A recently leaked internal European Union document details a plan to help facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state by building settlements on the part of the West Bank controlled by Israel, in contravention of Israeli law. As Alan Baker explains, such construction violates the Oslo Accords, to which the EU is a witness and signatory; moreover the document itself displays a misunderstanding of the Accords while making various false claims about Jerusalem’s behavior. Baker tries to answer the question of why Brussels is so intent on undermining the Jewish state—as made clear both by this policy and others:

It would appear that the EU’s extreme and illogical fixation with Israel is not necessarily shared by state members of the EU. It seems to represent and echo the long-held personal aversion and hostility to Israel that the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Josep Borrell has displayed long before taking up his EU post.

Regrettably, this aversion to Israel is faithfully implemented by the EU External Action Service whose major purpose and staff seem to be devoted to undermining and seeking to delegitimize Israel. So much so that it is patently clear that the tail appears to be wagging the dog, rather than the opposite.

It is high time that the state members of the EU play a greater role in determining EU policies regarding the Middle East peace process, rather than allowing the biased, partisan, and fixated EU External Action Service to dictate policy regarding Israel and the territories.

By the same token, it is high time that Israel’s government take a far more assertive role in clarifying to the EU and its member states that the anti-Israel fixation of its staff and its actions in undermining Israel’s legitimate authority and jurisdiction in Area C [of the West Bank] will no longer be tolerated and must cease.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.