, which means they have permanent resident or citizen status in Israel and are counted in Israel.

Additionally, Ettinger said, the World Bank documented a 32 percent artificial inflation in the Palestinian Authority’s birth numbers.

His group of three Americans and six Israelis does its work, he said, by looking at the numbers behind the numbers.

Elad said he had seen evidence of Palestinian population inflation at the time of the first Persian Gulf War, when Iraq under Saddam Hussein launched missile strikes against Israel. Elad said he was responsible for distributing gas masks to Arabs in Judea and Samaria.  They had a complete list of the population, he said, and for obvious reasons, everyone wanted the gas masks, and no one declined to pick them up.  “An average of a third of the population was missing,” he said.

Ettinger’s lead U.S. collaborator, Bennett Zimmerman of Los Angeles, comes from investment banking, where he did due diligence studies of companies requesting investment from his employer. Zimmerman suggested to Ettinger that they audit demographic data just as he had audited financial data for years, Ettinger said.

Ettinger focuses on the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics’ responsibility for questionable numbers. He said its data was impeached by the raw data from other Palestinian ministries, such as the ministries of health, education, and the interior.
“We don’t just echo data issued by any government,” he said.

“Arab birth rates have declined because of urbanization, education, and other modernization factors, while Jewish ones have risen.”   That is unique among Western societies, Ettinger said, in which birth rates have generally plummeted.

“The bottom line is not only is there no demographic Arab time bomb, but in fact, [there is] unprecedented demographic momentum on the part of the Jewish community in Israel,” he said.  He noted that this momentum “is not limited to religious Jews,” whose high birth rates are well-known, but is also present “among secular Jews.”

According to the study, the Jewish fertility rate of three births per woman is not only higher than the Muslim fertility rate of 2.86, but is also higher than the fertility rates in all Muslim countries except Iraq and Muslim countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 1969, two years after Israel took Judea and Samaria from Jordan during the Six-Day War, Arabs both there and in Israel proper had a fertility rate six births higher per woman than the Jewish fertility rate.

By 2015, both groups had a rate of 3.13 births per woman. The study suggests that this reflects the dramatic Westernization of Arab demography: Urbanization, enhanced social status for women, expanded participation by women in higher education and the job market, older marriage ages, shorter reproductive periods, and increased use of contraceptives have all combined to drive down Arab birth rates.

Ettinger said rural people need more hands to do farm work, but people moving to urban areas do not. Meanwhile, living space becomes more cramped when a family moves from a rural house to a small urban apartment.

The average age for marriage among Arab women in Israel, Judea, and Samaria rose from 15 in the 1960s to 24 now, and it is still rising, according to the study. The reproductive period for women has accordingly diminished.

Israel’s growing Jewish birth rate, meanwhile, is mainly caused by a rise in fertility among secular Jews. The ultra-Orthodox, with the highest birth rate, have seen a moderate decline, while the modern Orthodox birth rate has remained the same.

“Israeli Jewish women are unique in experiencing a direct correlation between a rise of fertility rate on the one hand, and a rise in urbanization, education, and level of income, on the other hand,” the study reads.

Israel’s fertility rate is almost twice as high as that of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the study states.

Ettinger said he attributes Israel’s unique position to “a relatively high level of optimism, patriotism, attachment to roots, and communal responsibility, which has characterized Israel from day one.”