Gad G. Gilbar - Population Dilemmas in the Middle East

Essays in Political Demography and Economy

Gad G. Gilbar
University of Haifa and Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University

First Published in 1997 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS
270 Madison Ave,
New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

Copyright 1997 Gad G. Gilbar

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-7146-4706-3 (cloth)

ISBN 0-7146-4244-4 (paperback)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited.

Cover photograph: Schoolyard in Egypt.
Photograph by John Samples.

For over a generation, demographic developments have had a crucial bearing on the economic, social and political situation in a number of countries in the Middle East. In the economic sphere, rapid population growth has contributed critically to multiple hardships in employment, housing and physical and social infrastructure. It has also stunted the process of economic growth, hindered improvement in standard of living and economic well-being, and been responsible for the persistence, or worsening, of poverty. In the social sphere, rapid population growth has been one of the factors accelerating the process of urbanization, on the one hand, and external migration, mainly for purposes of employment, on the other. The effects of these processes have been felt both in the economic sphere for example, the expansion of the non-formal economy and in the social sphere for example, greater integration of women into the labor force. On the political level, the most noteworthy phenomenon in this context has been the strong connection between demographic changes and the strengthening of radical Islamic organizations, their message eagerly received by considerable portions of the population.

The focus of this book are demographic developments that have occurred in two Middle Eastern societies, the Palestinian and the Egyptian, and the political implications attributable to these developments in the period from the late 1940s and early 1950s till the early 1990s, the starting point for analysis of the Palestinian society being the 1948 war, and of the Egyptian society, the 1952 revolution. More than other Islamic societies in the Middle East, the Palestinians and the Egyptians have been influenced in recent decades by demographic change, to the extent that no important area in these societies has been unaffected by population movement, that is, natural increase or migration.

The first part of the book deals with developments in Palestinian society, starting with a general outline of the process of Palestinian population growth after the exodus of 1948 until the end of 1987. During this period, a major demographic change in the history of the Palestinians took place: the creation of large Palestinian communities east of the Jordan River, especially in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Several factors, economic and political, caused changes in the absolute and relative size of the Palestinian communities, and these are discussed in Chapter 1.

The three chapters that follow detail various aspects of the Palestinian migration as well as the high rates of natural increase within the Palestinian community. Chapter 2 presents the domestic conditions in the early 1950s which impelled a growing number of Palestinians to migrate from the West Bank eastward, and focuses on the town of Nablus and the refugee camps in its environs. This town, which had enjoyed economic prosperity in the latter years of the Mandate era, faced serious difficulties after the 1948 war following its severance from the coastal plain and the influx of tens of thousands of refugees from Israel. In addition, it suffered from the policy of the Jordanian government, which concentrated its efforts on the development of the East Bank of the kingdom. One of the consequences of these developments was the start of a migratory movement to the East Bank and the oil economies of the Arabian Peninsula a few years after the annexation in 1950 of the West Bank to Jordan, which continued with growing intensity until the early 1980s.

The recession that struck the Arab oil economies in the early 1980s slowed this migratory movement, thereby shutting off the valve that afforded relief from economic pressures in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. To add to this misfortune, the Israeli government in those years did not encourage investment in the territories. The economic crisis that resulted was one of the main factors leading to the eruption of the Intifada in December 1987. Chapter 3 analyzes demographic and economic developments in the years preceding the uprising. Significantly, the policy of restraining economic growth in the territories, first by the government of Jordan and then by the government of Israel, played a central role in the two important demographic developments experienced by the Palestinians in the West Bank in the last two generations the eastward migration and its cessation.