I’ll be joining Phil in posting some thoughts from J Street soon, but in the meantime a friend sends:
State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2009 doesn’t say it that way, but if you skim the report and do the math you’ll see there are more Palestinians than Jews between the river and the sea. 5.735 million to 5.6 million. We have a democracy problem here. It’s the huge elephant in the room. (And I think J Street knows it.)
From the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report 2009:
Based on its pre-1967 borders, the country has an area of 7,685 square miles. The country has a population of 7.4 million (including settlers living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem), of which 5.6 million are Jews, 1.5 million are Arab Muslims and Christians, and 320,000 are classified as "other"–mostly persons from the former Soviet Union who immigrated under the Law of Return but who did not qualify as Jews according to the Orthodox Jewish definition used by the Government for civil procedures. . .
The West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) has an area of 2,238 square miles and a population of 2.4 million persons, not including approximately 300,000 Israelis. East Jerusalem has an area of 27 square miles, and its population is 415,000, including approximately 180,000 Israelis. The Gaza Strip has an area of 143 square miles and a population of 1.5 million.
