Population Dilemmas in the Middle East: Essays in Political Demography and Economy

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 1997 - 141 pages
This study first offers a general outline of Palestinian population growth between 1948 and 1987, and then focuses on the town of Nablus in the early 1950s for a detailed analysis of the economic forces that instigated Palestinian migration to Jordan and the Gulf. The author shows how the recession that struck the Arab oil economies in the early 1980s, by slowing down the migratory movement, shut off the valve that had afforded the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza relief from economic pressures. When during those same years the Israeli government instigated a policy of reducing investments in these territories, the Palestinians found themselves in a no-win situation, with their economic plight forming one of the main factors for the eruption of the Intifada in December 1987. Finally, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in July 1990, most of the 300,000 or so Palestinians who had been working there left (or were forced to leave) and made their way to Jordan. The author analyses how Jordan, in coping with the resulting demographic and economic pressures, adopted an antinatalist policy despite powerful political and social forces working against such a programme.

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Contents

The Policies of Demographic Change
1
The Palestinian Communities 194987
11
The Case of Nablus 194956
35
3 Demographic and Economic Origins of the Intifada
52
4 Jordans Road to Family Planning Policy
67
5 Nassers Soft Revolution
80
Egypt and Saudi Arabia 196285
97
7 Family Planning under Mubarak
113
Index
137
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