- JERUSALEM (AP) -- Immigration
to Israel hit a 15-year low in 2003 and population growth was the lowest
in a decade, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.
-
- The figures, apparently the result of an ailing economy
and more than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, were bad news
for Israel, built on the concept of large-scale Jewish immigration to the
ancient homeland.
-
- Immigration dropped by 32 per cent to 23,000 this year
from 34,000 in 2002, the bureau said in an annual year-end statement. The
last time immigration was so low was in 1988, when only 13,000 people moved
to the country, a bureau official said.
-
- In addition, Israel's population grew in 2003 by only
1.7 per cent to 6,750,000, the lowest natural growth rate since 1990, the
bureau said. Arabs make up 19 per cent of the population, or 1.3 million
people. Jews and others make up 81 per cent of the population, or 5,160,000
people.
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- The greatest contributor to the country's shrinking population
numbers was the drop in immigration, the bureau said.
-
- Immigration to Israel boomed in the 1990s when Jews from
the former Soviet Union flooded Israel. Since 2000, the number of immigrants
from the former Soviet republics has dropped off, causing a decline in
the overall immigration figures.
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- © The Canadian Press, 2003
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- http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/031231/w123136.html
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