Israel’s population reaches 10.1M, including over 2M Palestinians

Israel's population has reached approximately 10.1 million, including over 2.1 million Palestinians, the country's Central Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.

The bureau said in a statement that 7.73 million people (about 77.6% of the population) are Jewish. Another 2.12 million people, representing 20.9%, are Palestinian citizens. The remaining 2.5%-about 248,000-are foreign nationals living in the country.

The data was released ahead of the anniversary of the founding of Israel, which will take place Thursday according to the Hebrew calendar. The date coincides with what Palestinians mark as the Nakba, or "catastrophe," commemorated in mid-May.

Israel was declared on May 15, 1948, after the Zionist movement, backed by Britain, seized most of historic Palestine by force, displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and carried out massacres of civilian populations.

More than 3.5 million Jews have immigrated to Israel since 1948. Of these, about 1.66 million-47.6%-arrived after 1990.

As of the end of 2023, roughly 45% of the world's Jewish population lived in Israel, and about 80% of Jews in Israel were born in the country, the bureau reported.

The data also showed that around 27% of Israel's population is under the age of 14, while 13% is 65 or older.