Palestinians Invite Disaster, Yet Again

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With the Palestinian population being mostly young, unemployed and for the most part uneducated, what is there to keep them from going into the terrorists organizations? For the 14 - 18 year old Palestinian boys, what would be cooler, fighting against Israel or working to build their nation from the ground up?

Throwing rocks and volunteering to be a suicide bomber ranks much higher than picking up garbage or building a school, or volunteering in a hospital, or growing crops to feed their families and others in their community. But maybe that is just me being cynical.

Palestinians Invite Disaster, Yet Again

By Richard Z. Chesnoff

NY Daily News

October 11, 2006

Here's one of the Mideast's few sure things: When there's a bad decision to make, Palestinian leadership will make it.

Consider the region's latest intelligence buzz. Anyone with even an iota of sense would take one look at the loss of Lebanese life and property caused by Hezbollah's war on Israel and steer clear of provoking Israel's army again. Instead, Hamas is reportedly studying the Lebanese war to figure out ways to adopt Hezbollah's fighting tactics. The results are bound to be a new nightmare not just for Israel, but for the Palestinian people themselves.

What's more, these Hezbollah-style weapons and guerrilla cells will apparently also be used against Hamas rival Fatah in the mini-Palestinian civil war that's now underway.

If I could, I would grab hold of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's well-tailored lapels, shake him and shout: "Idiot! Don't you understand what you're doing to your own people?"

And the problem runs deeper than the leadership. Where is the silent Palestinian majority? It is up to them to come forward and demand their representatives stop wasting money on arms and bombs, stop denying Israel's existence - in short, stop hating and start building.

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A First Glimpse at the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey

Two demographic factors are contributing to rapid population growth in Palestine. First, the population is predominantly young, with an ever-increasing number of young women approaching their reproductive years. The age structure of the Palestinian population is among the youngest in the world (see figure).

In mid-2005, nearly 18 percent of the population was below age 5, and 46 percent was below age 15, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. As a result, the population of Palestine is expected to grow from 3.8 million in 2005 to 7.4 million by 2025 and to 11.2 million by 2050, even assuming that fertility in Palestine declines in the coming decades to 3.1 births per woman by 2025.2

Second, women living in Palestine have a total fertility rate (TFR) of 5.6 children—significantly higher than women in other countries that have similar levels of education and access to health services. (Women in Gaza have 6.6 births, on average, while women in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) have an average of 5.2 births.)3

Palestinian women marry young and consequently begin their childbearing at a relatively young age. On average, a Palestinian woman marries at age 18 and gives birth to her first child two years later. The 2004 DHS shows that 7 percent of women ages 15-19 in Palestine had already given birth to a child or were pregnant.4

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