The majority of Jews worldwide could be living in Israel within the next decade, according to a new report by the UK-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research .
The report, written by Professor Sergio Della Pergola and published on Wednesday, said that more than 50% of the world's Jewish population could be residing in Israel by 2035.
Currently, around 46% of Jews globally live in Israel, whereas until relatively recently, larger Jewish populations were concentrated in the United States and Europe.
The growth in Israel's Jewish population has partly been driven by high birth rates among ultra-Orthodox , or Haredi, Jews. According to the report, Haredi Jews could make up 30% of Israel’s population by 2050, compared with around 15% today.
However, despite the increasing proportion of Jews living in Israel, the Palestinian population across Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza is expected to remain relatively stable despite Israel's ongoing displacement, occupation and war on Palestinians.
The proportion of Palestinians living within Israel's 1948 boundaries is expected to remain at around 20%.
Across historic Palestine, meaning Israel together with the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians are projected to continue making up around half the population.
Della Pergola, who immigrated from Italy to Israel in 1966, argued in the report that a Jewish majority must be maintained for Israel to remain viable as a Jewish state.
He warned against annexing the occupied West Bank and Gaza, particularly areas "densely populated by Palestinian Arabs".
He also appeared to endorse a two-state solution from the perspective of preserving Israel's demographic balance.
"In the interest of the Jewish side, the division of territory and sovereignty should necessarily be resolved through a definition of the borders and responsibilities between the two rival national, ethnic, religious, linguistic and political entities — Israel and Palestine," he wrote.
Jews first became a majority within Israel's 1948 boundaries following the Nakba , the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948.
Israel took control of 77% of historic Palestine during the 1948 war, before occupying the remaining 23% — the West Bank and Gaza — following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Today, around half of all Palestinians live in exile, mainly in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, after being denied the right to return to their ancestral homeland by Israel.
Unlike the mass displacement during the Nakba, the 1967 war did not produce population expulsions on the same scale. In the decades that followed, Palestinians continued to make up a substantial proportion of the population across historic Palestine, partly due to higher birth rates.
The Palestinian share of the population has remained broadly stable despite Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, the mass displacement of Palestinians there, and ongoing settlement expansion and land seizures in the occupied West Bank, where tens of thousands have also been forcibly displaced.
Israel's far-right government has continued to reject withdrawing from the occupied West Bank or ending its siege and military assault on Gaza, undermining the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
Senior Israeli officials have also repeatedly floated plans to annex all or parts of the West Bank and forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring countries.