Demography and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The attack by the Islamist group Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the immediate Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, with the thousands of deaths and the devastation that we are witnessing daily in one of the most densely populated areas of the world, have pushed further away the prospect of a solution of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians through the establishment of two peoples-two states, a solution that is viewed favorably in non-holy Palestinian and Israeli circles by many Western countries and by the Holy See. To complicate the socio-political picture, we recall that in the last decades, in the territories occupied by Israel in the West Bank, there has been an incessant work of human settlements and the construction of roads and infrastructures, facilitated by Israel’s rapid population growth. According to many analysts, in order to dominate the Palestinians, Israel is now implementing a real system of apartheid that is spreading from the occupied territories to the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Based on the available data, which are not always reliable for political and organizational reasons of the existing statistical systems, this study attempts to grasp the strategic role that differential demography has had and continues to have in this complex conflictual reality.

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