Israel’s Arab population has increased by more than 60,000 during the nearly five years that the State of Israel has been in existence, C.Y. Palmon, advisor on Arab affairs in the Premier’s Office, today told a press conference.
Mr. Palmon reported that when the state was established there were 108,000 Arabs in it and that now there are an estimated 170,000. He said that about 5,000 per year are accounted for by the normal increase of births over deaths, but that the remainder are Arabs who were permitted to enter the country from the surrounding states to be reunited with their families.
He asserted that security problems still existed in Arab areas and that therefore the continued maintenance of military administration in most Arab regions was necessary. He said that the Arab citizens of Israel enjoyed the same educational and health facilities as the Jewish citizens as well as the same rights, advantages and hardships encountered by the rest of the population. Mr. Palmon stressed that the Arabs paid the same proportion of the indirect taxes as the Jews, but that their share of the direct taxation was “insignificant, almost nil.”
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