Abnormality Besieges Palestinians
The UN warns that it is running out of food to distribute in Gaza, putting the civilian population there at severe risk, as a direct result of an Israeli food blockade.
A food blockade? That is a war crime! Why aren't the people ordering the malnourishment of a civilian population under foreign military occupation being arrested and taken to the Hague for trial?
I mean, people in the US are routinely arrested for animal abuse because they kept their pets malnourished. Wouldn't it be a crime to do that to Palestinian children?
Even less dire situations are still harming the Palestinians. Jeremy Bowen of the BBC reports on the abnormal situation of the Palestinians in Hebron under Israeli occupation:
' When I was there last week the school's windows were catching the morning sun as Mohammed, eight, teetered in the entrance of his home, holding on to the doorframe. He has cerebral palsy, so his big brother Amjad, 12, parks his wheelchair, puts on the brake and lifts him in. A Palestinian woman and child walk behind an Israeli soldier in Hebron Israeli troops protect the Jewish settlers, and impose restrictions on Palestinians. He's been doing it since Mohammed started school two years ago. They wave goodbye to their mother and set off.
But they don't turn down the alley to get to school, which should be only two minutes away, even for a boy in a wheelchair.
About the time that Mohammed was born, the Israeli army blocked the alley with a high concrete barrier.
Last week Mrs Taha told the BBC that the Israelis had ignored requests to open it to make it easier for him to get to school. The barrier was put there by the army, to make life easier and safer for the Jewish settlers who sometimes use the street on the other side. '
The walls and checkpoints that enclose the Palestinians often make their lives hell, but pale in significance before their continued statelessness. A stateless person ultimately has no rights, and can be robbed, relocated, and even killed with no recourse.
The statelessness of over 3 million Palestinians is among the great ongoing crimes of the 21st century, allowing them to be continually besieged, as civilians, deprived of basic services, and to some extent even of enough food (15 percent of Gazan children are malnourished as a direct result of Israeli actions).
In essence, they are slaves to the Israelis.
So why can the BBC do a story like this, which frankly says, "A small community of Israelis lives in the centre of Hebron, in defiance of international laws that forbid an occupying power to settle its own people on the territory it has captured. A strong force of Israeli combat troops protects the settlers, and has imposed years of restrictions on the Palestinians who live near them."
Why is such a passage never present in any major publication or broadcast originating in the United States?
Here is something else that is not exactly front page news in the News Island of the United States:
A blockade-busting aid boat landed in Gaza, with several European lawmakers aborad, and met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya. So Haniya vowed eternal jihad, right? Nope:
' Following intensive negotiations with Hamas, the de facto leadership of Gaza, a group of European parliamentarians has been told by the organization that it will accept a Palestinian state within the internationally recognized 1967 borders as well as offer Israel a long-term ceasefire.
The delegation of 11 from Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy, managed to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza on Saturday morning after their boat, the Dignity, sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, shadowed part of the way by an Israeli naval vessel.
The group had originally tried to enter Gaza from Israel's Erez border crossing but was refused permission by the Israeli authorities to cross. Another attempt to enter the territory from Egypt's Rafah terminal was denied by the Egyptian authorities.
This was the third successful boat trip made by the Dignity into Palestinian coastal waters despite warnings by Israel that action would be taken to stop the vessel. On board was a ton of medical aid and desperately needed medical equipment.
Despite the threats of naval intervention, in the end Israel backed down after realizing it would have gained more bad publicity if it had detained and harassed a boatload of international politicians carrying humanitarian aid.
The aim of the visit was to protest Israel's economic embargo and closure of Gaza's borders, assess humanitarian conditions on the ground, and to hold talks with Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas.
Haniya was questioned about his organization's previous offer of a 20-year hudna or truce with Israel in exchange for the Israeli government recognizing the national rights of Palestinians.
British parliamentarian Clare Short, who served in the cabinet of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked the Hamas leadership to repeat the offer, which he did.
Haniya was also questioned by delegation leader Baron Nazir Ahmed, a Pakistani-born member of the House of Lords, about Hamas' relationship with Iran.
"Our ties with Iran are like those with other Muslim states. We are prepared to accept a Palestinian state within the internationally recognized borders of 1967. Our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation," Haniya said.'
Note that Gaza does not have an airport because the Israelis won't allow one, and that the Israelis control Gaza's borders and port, keeping out anything and anyone they like, including food and fuel.
I'd say that is tantamount to slavery.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/12/2008 12:17:00 AM
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20 Comments:
Professor Cole,
I really can't exaggerate how much I and other Muslims appreciate when news such as these atrocities are brought to people's attention. In any other corner of the world collective punishment to this degree would be internationally shunned and immediate action would be taken.
How on earth do the Israelis expect the Palestinians to push for peace when they subjugate them to such torture? How is a young Palestinian child in Gaza not going to have harbor hostile feelings towards Israelis after enduring such pain and suffering? I think your comparing this situation to slavery is quite benign as a slave owner at least has a modicum of mercy (albeit for selfish reasons) to provide food and shelter to his slave.
And yet, through all of this, Haniya has the grace to say that his problem is with the occupation, not the Jews. 1 Jewish soldier captured and the Israelis bomb a country for a month. Who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? If only the American people could hear the true plight of the Palestinians.
I hope and pray that there will be more people like you Dr. Cole that have the courage and wisdom to discuss such issues and who stand for justice wherever, whenever, or whomever it may be.
So, what're your men Chief Rahm and Obama going to do to break the Israeli blockade and end the Israeli occupation of Palestine?
Gaza airport - it is worth noting until as recently as 2001 Gaza had a fully functioning airport.... until destroyed by the IDF.
You aren't pulling your punches and I think rightly so. I am not as critical of Rice as many but I think she made a horrible mess of this and it can't be fixed too soon.
Another thing. Speaking as a Brit can we pension the quartet's 'peace envoy' as part of the transition. The joke is over now and it's time to get down to some real business again.
Looking back, Israeli strategic security has all come from Democratic presidents. Its a shame this isn't talked about more.
A lovely piece and I agree with the sentiments you express.
However surely the reason Israel feel free to committ such crimes is they are confident of American backing no matter what they do largely due to the abomniable influence of AIPAC.
As a Brit I find this hard to understand as the Israel lobby in this country has less influence than AIPAC.
I had hoped to see some improvement in the US attitude towards this situation with the arrival of Obama however I note he has appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Cheif of Staff. To me this shows what way the wind is going.
I would suggest that while ISraeli Gov should be up for war crimes they should be joined by members of Bush administration for assisting the war crimes and Obama should follow if he does not move quickly to remedy this situation. That said whose actually going to enforce that....
Thanks for your continuing work in this area, Juan. I'm baffled as to the collective silence of the liberal blogosphere.
Let us not forget the complicity of the Egyptian government in this blockade and siege.
Prof. Cole, I guess your questions are rethoric. Anyway, answers can be easily found in many articles written by Edward Said. As for the Gaza Airport, it is also worth noting that it was financed by the European Union, which at the same time backs the Israeli Government and supported the stupid crackdown on Hamas.
ref : “Abnormality Besieges Palestinians”
ref Daily Times (Pakistan) : “Israel deploys remote-controlled guns along Gaza”
“JERUSALEM; via AP: Israeli defence officials say the military has deployed remote-controlled machine guns along its border with the Gaza Strip.”
“The system allows female soldiers watching television screens in control rooms in the rear to spot targets and open fire. In the past, lookouts had to call in ground forces to intercept ‘militants’.”
“Israel’s military is shifting to more unmanned weaponry along the Gaza frontier in an attempt to protect their soldiers. An Israeli company recently developed an unmanned vehicle to patrol the border. The military had no immediate comment, and the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the new weapons have not officially been made public. Israel is currently observing a shaky truce with the Hamas militants who control Gaza.”
Sounds almost exactly like the ghetto, except it isn't Jews behind the wall.
Hawkesy
Dont forget that Mubarak of Egypt is cooperating with those war crimes too (isolating Gaza and suppling tons of gas and denying any to Gaza , confiscating food and toys and shoes from the trucks going to Gaza ) we the Arabs are also contributing to this ,including the Royal hashemites of Jordan .
I believe that members of the Jewish community are morally obliged to speak out against the inhumanity that is being meted out to fellow human beings, i.e. Palestinians, on their behalf. People must realise that in future they will have to suffer the pangs and indignity of having to answer their children's and grand-children's questions as to why they did not speak out when they could, and would have to. We should put aside our tribal loyalties when we see that at stake is Humanity, our fellow human-being's Humanity and our own Humanity. There are very many admirable Jewish individuals who speak out, but there are also very many equally admirable Jewish individuals who do not, conceivably out of the fear of being perceived as disloyal, or "self-hating". There is absolutely no excuse to remain silent when one sees injustice. As the saying goes, Silence means consent.
BF.
I'd say slavery's not quite an apposite comparison. As a commenter above pointed out, the Palestinians are not subject to the "paternalist" aspects of slavery, i.e., being fed and housed; nor, however, are they expected to work for the Israeli's benefit.
I'd posit the position of certain indigenous groups -- American Indians, Australian Aborigines -- after settler-conquest, when they are neither needed and (at a brutal, vulgar level) valued, a la slaves, nor allowed to be part of the conquering society. They are both stateless and trapped within states.
This is perhaps a too long comment on my part, apologies. Thank you for your insightful work to date.
The Gaza Strip right now is straining under a siege that denies even the entry of food to the point of pushing a besieged people into a state of malnutrition. The recent report, made by the UN, of food running out in the Gaza Strip and that UN deliveries of food to civilians are being denied entry is evidence of a terrible act. According to news reports, Israel has recently tightened sanctions on Gaza because of rocket attacks by Palestinians. Palestinian militants meanwhile claim that the rockets were in response to an Israeli raid. There’s more complexity and depth to this act than this current outbreak of severe and life threatening collective punishment on the Palestinian people: this is what I would like to talk about.
I would like to briefly discuss a few things: the context of this particular incident, codes of war regarding war against civilians, and the history of reprisals inside and outside of this conflict. I think it important to investigate these dimensions in order to move beyond any single wrong to understand the sinister face of a logic of behaviour that we may respond to beyond putting out fires by singularly reacting to an individual atrocious act.
I believe that effective action to prevent situations like the strangulation of the Gaza Strip requires our taking aim at the distorted founding logic that fuels and funnels these atrocities.
There’s nothing new in today’s siege of Gaza
"The total blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has paralyzed the Palestinian economy, which is so vulnerably dependent on Israel and already severely weakened by frequent border closures, to such an extent that it is now in a deep recession, with millions of people severely impoverished and extremely food insecure."
This is a statement from UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), from 16 April 2002. The same report informs us that: “malnutrition is on the increase, reflected in recent estimates of a 10.4 per cent increase in the incidence of low birth weights and a 52 per cent increase in the stillbirth rate in the West Bank.”
Also: “The United Nations food agency voiced ‘serious concern’ about the ongoing large-scale destruction of important Palestinian infrastructure, including farm assets such as stores, irrigation systems, greenhouses, water facilities, orchards, and even removal of topsoil from an estimated 8,000 hectares of land.”
And: “confiscation of agricultural land and water resources by Israel and estimates that freshwater resources available to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip amount to 112 cubic metres per person a year, compared to 377 cubic metres for Israel.”
Now, to something more recent; Israeli border closures of the Gaza Strip in January resulted in a backlog of 224 UN relief trucks by 29 January. These trucks were held back by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip and delivering food or general aid supplies.
The UN, EU, and international aid agencies have also been concerned that cutting off shipments of oil to Gaza, a repeated tactic, affects health facilities, refrigeration (needed for keeping already scarce foods and some medication), and harms an already crippled economy.
The BMJ medical journal published a survey in 2002 indicating that, in the Gaza Strip, “13% of children under 5 years old were suffering from short term malnutrition and almost 18% had long term malnutrition—compared with a level of about 2% in countries that the World Health Organization defines as having moderate malnutrition.” Things are bad when almost a third of children under 5 suffer from malnutrition.
I give only these few examples out of many available to indicate that the latest threat of malnutrition, power outages, health risks, and economic collapse resulting from an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is only the latest such incident in a long series.
Codes of war and the history of sieges
The history of sieges and blockades, over the millennia of warfare, is riddled with stories of human tragedy, starvation, and economic hardship. That, in fact, is the very point. A city or region is surrounded by a military force in order to deprive it of free transit (restricting the movement of enemy fighters, supplies and also civilians), to hobble communications, deprive it of an economy that could support resistance, and deprive it of food and water in order to erode or break the morale and body of the enemy. I agree with the political philosopher, Michael Walzer, that “siege is the oldest form of total war.”(1)
During the long history of sieges non-combatants have always been the first to suffer or die. This is because the defending military forces will always reserve the most secure position for themselves, and have first access to necessary supplies including food. This is simple military logic.
Therefore no attacking force can legitimately claim they expected any outcome other than the civilian population and infrastructure collapsing before a defending force would see substantial deterioration of its combat capabilities. As Walzer puts it, when besieging, expectation is not that fighters fall or suffer before civilians:
“Death and suffering of ordinary inhabitants… is expected to force the hand of the civilian or military leadership. The goal is surrender; the means is not the defeat of the enemy army, but the fearful spectacle of the civilian dead.” (2)
Military strategists, political leaders, and intellectuals who have attempted to establish an ethical code to sieges have often suggested the right to free exit by the civilian population. Without going into the pitfalls of this flawed and mostly ignored solution, it is an entirely different story when a siege is over an entire region as opposed to a single city. When a country or region is under siege, the right to free exit becomes a moot point since it would require the mass migration of civilians and the emptying of lands of non-combatants. This obviously is not a viable or just solution to ‘humanize’ a siege of the Gaza Strip.
Attackers during a siege often argue their innocence by claiming that enemy fighters have forced civilians into the front lines by taking defensive positions in urban centres. This assumes that the attacking force did not intend to gain from the slow starvation and economic strangulation that provides military and psychological benefits in war. Walzer references the British military historian B.H. Liddell Hart’s assertion that in the First World War the British blockade was a decisive factor in Germany’s defeat. Hart argues that “the spectre of slow enfeeblement ending in eventual collapse,” drove the enemy military to make desperate and disastrous military decisions. (3)
In the case of the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian combatants live within the densely populated region and could not leave it without en mass entering Israel, Egypt, or simply diving into the sea. These are obviously not viable options. It’s also not true to say that civilians were placed between the attackers and defenders in the case of this siege since the civilians were there already. The combatants and non-combatants are together trapped within Gaza. So in the case of an Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip it’s impossible to honestly assert that Palestinian fighters have pushed civilians into the zone of a siege and that therefore they must bear full responsibility. Both the Palestinian civilians and the fighters are restricted to their existing territory of Gaza and neither has the option to leave it.
Even if the systematic destruction of civilians is not part of a plan, then it’s obvious that the plan does nothing to safeguard or prevent their deaths.
A snake eating its own tail: reprisals do not work in this long conflict
In this latest tightening of the siege of the Gaza strip Israel says it is responding to Palestinian rocket attacks while Palestinian fighters claim they fired rockets in response to an Israeli raid.
Walzer quotes a critic of the rules of war as saying, “reprisals mean doing what you think wrong on the plea that someone else did it first.” (4)
In long wars all parties can argue that the other side committed a hostile act to deserve reprisal. Then each reprisal can be an excuse for one side or another to commit to their own act of reprisal. In this fashion, reprisal follows reprisal, wrong follows wrong, and moral constrains are eroded by the attacker’s claim that their extreme measures deserve exemption because their crimes are in response to another’s crimes. There’s something insidious in this, since the attackers committing an immoral act of war in the form of a reprisal often claim that their enemy is in fact responsible for the immoral outcomes of the reprisal itself. Essentially the attacker says, I know what I did is reprehensible but he made me do it.
In military history and the rules of war, reprisals have been used to dissuade an enemy from repeating an action that is seen to break the norms or codes of warfare. Sometimes this works, usually it does not.
Reprisals have been used from the beginning of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis going back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Yet, peace has not been the result, nor have atrocities decreased. You cannot today seriously argue that peace is around the corner; there’s a lot of work ahead before that can happen and political solutions not military reprisals will help achieve this. Also, no one can seriously argue that the suffering of civilians has been reduced over the past 60 years as a result of reprisals. The often cited excuse that each reprisal is in response to another side’s reprisal is a clear indication that this strategy will not bring peace to Israel and Palestine. Therefore the recent Israeli implication that they be given an exemption from the suffering caused by the siege of Gaza because this is a response to an earlier (and infinitely less harmful) Palestinian attack would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
References:
1. Michael Walzer, 2000. ‘Just and Unjust Wars’, Basic Books, p. 160.
2. Ibid, p. 161.
3. Ibid, p. 172.
4. Ibid, p. 207.
It's interesting the word verification reads: acter (almost like the word ACTOR), and the word 'act' came to my mind as I read through this.
The ACT I think you could take that goes with ACTION, would be to copy this beautifully written and informative article (along with the comments that are valuable too), and forward (or place it as a full commentary) on a MAJOR WEB-SITE so it's read by a multitude.
I also think SENDING ALL OF THIS TO THE PBS PEOPLE AND SUGGESTING THEY DO A DOCUMENTARY AND/OR A ONE HOUR COMMENTARY ON THIS is critical.
Since it's your blog and post, I don't feel I can go 'over your head' by sending all of this to a major web-site, but I suggest you think about it - it's IMPORTANT and possibly we could get MSM to start paying MORE ATTENTION to this atrocity!
Diane
The Rt. Honourable Gordon Brown said..."nor, however, are they expected to work for the Israeli's benefit."
Oh, but they ARE! They are expected, among other things, to serve as cheap labor in the building of the very colonies and roads and "wall" that displace them and are intended to eventually squeeze them out of their land so Israel can take it over and annex it (doubters that this is the strategy, please google Jeff Halper).
And what do you suppose that ugly racist remark of Rahm Emanuel's father signified? "What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House." What is that but an indication of what, in the Israeli mind, Palestinians are good for?
I do agree completely with your second paragraph.
For Nima Maleki and others
Viewing the situation purely in technical terms, the Israeli governments are waging a losing war. According to CIA Factbook, 2008
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2002.html
the population growth rate of Gaza Strip is at present 3.422% per year, and that of Israel 1.713% per year. The Jewish population of Israel comprises at present some 76% of Israel's total population, so that at present there are
0.76 * 7,282,000 = 5,534,320
Jewish people living inside Israel.* The total population of the Palestinian territories is at present*
3,760,000
A simple calculation** shows that within some 22 years (more precisely, 22.62 years) the number of Palestinians in Palestinian territories will surpass that of the Jewish people inside Israel. In other words, the children of the Israeli Jews who are born today will be born as members of a minority group in the area. Will by this time a Jewish government have any democratic mandate to do to Palestinians what is being done today? From this perspective, and leaving aside for argument's sake all ethical considerations, it makes only sense that Israeli governments change their wrong-headed ways and treat members of the majority community of the coming generation in a radically different way, one that is befitting fellow human beings.
BF.
____
* For the population data that I am using here, I refer the reader to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_People
** For the mathematical details underlying this calculation, please consult my technical Comment at the following address (to be found towards the end of the page):
http://www.juancole.com/2008/10/mccain-racism-hypocrisy-on-khalidi.html#comments
For my present calculations, I have not taken into account that the population growth rate of the Jewish Israelis may be lower than that of non-Jewish Israelis. Some 19% of the Israeli population are Arab and by looking at the population growth rates of such countries as Jordan (2.338% per yer), Iraq (2.562% per year) and Saudi Arabia (1.954% per year), it stands to reason that the population growth rate of the Jewish Israelis is less than the 1.713% per year that I have used here. If, for instance, 1.0% per year would be the appropriate rate, the above-mentioned 22.6 years would reduce to nearly 16 years.
For comparison, the population growth rate of Greece is 0.146% per year and those of Germany and Italy are -0.044% per year and -0.019% per year, respectively (that is, the populations of the latter two countries are decreasing).
BF, thanks for your comment, I'd never explicitly considered the birthrate issue.
I agree with you that inclusion of significant populations in governance is an important aspect of state legitimacy and stability. It hasn't always been necessary though, in order to maintain control. Syria of today is mainly governed by a minority.
Perhaps the recent history of Lebanon can serve as an example of volatility when significant minorities and majorities are excluded from government. Though, Lebanon has it's own unique set of issues.
I think the case of broad inclusion in governance is best served by the ethical argument combined with reasoning over stability. Simply put, it's just the right thing to do. This becomes difficult though when questions of nation state identity enter the equation. In Israel, Palestinian inclusion would require a re-imagination of Israel's identity, and given the current emotionally (and physically) explosive climate this would be difficult to accomplish without great care and foresight.
Returning to your calculations, I assume the numbers you have don't include Jewish immigration. I believe immigration is a key component of population expansion in Israel. Also, there's the question of the potential of the right of return for Palestinian refugees in other countries, which may add to the population increase within Palestine as well.
Regarding the occupied territories, I found an interesting short documentary through Sabbah's Blog.
Youtube video here.
From the director's (Yariv Horowitz) website:
"For the first time Israeli combat soldiers speak to the camera of their traumatic experiences in the first Intifada, revealing their deep moral and psychological scars left by their involvement in acts of extreme violence against the Palestinian population. The film combines explosive interviews with soldiers in Nablus in 1991 as well as their perpective ten years later."
Dear Nima Maleki,
Thank you for your response and for the links. Although I had not seen the documentary on YouTube, I have always believed that one’s misdeeds invariably come to haunt one in later life. In fact, in my opinion this is axiomatically true for all human beings who do not lose command of their mental faculties in later life (I believe that we are genetically programmed to know what lines we must not be crossing).
I am well aware of the social and political implications of the issues that you raise. That is why I believe that a two-state solution is inevitable if Israel is to remain a Jewish state. And, as the numbers that I presented in my previous comment unambiguously show, the time available for this solution to be feasible is very short. Neglecting this restricted time-frame, within possibly 16 years Israel will overnight turn from a democratic into a non-democratic state. This is of utmost significance, since despite all the criticisms that one can have of the actions of the Israeli governments, they are strictly democratic governments. Now, without Palestinians having an independent state of their own in the coming, say, 16 years, after the closing of this period the Israeli state can no longer be democratic, irrespective of how fair Israeli governments may become; formally, after this period Israeli governments will be governing a South-African-type Apartheid state. It is conceivable that some would not mind that Israel formally became an Apartheid state (radicals are everywhere), however the surprising thing is that those who should care about the future of Israel as a Jewish state, and should know better (considering the history of South Africa, sane people will realize that Apartheid régimes are no longer viable), do as if they were asleep. The time scales that I gave in my previous comment (22.6 and 16 years) clearly show that the inactivity of the past 8 years (during the Bush, Jr., Administration) is not excusable by any standard. Oftentimes I even doubt in the sanity of our political leaders; they behave as though they are totally incapable of ranking issues in the order of their true significance --- one only needs to recall that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were not pursued for almost eight years merely on account of some words in the Hamas’ founding document (it is very much reminiscent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater).
The function g(t), the population growth rate, contains everything; by allowing g(t) to contain very sharp peaks, the formulation in terms of g(t) is capable of accounting for sudden changes in the population number P(t), as arising from e.g. immigration, or emigration, of a large number of people over a short period of time (“large” here means a finite fraction of the total population). Please note that all the numerical results that I have presented in my comments correspond to constant values of g(t) (i.e. to functions g(t) that do not depend on t). In my earlier comment, to which I referred in my previous comment on this page, I have explained all the relevant issues regarding the dependence on t of g(t) and the errors that are in principle incurred in the calculated P(t) on disregarding this dependence.
In the light of the above details, the number g = 1.713% per year, which corresponds to year 2008, takes into account everything, i.e. births, deaths (whether natural or accidental), immigrations and emigrations. The function g(t) is a very complicated mathematical object to calculate theoretically and the simplicity of the formulation in terms of g(t), as I have presented, is bound incorrectly to suggest that determination of the population dynamics were a triviality. If I were to be given a good set of relevant statistical data, and if I had the necessary time for, I could make a very detailed and accurate analysis of the population dynamics of the pertinent community for a reasonably long period of time.
As an aside, my back-of-envelope calculations show that, for any community the knowledge of the corresponding g(t) at time t and the fertility (or even age) profile of the women in that community at the same time t, is sufficient for calculating the average number of children per family in that community (the reason that men do not show up in these back-of-envelope calculations is partly due to the fact that in any sufficiently large community, to a very good approximation the ratio of the number of men to the number of women is equal to 1; men are thus not as irrelevant to population dynamics as may appear at first glance). These calculations are useful in that they show that given g(t), at a given t, and the age profile of the women of a community, at the same t, one can calculate the change in g(t) consequent to changing the average number of children per family by, say, +/- 1.
Yours sincerely,
BF.
BF, thanks for the clarification of your calculations. Much appreciated. I look forward to future discussions.
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