An unusually large number of Israelis left the country over the course of 2024, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday, fueling a sharp slowdown in population growth amid a dragged-out war and domestic political turmoil.
Announcing year-end figures ahead of the new year, the central bureau claimed that Israel’s population topped 10 million for the first time, though the figure appeared to include foreign nationals in the country on extended stays, a category that was left out in previous census announcements.
According to the bureau, 82,700 Israelis were registered as having left the country over the past year, up from around 55,000 a year before. That figure itself was a sharp increase from the previous decade, when approximately 35,000 people left each year.
Emigrants are only counted as such after they have spent most of a year outside the country, meaning that most of those included in the figures actually left the country in 2023, a year marked by massive unrest over the government’s attempts to overhaul the judiciary and the October 7, 2023, massacre and ensuing war in Gaza.
Figures published by the government office showed a net negative migration of over 10,000 people in October 2024 alone — meaning those who left one year earlier — compared to a net of seven people the same month a year earlier.
The trend is only seen reversing in November and December of 2024, seemingly corresponding to an influx of Israelis returning during those months a year earlier to contribute to the war effort following the October 7 attack.
New immigrants from France arrive on a special ‘Aliyah Flight’ at Ben Gurion Airport on August 1, 2024. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
According to the bureau, 23,800 Israelis returned home in 2024, and 32,800 new immigrants arrived, down some 15,000 from a year earlier.
The census office said in a statement that the net negative migration had been a leading factor in the country’s population growth dropping to 1.1 percent from 1.6% a year earlier, and 2.2% in 2022.
Still, the bureau reported that Israel’s population stood at 10,027,000, the first time it was said to have crossed the 10-million benchmark.
The count included 7.7 million residents registered as Jewish or “other,” a category that includes non-Arab Christians and those without any ethnicity listed on official papers. In past years, Jews and “other” have been counted separately. The Arab population was put at 2.1 million.
The total population figure also included 216,000 foreigners. In previous end-of-year tallies, the bureau has noted that population figures do not include foreign workers and it was unclear if it tallied other types of resident aliens.
The bureau did not explain why the change was made.
Overall, around 181,000 babies were born in Israel throughout 2024, CBS said, with around 76% of them born to Jewish mothers and 24% to Arab mothers. Approximately 51,400 residents died throughout the year, slightly higher than the 2023 figure.
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