The tipping point—when Arabs become a majority in Israeli-controlled land—lies directly ahead. With no perfect solution, the demography debate rages on in the Jewish state.

“Crowded.” That sums up the Rosh Hashana message from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. In its annual pre-holiday announcement, the bureau said the country’s population is 6,716,000. That’s nearly eight times the number just after Israeli independence 55 years ago, and nearly two and a half times the population just after the Six-Day War in 1967.

Those numbers explain why much of Israel now has the Southern California look of endless city.

But urban sprawl is a small part of the political implications. Start with this: At the end of 1948, Israel was 82 percent Jewish, 18 percent Arab. Today, Arab citizens are 19 percent of the population. Jews are 77 percent; the remaining 4 percent is made up of immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union, who aren’t officially Jewish but who belong to the Jewish part of society. Counting them as Jews, the Jewish-Arab balance has stayed nearly the same since independence—but only because close to 3 million Jews have made aliya, compensating for the higher Arab birth rate. With the flood of aliya from the former Soviet Union drying up, the Arab portion of the population is rising.

But the full story comes only by filling in another set of figures. The estimated Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is over 3.6 million, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. An Israeli expert gives the PCBS solid marks for accuracy, but notes that its figures include East Jerusalem’s Arabs, also counted in Israel’s numbers. Subtract the East Jerusalemites, and there are an estimated 3.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Starkly, that means that in land under Israeli control, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, Jews aren’t quite 51 percent of the population. Even adding the “sociological” almost-Jews, Jewish society makes up barely 54 percent of the total. And the fertility rate remains far higher among Palestinians.

“In the total territory, it’s practically a tie,” says top Israeli demographer Sergio DellaPergola of Hebrew University. The tipping point, when Arabs become a majority, is directly before us.

Of course, the demographic issue has hung over Israel since the Six-Day War, when the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell into Israeli hands. The desire for more defensible borders, along with ties to areas rich in Jewish history, created pressure to hold the newly conquered territory. Passionate proponents of the “complete land of Israel” included not only rightists like Menachem Begin, but also Laborites such as the leaders of Hakibbutz Hame’uhad, then one of the three major kibbutz movements.

However, the fear of adding a large Arab population worked against annexation. Then-prime minister Levi Eshkol liked to say that “after the war we got a very nice dowry, but the trouble is that with the dowry comes the bride.” Annexing the West Bank and Gaza and giving citizenship to their residents would ultimately threaten Israel’s Jewish majority—and therefore its Jewish character. Ruling them without granting citizenship would undermine democracy.

Eshkol personified the ambivalence. In the first cabinet debate on the territories’ future after the war, according to recently released minutes, he proposed annexing the Gaza Strip, and in the same breath referred to the area’s Palestinian population, saying, “When we remember 400,000 Arabs, the heart gets a little bitter.” The result was the indecision that plagued Eshkol’s government. Paralysis virtually became official policy under the next prime minister, Golda Meir.

Some hoped demographic shifts might solve the problem. A top-secret report in July 1967 by a committee of high officials suggested that if a peace deal on Israel’s terms couldn’t be reached with Jordan’s King Hussein, Israel should hold the West Bank, quietly encourage Arabs to emigrate and wait to see if Jews would immigrate in large numbers.

Eshkol did initiate an unpublicized campaign to help Palestinian refugees to leave the Gaza Strip, but it quickly stalled, according to minutes of secret meetings held in 1968. Massive aliya did materialize much later, after the Soviet Union’s fall. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union delayed the moment when Arabs would become a majority in the land under Israeli rule—but not for long.

Today, the demographic issue is more pressing than ever. A key risk is that as Palestinians approach majority status, they’ll cease pushing for a two-state solution, instead demanding “one-person, one-vote” in a single political entity.

Phrased as a civil-rights demand, that slogan could garner wide support internationally, even in the United States. If the demand were ever met, it would mean minority status for Jews—and an end to Zionism’s goal of a democratic Jewish country.

So the population problem is the subtext crucial to understanding every major political position in Israel since 1967, and today more than ever. No solution is perfect. Here’s a guide to the demography debate:

Transfer: The far-right’s program. In practical terms, it means forced expulsion of the Palestinians. To reduce public opprobrium, the hard-right Moledet party advocates “voluntary transfer,” but has never adduced evidence that Palestinians would voluntarily leave. For the vast majority of Israelis, including the mainstream right, “transfer” is moral anathema.

Keep the land, don’t grant citizenship: De facto, this is what Labor governments did after 1967. The hope was that under “enlightened occupation,” with the chance to work in Israel, Palestinians would accept the situation. As an opposition politician, Likud leader Menachem Begin demanded annexation—but he quietly shelved the idea as prime minister, apparently because of demography. However, the eruption of the Palestinian intifada in 1987 shattered hopes that Israeli rule could be maintained with minimal effort.

Nonetheless, a variation on this theme has currency on the right today. It calls for allowing Palestinians self-rule on the municipal level. As for participating in a national government—so goes the argument—they’d achieve that by voting in Jordanian elections.

The plan’s flaw is that it treats voting as something akin to pledging allegiance, a form of national identification. Democracy means that people vote for the government that rules where they live, that decides how land and water will be divided up and who will pay what taxes. Arranging for Palestinians to vote elsewhere wouldn’t solve Israel’s democracy problem, even if Jordan agreed—which is hardly likely.

Give up only populated land: The idea behind Labor’s Allon Plan. Yigal Allon, a top Labor politician in the 1960’s and 1970’s, argued for Israel keeping the lightly populated areas of the West Bank along the Jordan River and Dead Sea coast. The mountain ridge, where most Palestinians live, would return to Jordan. In a secret London meeting in September 1968, Allon presented the idea to King Hussein, who called it “wholly unacceptable.” Nonetheless, Labor leaders continued to hope the plan could be implemented. Its influence can be seen even in Ehud Barak’s proposals at Camp David. Barak, say knowledgeable sources, wanted to keep the Jordan River strip under a special status for an undetermined time. The Palestinians also rejected the idea, one of the key reasons that the talks collapsed.

Prime Minister Sharon’s thinking is shaped by the same idea. For years, he advocated local self-rule in fragmented West Bank enclaves where most Palestinians lived, while Israel would keep the land between. As prime minister, Sharon has spoken of a Palestinian state—but with Israel still retaining half or more of the West Bank’s land. The flaw: Even if a Palestinian leader could be found who would agree to the plan, Palestinian and foreign critics would describe the new state as a bantustan, and pressure would grow for “one person, one vote” between the river and the sea.

Unilateral pullout: Israel would withdraw from most of the West Bank and Gaza. The idea has had advocates since 1967, but popularity has grown since Camp David failed. Many Israelis believe current Palestinian leaders can’t reach an agreement with Israel—but Israel can’t afford to rule millions of Palestinians. So, they say, Israel should keep small parts of the West Bank that are essential for security, or where major settlements stand, and leave the rest. A fence along the new border would reduce terror, and the land that Israel would annex would be a bargaining chip if negotiations resumed.

The plan’s key drawback: It gives up on peace; Palestinian violence would likely continue, with the declared goal of regaining any land Israel retained. Critics add that a unilateral pullout would look like proof that terror has succeeded, encouraging more.

Negotiate a two-state deal: If Palestinians are able to cut a deal, Israel would probably end up ceding nearly all the West Bank. That would restore the security risks of the pre-1967 borders. Evacuating settlements would also strain Israeli society. But the state would remain democratic with a Jewish majority. Even if Israel kept East Jerusalem, DellaPergola has estimated, Jews would still be 74 percent of the population in 2050.

Another option: Give up Palestinian neighborhoods of the city, and trade small areas of Israel with large Arab populations for equal territory in the West Bank (a move probably requiring a plebiscite). In that case, Della-Pergola estimates, Jews would be 81 percent of Israel’s population when the state celebrates its one-hundredth birthday.

Each of the options entails high costs. But the demographic clock is ticking. Making a choice has become Israel’s central issue today.