For decades, Israel has been hiding crucial demographic facts about the Palestinians West of the River Jordan (Israel proper, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip). During this period, Successive Israeli governments consistently sought to inflate the number of Jews while deliberately belittling the number of Palestinians. The purpose of this manifestly racist and still-ongoing policy is to portray the Palestinians as an insignificant and shrinking minority.
Palestinian demographic facts:“The Palestinian womb is overwhelming Israel”
Demographic facts and data are considered Israel’s best-guarded state secrets.
However, from time to time, Israeli officials make racist statements reflecting Israeli anxiety toward the growing Palestinian population and Palestinian demographic data and facts.
Moreover, the toxically racist Israeli media normally resort to “Statistical manipulation” to ensure the pathologically insecure Jewish citizens that Jews are still a large and growing the majority of the population.
This week, a senior doctor at the Soroka hospital in Beir Sheva in Southern Palestine was quoted as saying that “the Arab womb is overwhelming the Jewish public” in the country.
The doctor, Gideon Saar, a cardiac surgeon, was recorded on video, saying the remarks during an election gathering to promote the notoriously racist former Justice minister Ayelet Shaked.
Crucial Palestinian demographic facts: Short is the robe of lying!
As we all know, mendacity has always been and continues to be Israel’s modus operandi and ultimate lifeline. Israel lies about almost everything, from how it came into being to its possession of nuclear weapons. So, we shouldn’t be surprised a bit to discover Israeli efforts to cover up crucial demographic facts in occupied Palestine.
Indeed, lying rather obscenely is simply an integral part of being Zionist.
Honesty and being Zionist are eternal oxymorons and shouldn’t be used in the same line. Israel lies as often as Israelis breathe.
Rare admission:
In 2014, the Head of the Military Administration in the West Bank, euphemistically called the Civil Administration, made a rare admission when he pointed out that the number of Palestinians between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean exceeded the number of Jews.
The admission has since been confirmed by many Israeli scholars, including Sergio Della Pergola, an Italian-Israeli demographer and statistician.
Some irate right-wing officials dismissed the shocking revelations demographic facts about Palestinians as “spurious and distorted.” But Della Pergola, a Hebrew University Professor, dismissed these right-wingers as “delusional.”
Three out of four Russian immigrants are “non-Jewish”
According to the Israeli media, it has been revealed by official Israeli circles that hundreds of thousands of “Jewish” immigrants from the former Soviet Union are actually “nom-Jewish” according to the so-called “Law of return.” The Ynet English website on 17 November 2002, reported that in 2020, three out of every four Russian immigrants were actually non-Jewish.
The “shocking” report came after leaders of the religious and fascist Jewish parties, which won the recent elections in Israel, expressed intention to amend the Law of Return and reopen the sensitive question of who counts as Jewish according to Jewish law or Halacha. According to the Jerusalem Post, only 28% of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union were actually Jewish. The same source reported that between 1990-2020, the percentage of truly Jewish immigrants didn’t exceed 36%.
Palestinians have a clear majority
Today, data shows that the existence of a Palestinian demographic majority west of the River Jordan (Israel and the occupied Territories) is a clarion fact that only the willfully blind refuses to see. In fact, if we deduct around 500,00-600,00 non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union from the projected Jewish population, the Palestinian majority becomes an axiomatic fact that even the most dishonest Israeli politicians wouldn’t deny.
According to Palestinian and Israeli experts, the crucial Palestinian demographic facts today exceeds the Jewish population by at least 300,000 people.
However, some hot-tempered Israeli leaders and pro-settler circles keep indulging in prevarication, statistical sophistry and outright lies to produce an otherwise rosy outlook.
Palestinian demographic facts: Apartheid to make “them” out of sight and out mind”!
Israel, especially the so-called “deep state,”e.g., the hawkish security establishment, has been using a variety of criminal tactics to neutralize the problem. These tactics include the following:
1- Denial and concealing crucial Palestinian demographic facts, classified as “top secret” from the general public, while making the classified data available to top politicians, like the Prime Minister, the President, and Mossad Chief. Moreover, military censorship has been barring the normally-liberal Israeli media from discussing the matter or making “harmful” Revelations.
2- Maximizing systematic persecution, repression and state sponsored-terrorism against the Palestinians for the purpose of coercing them to emigrate as the Zionist gangs did in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave following the perpetration by Jewish terrorists of genocidal massacres like Dir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, etc. Indeed, for decades, Israel claimed the refugees were not expelled but left voluntarily.
3- Confining as many Palestinians as possible to the smallest possible territory.
4. Refusing to grant non-Jews building licenses to construct a home in (Area C) of the West Bank, which constitutes more than 65% of the occupied territory.
5- Demolishing Palestinian homes in the contiguity of Jewish colonies or in areas coveted or slated for settlement expansion. It is estimated that Israel demolished more than 50,000 Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank since 1967.
6- Applying two sets of laws, one lenient, another harsh and draconian, to Jews and Arabs living in the same area, even the same neighbourhood.
Yet Zionist Jews bark furiously and uncontrollably like rabid shipyard dogs whenever someone calls the racist entity apartheid? Do they want the world to celebrate with them their “exemplary egalitarianism” and the kosher savagery meted out to the helpless and virtually abandoned Palestinians whose only “crime” is their being goyem and therefore un-kosher? Is this the way Jews are supposed to pay back for Muslim protection for many centuries in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and many other places?
I advise doubting Jews to read “the Jew and the Cross” to realize the huge difference in the treatment Jews received under Islam and Christendom. (see The Jew and the Cross – Dagobert David Runes).
Exercising some honesty and rectitude is always beneficial and rewarding.
7-Israel has been manipulating statistical data and crucial demographic facts to give the impression that the Palestinians are not actually a nation, but a cacophonic set of sects and tribes with very little common bonds.
Thus, Israeli statisticians divided Palestinians into Muslims, Christians, Bedouins, Jerusalemites, Israeli Arab citizens, and Circassians. Samarians, etc.
This sort of statistical mutilation is not met with a reciprocal sub-categorization when dealing with the Jewish community which has far more ethnic and religious heterogeneity. For example, the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate doesn’t consider a majority of American Jews (Reform and Conservative Jews) to be bona fide Jews. Orthodox Jews, who are in control in Israel, routinely quarrel and scuffle with Reform and Conservative Jews at the Western Wall esplanade, shouting obscenities at them and calling them abusive epithets like “Goyem” (non-Jews) and “Notsrim” (Christians).
Demographic holocaust
One might wonder how Israel would deal with its demographic dilemma in the medium and distant future. Some Israeli leaders, especially within the jingoistic religious messianic circles don’t hesitate to use far-fetched explosive terms like “demographic holocaust” to describe the Palestinian demographic advantage.
The scandalously corrupt analogy between one of the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind on the one hand, and the survival and growth of the Palestinian people in its own ancestral homeland on the other, cheapens the holocaust and seriously corrodes international efforts to combat true, virulent anti-Semitism. It also exposes the brutal ugliness of the Zionist mindset.
Unfortunately, we Palestinians have learnt that nothing can be dismissed as unthinkable as far as the depraved Zionist mentality is concerned. Indeed, a state that shamelessly argues that Jews have an inherent right to be racist “because they are a special people” can do anything, however ghoulish and nightmarish or diabolic it may be.
That is why, the Rabbis of Gush Emunim, who represent religious Zionism, declare openly that the solution for the Palestinian problem is a combination of three measures: Transfer or collective deportation; a tight, humiliating apartheid regime; and\or a war of extermination. Frankly, I prefer to believe these evil rabbis rather than notorious pathological liars like Netanyahu, Lapid, and Biden.
This is not just about a region in this world where human rights are not given, and people are being killed. It is about humanity, life, and the very foundations of values that humans are living with. When Gaza is discussed today, it is rarely in the language of rights. It is discussed as a problem to be solved, a territory to be stabilized, and a population to be administered.
The announcement of a new international “Board of Peace” fits neatly into this pattern. Presented as a bold initiative to guide Gaza out of conflict and into reconstruction, the Board of Peace has been framed by its sponsors as innovative, inclusive, and forward-looking. Yet for Palestinians, the announcement raises an older, still unresolved question: Who decides Gaza’s future, and on what authority?
What Is the Board of Peace?
The Board of Peace was announced by US President Donald Trump as part of a broader Phase Two Gaza plan, marking a shift from ceasefire management to post-genocide governance and reconstruction.
According to official descriptions, the board is meant to:
Oversee Gaza’s political transition
Coordinate reconstruction funding and investment
Provide international supervision during a “transitional” period
Trump declared himself chair of the board and described it as a high-level body composed of political leaders, financial figures, and diplomatic actors. Unlike the United Nations, the board has no clear treaty basis, no General Assembly mandate, and no defined accountability mechanism.
It is powerful not because it is formal, but because it is backed by money, political leverage, and security control.
Who is on the Board?
The individuals named or referenced in connection with the Board of Peace are not neutral facilitators.
The board’s executive circle includes:
Marco Rubio, US Senator and the Secretary of State
Tony Blair, former UK prime minister
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East envoy
Steve Witkoff, US real estate magnate and political donor
Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank
These are figures associated with Western political power, financial institutions, and security-centric diplomacy. None are elected Palestinian representatives. None comes from Gaza. The imbalance is structural, not incidental.
Which Countries Were Invited?
One of the board’s defining features is its attempt to project global legitimacy through invited state participation.
According to credible sources, Trump sent invitations to around 60 world leaders. Those explicitly named in reporting include:
Turkey (President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan)
Egypt (President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi)
Canada (Prime Minister Mark Carney)
Argentina (President Javier Milei)
Moreover, some diplomatic sources also indicate the list includes:
Britain
Germany
Italy
Morocco
Indonesia
Australia
The Palestinian Face of the Plan: Who Is Ali Shaath?
To provide the plan with Palestinian leadership, the US has backed Ali Shaath as head of the transitional Palestinian committee that will administer Gaza’s civil affairs under the Board of Peace.
Shaath’s profile is central to understanding how this governance model is being sold.
Here is a quick overview of Ali Shaath:
He was born in 1958 in Khan Younis
He is a civil engineer with a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast
He previously served as deputy minister of planning in the Palestinian Authority
He has worked on industrial zone projects in both Gaza and the West Bank
Shaath has spoken publicly about the scale of Gaza’s destruction, estimating around 68 million tons of rubble, much of it contaminated with unexploded ordnance. He has suggested that clearing debris could take three years, with full recovery achievable in seven years. It seems to be a far more optimistic timeline than UN estimates, which warn that rebuilding could extend beyond 2040.
Politically, Shaath has been described as acceptable to both Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, precisely because he is positioned as a technocrat rather than a political leader. However, it is yet to be observed how he would work with the other members.
Governance Without Sovereignty
The Palestinian committee, chaired by Shaath, has issued a mission statement pledging to restore services, rebuild infrastructure, and stabilize daily life in Gaza.
The committee describes its work as “rooted in peace” and focused on technocratic administration rather than politics.
Yet the committee:
Controls no borders
Commands no security forces
Regulates no airspace or coastline
Has no electoral mandate
It governs without power, while power remains in external hands.
When it comes to the reaction of the people of Gaza, they showed mixed feelings of skepticism over hope. Some Palestinians express cautious hope that any plan might bring electricity, water, and an end to constant displacement. Others see the Board of Peace as another externally designed structure that manages Gaza without addressing the occupation.
Peace Architecture or Power Management?
The Board of Peace is being presented as an innovation. However, history offers a cautionary lens.
Temporary governance structures in occupied or post-conflict territories have a habit of becoming permanent. Reconstruction becomes conditional. Aid becomes leverage. Administration replaces self-determination.
In a nutshell, the Board of Peace asks the world to believe that stability can precede justice, and that governance can substitute for freedom.
For Palestinians, the unanswered question is simpler and older:
If Gaza’s future is designed in Washington, financed in global capitals, and overseen by external boards—where does Palestinian self-determination actually begin?
Until that question is addressed, the Board of Peace risks becoming not a new architecture for peace, but another structure built on the same imbalance that has kept Gaza unfree for decades.
Peace cannot be outsourced, and a people cannot be rebuilt while being brutally ruled.
The second phase of Gaza’s so-called peace plan has officially been announced. It is being described as a transition from ceasefire to governance, from violence to rebuilding. However, on the ground in Gaza, the distinction is harder to locate.
Isn’t it shocking that more than three months after the ceasefire took effect in October, Palestinians are still being killed, and aid is a privilege to have? Entire neighborhoods remain uninhabitable. So, the announcement of phase two does not coincide with calm. It arrives amid continued military pressure, delayed withdrawals, and a humanitarian system operating far below what was promised.
There is a crucial question Palestinians are asking, and that is not whether Phase Two exists on paper, but whether it alters the reality of power.
What Phase Two Claims to Change
According to some US officials, Phase Two is meant to shift the Gaza file from emergency truce management to long-term stabilization. Its three pillars are clear:
First, the demilitarization of Hamas and other armed groups, framed as a non-negotiable precondition for any durable peace.
Second, the establishment of a Palestinian technocratic committee to administer Gaza’s civil affairs during a transitional period.
Third, the beginning of reconstruction planning, coordinated under international supervision and tied to security compliance.
In theory, this is where genocide ends, and governance begins, but in practice, each pillar raises more questions than answers.
Phase One by the Numbers: A Ceasefire in Name
Before moving further, let’s have a look at the overview of Phase One. Since the ceasefire came into force on October 10, at least 451 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,250 injured, an average of nearly five deaths per day. Military operations continued under the language of “enforcement” and “targeted action,” blurring the very meaning of a ceasefire.
When it comes to the prisoner exchanges, Hamas and Israel both released most of the captives. Bodies were also exchanged, with one reportedly still trapped under rubble.
Aid delivery fell far short of commitments. Between October and early January, around 23,019 aid trucks entered Gaza out of a promised 54,000, roughly 43% of the target.
Critical crossings, including Rafah, remained closed or heavily restricted. Aid organizations reported operational paralysis as bans, inspections, and suspensions multiplied.
In other words, Phase One did not fulfill its promises. It managed the violence without ending it.
Demilitarization Before Relief
Phase Two places demilitarization at its core. President Trump has repeatedly framed it as a binary choice—an “easy way or a hard way.” The message is unambiguous: disarmament first, normalization later.
What remains unaddressed is the imbalance this creates. Israel retains control over Gaza’s airspace, coastline, borders, population registry, and imports. Palestinian armed groups are asked to disarm while occupation-level controls persist.
It is pertinent to mention that international law does not recognize demilitarization as a substitute for political rights. Yet phase two calls itself the engine of peace, while humanitarian access, withdrawal timelines, and accountability for genocidal destruction remain secondary.
For many Palestinians, this sequencing feels less like peacebuilding and more like containment.
The Technocratic Committee: Governance Without Power
There will be a 15-member Palestinian committee tasked with administering Gaza’s civil affairs. Its stated mission includes restoring basic services, managing reconstruction, and laying foundations for stability.
Its members are presented as non-political professionals, including engineers, administrators, and planners. But what is missing is authority.
The committee operates under external oversight, with no electoral mandate, no independent security control, and no ability to regulate borders, trade, or movement. Its legitimacy is managerial, not democratic.
However, it’s not shocking for Palestinians as they are familiar with this model. Over the past three decades, “temporary” arrangements have repeatedly substituted administration for sovereignty. Technocracy becomes a way to manage populations without resolving the structures that disempower them.
Palestinian Voices
Some reports from Gaza capture a mood that is neither celebratory nor dismissive, but only exhausted.
Some residents express cautious hope that Phase Two might at least bring predictability: electricity that lasts more than a few hours, water that runs clean, streets cleared of rubble. On the other hand, most of them see another externally designed plan that speaks the language of peace while preserving the architecture of control.
One displaced man described being forced to move 17 times since the genocide began. Another questioned how demilitarization could be discussed while entire families still sleep in tents beside the ruins of their homes.
For many, peace is not an abstract framework, but the ability to survive the night without fear.
Aid as Leverage, Reconstruction as Reward
Phase Two introduces reconstruction, but not as a right. Aid and rebuilding are explicitly linked to compliance. This conditionality transforms humanitarian relief into a pressure tool.
History offers little comfort here. Millions pledged to Gaza after previous acts were delayed, diverted, or blocked entirely. The difference now is scale. Gaza’s destruction is unprecedented, with tens of millions of tons of rubble, unexploded ordnance, and erased neighborhoods.
Therefore, rebuilding without political change risks entrenching dependency rather than restoring dignity.
A Governance Phase Built on Unresolved Violence
Although phase two is described as a transition, transitions require movement—away from violence, toward rights.
So far, what has changed is not the structure of power, but the language used to describe it.
Demilitarization is demanded without de-occupation. Governance is promised without sovereignty. Reconstruction is discussed while restrictions remain.
This is not peace delayed. It is peace redefined—away from justice, toward management. Ultimately, nothing can substitute for Gaza’s right to determine its own future, which has been denied for decades.
When governments talk about protecting children, their words rarely match what young Palestinians are living through. In the Gaza Strip, education is not merely disrupted; it is being systematically erased, leaving the possibility of a generation without basic schooling and awareness.
A recent analysis done by the University of California warned that children in Gaza may lose the equivalent of five years of education due to repeated school closures since 2020. These conditions are compounded by violence, trauma, and chronic destruction of infrastructure.
Almost all of the schools have been partially or completely destroyed by Israel. If schools remain out of session until at least 2027, many teenagers will be a decade behind where they should be educationally.
This is not only about education but the erasure of an entire generation, coupled with despair. It is ultimately the humanitarian consequence of genocide-scale violence and blockade. The future is being stolen from innocent lives, and the world is witnessing one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of mankind.
The Scale of the Education Collapse in Gaza
Before the genocide intensified, Gaza had an education system serving nearly 660,000 school-aged children. However, two years of bombardment, destruction, and blockade have devastated this system:
An estimated 97% of schools in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.
Hundreds of thousands of children have had little to no access to face-to-face schooling for more than two academic years.
More than 18,000 students and 780 teachers were killed as of October 2025, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) data included in international analysis, representing a massive depletion of both students and educators.
UNRWA reported that around 660,000 children are out of school, with many classrooms repurposed as shelters for displaced families.
These figures combine lost school buildings with lost lives and lost opportunities. These conditions are creating structural barriers to learning that go far beyond temporary closures.
What It Means to Lose Years of Education
According to the Cambridge analysis, repeated closures since 2020, first due to the pandemic and then to ongoing genocide, have eroded more years of learning than children can realistically recover.
This isn’t just falling behind, but a fundamental derailment of life trajectory:
Delayed literacy and numeracy milestones
Increased likelihood of dropout in teenage years
Higher risks of early marriage and child labor
Limited access to higher education and careers
Resultantly, when education stops, social mobility also stops with it.
Education as a Protective Space
Children’s access to education is not just about reading and math, but about safety, structure, and psychological stability.
UNICEF and other child protection agencies have emphasized that education provides:
Protection from exploitation and abuse
Psychosocial support
A routine that counteracts trauma
Opportunities for social interaction and identity building
When schools are reduced to rubble or become temporary shelters, these protective functions disappear. Instead, Gaza’s schools increasingly resemble sites of trauma, displacement, and interruption, not growth.
Trauma, Hunger, and Learning Loss: A Spiral of Harm
The education crisis in Gaza does not exist in isolation, but it intersects with:
Widespread hunger and malnutrition, which impair cognitive development
Psychological trauma, which reduces concentration and memory
Displacement and instability, which make regular attendance impossible
A recent scientific analysis describes how children exposed to conflict, displacement, and trauma face long-term developmental challenges, including reduced educational outcomes.
Comparing Gaza to Global Conflict Patterns
Gaza’s education collapse is one of the most extreme examples today, but it reflects a broader global trend.
UNICEF estimates that globally, more than 25 million children of primary age are out of school due to conflict and insecurity.
In wider conflict zones, from Yemen to Sudan, attacks on schools and displacement keep millions from education.
However, Gaza’s situation is exceptional for the scale of destruction, cumulative closure, and overlap with famine, displacement, and repeated bombardment.
The Lost Generation is Not Just a Phrase but a Forecast
Researchers warn that, unless things change, Gaza’s children will not simply “catch up.” They will represent a generation with permanent educational loss, with consequences echoing for decades.
This is the core of the Cambridge study’s warning:
“Children in Gaza will have lost the equivalent of five years’ worth of education… and many will be a full decade behind their educational level.”
Even temporary or online learning measures introduced by UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Education have been severely constrained by destroyed infrastructure, scarce resources, and ongoing insecurity.
Why This Matters Beyond Gaza
When an entire generation loses access to education:
Entire economies lose future professionals
Communities lose rebuilding capacity
Political stability becomes harder to achieve
Human rights, including dignity and autonomy, are undermined
Gaza’s children are not only Palestinian future workers and citizens. They are part of the global Muslim community, and their loss echoes in every society that values human potential.
Their right to education is universal, and its denial is not a local tragedy but a global failure.
