Palestinian birth rates higher than ever

[Joseph]

Just reading through

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Viking Berserk
Retailiate? What have the Palestinians done? It's the Jews who don't belong to the country.

Maybe you should read the Bible. I believe God gave them the country.

[Ramo]

Ignoring the millionth Israel-Palestine debate:

Population growth generally leads to economic growth, considering that population growth leads to labor growth. The basic output equation has two components: labor and capital. An increase in the labor input will lead to more economic growth.

A high birth rate means that families, in general, have less resources (food, education, and so forth) to spend per child. In other words, new generations won't be any better off than previous ones. This is why, for instance, poverty among blacks and hispanics in the US is so prevalent and the situation isn't changing very rapidly.

Economic growth is pretty much irrelevent if it doesn't match increases in population. It takes time for labor and capital to equilibrate; time in which, the population increases. Add to that, restrictions on immigration and trade between countries to varying extents mean disparities grow.

Err... actually I can't resist this one:

Before the Intifada, it is the PA who were maintaining the government policies for nearly all the Palestinians for a number of years, and even then, it wasn't until April that Israel started it's massive incursions.

The PA wasn't responsible for maintaining Isreali trade barriers on Palestinians, restrictions on economic development (denial of permits and whatnot), distributing insufficient water resources (acquired from Palestinian areas) to Palestinians, restrictions on travel, and so forth.

[Edan]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Could I also ask you if you are jewish?

......

You already did. Thank you.

Would it have made any difference what if I replied? You came up with your conclusion before you asked your question.

[Ned]

Edan, Interesting link that on the issue of Palestinian textbooks. They still teach kids that Israel is a "usurper" that must be destroyed.

So much for Arafat's pledge to recognize Israel's right to exist. He is simply not sincere and cannot be trusted.

[Eli]

The Gaza Strip is the most crowded and poorest hell-hole on the planet, even before the Intifada. And it was a Palestinian controled autonomy until 2000. They can continue breeding like mad if that's what they want, they should be concerned about their own future, not me.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by GePap
I strongly share Wenerzuma's disgust at this line of thought.

Hitler gave out medals for women who produced sons in certain numbers. What is abhorrent is not that someone else notes that the birthrates are what they actually are, but that the birth rate is a "patriotic" issue or discussed in that way by anyone. Looking at an infant as a future warrior or martyr is what is sick, not noting that someone else is doing that.

[Imran Siddiqui]

A. It is widely known that poorer people have higher birth rates. One main reason is a lack of access to proper birth control. This is futher acerbated by religious commands that having children is a good thing and a blessing.

B. One of the reasons that Palestinian textbooks call for the extinction of Israel is that they are 30 years old (at the least). No one seems to acknowledge this fact. They say the textbooks are soo bad and don't realize that Palestine has no money for new books.

[MichaeltheGreat]

B.

The Palestinians have new books published under PA authority.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I haven't that at all.

Hell, they hardly have money to keep schools open.

[MichaeltheGreat]

UNRWA's website refers to them, as well as the CMIP site linked to by Edan.

Maybe if the Iraqis and others would donate money to run schools instead of to subsidize the families of "martyrs", they'd have less problems.

[Viking Berserk]

An end to the terrorism?

Yes! And end to the Israeli terrorism on Palestinians.

[gsmoove23]

Yeah, new textbooks created were for grades 2 and 6 and introduced in September 2000. 3 and 7 were supposed to be introduced in 2001 but I believe funding was cut because of the uproar created by the biased CMIP report. If you want to see a response...

http://www.ipsjps.org/jps/121/moughrabi.html or

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article501.shtml

or an interesting look at Israeli education...

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0999/9909019.html

...but the idea that education is the root of the problem is ludicrous unless your speaking of the education palestinian children are getting 24/7 in the territories.

Some of the complaints in that report are funny though. They seem to be upset by the use of arabic names for Israeli towns, which in fact are replacing arabic towns. Judea and Samaria? They complain about depictions of pre-1948 Palestine? How about "the IDF web site's use, as well as daily Israeli newspapers, of maps displaying Eretz Israel, depicting the West Bank and Gaza as Israeli."(taken from http://electronicintifada.net/featur...0709zogby.html)

[gsmoove23]

It seems to me the whole birth rate issue in Israel is just sour grapes. Isreal has been pushing its citizens to go forth and produce for 50 years to no avail. Well, there's always immigration.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DanS
Sure, they might have to pay more for water and food, but in a working economy, this shouldn't be too difficult to overcome.

Isn't that the problem Dan? The Palestinians don't have a working economy and the high birth rate is only worsening the problem. Thus Zorba is incorrect in his original assertion.