SINCE ISRAEL became independent its population has grown nearly fivefold; from 650,000 in May 1948 to 3,164,000 in May 1972. Of this increment 1,400,000 are immigrants. So far there have been four major waves of Jewish immigration. These were :

May 1948 to the end of 1951. Some 754,800 entered Israel, doubling its population: these were mainly refugees from the holocaust in Europe, among whom were most of the remnants of the Jewish communities in Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia; and entire Jewish communities from Arab countries, including 121,000 (out of 130,000) of the Jews in Iraq; 44,000 (out of 45,000) of the Jews of Yemen; 30,500 (out of 35,000) of the Jews of Libya.

1955 to 1957. Some 165,000 from Morocco, Tunisia, Poland, and other countries. A large number from Roumania arrived under a family reunification scheme.

1961 to 1964. 215,056, mainly from Eastern Europe and North Africa.

Since the Six-Day War in 1967. By the end of 1972 about 200,000 had arrived in this latest wave, principally from countries in North and South America, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union.

Immigration to Israel virtually ended the existence of several ancient Jewish communities. Those of Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya— all with a history of over 2,000 years—have almost disappeared. In several countries in Eastern Europe, immigration to Israel removed what was left of the Jewish communities after the holocaust. Today only a small number of Jews remain in Poland, Hungary and Roumania, where for many centuries the Jews had constituted a substantial minority.

In 1972 a special Government committee under the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior published a “Plan for a Geographical Distribution of a Five-Million Population of Israel”; this made a forecast expecting the population of Israel to reach 4,000,000 by 1981 and 5,000,000 by 1992. These figures do not include the population of the administered areas.

One million Jewish immigrants are expected to reach Israel between 1970 and 1992.

Israel is a pluralist society where different cultures and social traditions coexist. The 1972 figures for the various communities showed that there were 2,636,600 Jews (85.2%); 343,900 Moslems (11.1%); 77,300 Christians (2.4%) and 37,300 Druzes and others (1.3%). The Jewish population consisted of: locally born Jews, “sabras” (47.2%); Jews from Asia-Africa (25.7%); and Jews from Europe-America (27.1%). J.G.M.T.

(Abstracted from Facts about Israel)