Israeli Population Passes 9.5 Million Mark, Immigration Up Amid War in Ukraine

By Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM – The population of Israel has topped 9.5 million, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) announced in an end-of-the-year release of data on Tuesday.

The exact figure, according to the CBS, is 9.593 million people live in Israel.

Of those, 7.069 million (74%) are Jewish, 2.026 million (21%) are Arab and 498,000 (5%) are neither.

The government main source of statistics projected a population of 10 million by the end of 2024.

The population of Israel grew by around 187,000 people since Rosh Hashanah 2021, the CBS says, a rate of 1.8% — a slight increase over last year.

Throughout the year, 177,000 babies were born in Israel. Some 53,000 people died, around 4,000 of them reportedly as a result of the coronavirus.

As expected, Ukraine and Russia have greatly swelled the immigration numbers. Since the beginning of the year, 38,202 new immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have become Israeli citizens, accounting for a 148 percent increase in overall immigration over the same nine-month period in 2021, according to Immigration and Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata.

In addition to new Israelis, 1,011 potential immigrants from the three countries affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine arrived in Israel, alongside nearly 38,500 Ukrainian refugees who do not qualify for Israeli citizenship, according to a spokesperson for the Welfare Ministry, which is responsible for refugees.

Tamano-Shata noted that “tens of thousands” of Jews in Russia are still waiting to emigrate, said, without specifying the number.

“The Jewish Agency is acting in a modified manner, in accordance with their directives. This will be resolved legally,” Tamano-Shata told The Times of Israel on Monday, referring to an ongoing case in which the Russian Justice Department is seeking to oust the agency from the country for alleged breaches of privacy laws.

Her comment came as a Moscow court on Monday again delayed the trial of the Jewish Agency, postponing it until mid-October.