Statistics, Israel, Palestine

When thinking about ways to quantify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the Middle East, what numbers should we be looking at, and what kind of story would they tell?

In the Middle East, the most commonly mis-used facts are historical, rather than statistical. This leads to a bit of strangeness now and then. How many Palestinians were turned into refugees as a result of the 1947-9 Arab-Israeli War? 650,000 or 790,000? Excuse me, but why is this important?

The most abused statistics I can find are usually trying to quantify how awful the other side is. Number of terrorist attacks committed by Palestinians against Israelis seem to show that the Palestinians really love attacking those Jews. Of course, I could stick up some nice numbers from the other side: number of Palestinian children killed by Israelis. The numbers simply are folks, but the context is a battleground.

On one side we have dozens of human rights groups in Israel, Palestine and elsewhere with statistics on Israeli violations. Number of Palestinian:

• Prisoners held by Israel without being charged? (691)
• Children killed by Israelis 2000-2007? (949)
• Civilians killed by Israelis, known to be innocent bystanders, 2000-2007? (2222)
• Homes demolished in the Occupied Territories since 1967? (18,000)

And so on. The Israeli foreign ministry and assorted pro-Israel entities will be quick to release their own set of statistics.

• How many suicide bombers have attacked Israelis from 2000-2007? (165)
• How many Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism from 2000-2007 (1067)
• How many terrorist attacks in 2007? (2946)
• How many Arab states (21) and how many Jewish states? (1)
• How many Arabs (325 million) and how many Israeli Jews? (5.4 million)

To use these statistics most successfully, it’s important to present them without other kinds of information that might distract one from drawing the proper conclusion. Dead Palestinian babies? The Israelis are bad. Number of suicide bombings? The Palestinians are bad. Human rights violations? Those awful Israelis! Percentage supporting ‘armed struggle’ in the West Bank & Gaza? (49.5%) Those bloodthirsty Palestinians! And on it goes.

My conclusion at this point is that ‘facts’ aren’t nearly as important to our understanding as ‘narratives.’ ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ is often a way of directing attention to one’s frame of choice. For example, many of us ‘know’ that Israel fought its war of independence against superior Arab armies. Seven countries declared war on the infant state, hoping to crush it, but Israel prevailed. Sure, a miracle proving that God is on Israel’s side.

Armed forces in May 1947

Arab and Israeli casualties 1947-49

Villages de-populated 1947-1949

Source: Benny Morris

Or maybe not. With the outbreak of war, Israel’s armed forces were better trained and more numerous than those of the Arabs. This is true even taking all the Arab armies into account, and horrifically true when looking at the strength of the Palestinian community. The Arab League declared at the time that their mission was to prevent the expulsion of the Palestinians. Given what historians have uncovered about the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, this comes across as a perfectly reasonable goal.

Or maybe not. Because some other Arab leaders talked in graphic terms about killing Jews and throwing them into the sea, one can at least talk about mixed motives. If the goal of preventing the expulsion of Palestinians was connected strategically with preventing strangling the infant state, an argument can be made that the Arabs brought the disaster upon themselves.

Statistics in and of themselves do not assign blame or give context, and someone claiming otherwise usually has an agenda. I try not to rely on statistics to my own case, although I do have an agenda: to open hearts. The fact is both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering. They don’t seem able to resolve this conflict on their own. They need our help. Won’t you help?