Israel Matzav

Why Yair Lapid is threatening Israel's economy

Finance Minister Yair Lapid threatened this week that Israel's economy would collapse if there is no 'two-state solution.' Caroline Glick argues that exactly the opposite is true, and Lapid is saying what he says because there is nothing else to say in support of the 'peace process.'

For 17 years, the Left has been relying on a falsified 1997 Palestinian census that exaggerated the Palestinian population by 50 percent, as a means of scaring Israelis into going along with its phony peace process.

Still today, Kerry, Livni, Lapid and their fellow travelers seek to intimidate us by constantly telling us that continued Israeli control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem will bring about Israel’s demographic demise.

But the lie at the heart of their argument is no longer possible to ignore.

As demographic expert Yoram Ettinger wrote last week in Yisrael Hayom, Jewish Israeli fertility rates are higher than Palestinian fertility rates in Judea and Samaria. In 2013, the Palestinian fertility rate was 2.91 children per woman and the Israeli Jewish fertility rate was 3.04 children per woman.

Today Jews make up 62-66 percent of the population in Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. With a two to one majority, a higher birthrate, and positive immigration rates, far from being a strategic threat to Israel’s national viability, demographics are one of Israel’s strategic assets.

The only threat to Israel’s demographic stability is the two-state formula. A Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem would permit the unlimited immigration of millions of foreign Arabs into its territory. Rather than securing Israel’s Jewish majority, a Palestinian state would place millions of hostile Arabs on the outskirts of a rump Israel’s major cities.

With their threat of demographic ruin losing its traction with the public, purveyors of the two-state plan now raise the threat of economic strangulation and ruin at every opportunity.

They understand that given the public’s refusal to be drawn into their fantasies about “peace dividends,” the only path before them is a mix of intimidation and political subversion. They hope that together these two tactics can force Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to submit to Kerry’s dictates for Israeli territorial surrenders.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, demography, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Yair Lapid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:42 PM