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NewsMine war-on-terror israel population Viewing Item | Less jerusalem jews January 2003
>Jewish population of Jerusalem shrinking > >By Nadav Shragai > > >About 40 percent of children up to the age of four in Jerusalem are >Palestinians, and 41 out of 100 births in the capital are to Palestinan >mothers. Annual birth rates in Jerusalem's Palestinian sector are much higher >than rates in the Jewish population: 31 births per 1,000 people in the Arab >population, versus 19 births per 1,000 in the Jewish sector. > >Annual figures for Jerusalem, released yesterday by the Jerusalem Institute >for Israel Studies and the Jerusalem Municipality, show that ultra-Orthodox >children represent a solid majority in the city's pre-school frameworks. >Haredi children constitute 62 percent of the children in compulsory >kindergarten, whereas just 38 percent of Jerusalem's kindergarten children are >enrolled in the state and state-religious streams. > >On average, a Jewish woman in Jerusalem has 3.8 children, whereas the figure >for Jewish women throughout the country is 2.6 (in Haifa and Tel Aviv the >figure is 1.8). The numbers are higher in Jerusalem mainly due to the large >size of ultra-Orthodox families. Haredi women have an average of 7.5 children. >Muslim families in Jerusalem are also large; Muslim women have an average of >4.5 children, which is slightly below the national average for Muslims. > >Speaking yesterday at a press conference held to mark the release of the >city's 2001 data, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert declared: "I am very worried by >Jerusalem's demographic situation. Nothing is more worrisome than this topic. >The situation has to be taken in hand, but doing so means wide-scale >intervention, and a much more intensive use of national mechanisms than can be >done by the Jerusalem municipality." > >The new data establish that departures from Jerusalem to live elsewhere >lessened in 2001. In 1999 and 2000, Jerusalem lost an average of 8,000 people >a year; this figure dropped to 5,900 in 2001. The reason for the drop in the >number of Jerusalemites leaving is related to the Al-Aqsa Intifada: fewer city >residents left to live in West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements during 2001. >However, in contrast to previous years, more Jerusalemites left the city to >live in Tel Aviv. > >Jerusalem's population grew 152 percent between 1967 and 2001. The city's >Jewish population, which today stands at 456,000, grew 130 percent in this >period, while the Arab population, 215,400 today, rose by 214 percent. > >Over half the city's residents - 371,000 Jews and Arabs out of 670,000 - live >in areas that were added to Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War. A minority >(46 percent) of the residents of post-'67 neighborhoods are Jewish. In terms >of the city's total Jewish population, 62 percent live within the Green Line >boundaries, and 38 percent live in regions that were annexed to the city after >the 1967 war. > >If the current intifada has harmed tourism to all parts of the country, it has >delivered a lethal blow to tourism in the capital. In western section of the >city, hotel stays have dropped 80 percent over the past two years; in East >Jerusalem, the figure is 100 percent. In the western areas, the number of >persons staying in hotels dropped from 2.85 million in 2000 to 1.36 million in >2001; in the city's eastern (Arab) parts, this figure dropped from 600,000 in >2000 to 104,500 in 2001. > >The intifada also apparently influenced the frequency with which residents >sought care in hospitals located in Arab sections of Jerusalem. Some 153,000 >persons received care in the city's hospitals in 2001. Of these, 84 percent >went to hospitals located in Jewish neighborhoods, and 16 percent received >care in hospitals in Arab neighborhoods. Statistics in the new study reflect a >7 percent drop in the number of patients admitted to hospitals in Jerusalem's >Arab neighborhoods, in contrast to just a 1 percent drop in patients who >received care in facilities located in Jewish parts of the city. > >The statistics indicate a sharp drop in the number of visitors to museums and >cultural institutions in Jerusalem. This decrease was apparently caused by the >security crisis, and perhaps also by the stagnant economy. In 2001, 1.6 >million people visited a defined group of museums and cultural institutions in >the city; in 1999, 4 million visited the same group of institutions, and 3.7 >million in 2000. > >
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