Demographics of Israel - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

This absolutely blew me away. Is this common knowledge? I thought they were wayyy more densely populated. 20% of those are Arabs, by the way, so the Jewish population is less than 8 million. O_O

  • Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz
    7·
    7 hours ago

    They are by any metric very dense. According to population by area they are right between India and the Philippines, both highly dense countries. Another way would be by hectares of arable land per capita which would roughly indicate how large a population their agriculture could support. According to this they rank 137th and rank below countries like Japan and Norway, both known for being severely deficient in farmland. Only reason Israel gets by with their surprisingly high food self sufficiency is their use of highly advanced agricultural technology and intensive use of irrigation from both the Jordan river and desalination plants. However they are still unable to produce all the food they need and need imports.

    The fact is that Israel is very small, especially for their population size. Occupying more land in Palestine and the Golan heights have therefore made strategic sense. And with the high fertility rate constantly increasing their population the land deficiency will only increase without occupying more territory. Look at Israel on satellite you quickly see how villages, towns and cities occupy a huge percentage of their land and this urban development is encroaching on their already limited farmland.

    • tomiant@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      31·
      7 hours ago

      Yeah I was thinking. They are annexing Lebanon, pushing the frontier forward as it were, taking up a better strategic position. Kind of like the Soviet Union and their satellite states. I was figuring earlier that Israel has imperial ambitions in the Middle East, when I went and tried to disprove my idea I stumbled upon this fact that there’s very, very few of them (inhabitants), and that it simply wouldn’t be possible.

      Then again, during colonial times the Brits, Belgians, French et al, managed to control vast swathes of land using just a few thousand troops, officers, and administrators. They simply controlled the local population by pitting them against one another along tribal lines and arming and helping basically one side and tribal warlords. Bringing them into the fold so to speak. It was very successful, even though the imperialists are long gone (they stay in control by other means these days), the infighting, civil wars, massacres, and local genocidal ambitions usually keeps going along those lines that were established in and around the 1800’s.

      One could do that, and have, with Shia/Sunni, or Kurds, basically any religious divide or ethnic minority in the Middle East too, if one were so inclined.

  • darklamer@feddit.org
    15·
    5 hours ago

    It blows my mind that you didn’t know this already. This most certainly is common knowledge.