THE Israeli regime is facing an unprecedented wave of negative migration of around 200,000 settlers leaving the occupied territories since October 2023 posing an extreme threat to the Israeli economy.
This stark warning was delivered by opposition leader Yair Lapid during a special debate at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on Monday.
Lapid, citing official data, said it reflected a deepening crisis tied to the cost of living, governance and trust in the Zionist regime’s future.
During the debate Lapid said: ‘The data from the central bureau of statistics (CBS) has been released, and it has become apparent that for two years there has been a peak of negative migration. Over the past three years 200,000 have left.’
He said the CBS figures showed that 69,300 settlers had left in the past year alone, identifying them as predominantly young, educated, working individuals who paid taxes and were part of the Zionist regime’s military reserves.
According to the data, those fleeing in the past year included 875 physicians and 3,000 engineers.
Lapid said: ‘That is the profile of those who are leaving’, describing them as the regime’s ‘backbone’ and ‘the people who keep us alive.’
He blamed the increasing spectacle of middle class, educated Israelis fleeing the country on the cost-of-living crisis, accusing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of neglecting everyday economic pressures while spending billions annually to fund government spending.
He criticised Netanyahu’s cabinet for advancing legislation relating to draft exemptions for ultra-orthodox Jews while Israeli occupation troops continue to be killed and wounded in the genocidal war against Palestinians.
Lapid, whose opposition party fully supports Zionist genocide, is rightly worried that the mass exodus of middle-class professionals spells economic disaster for the Israeli regime.
This point was emphasised by Israel’s economic daily paper Calcalist which reported yesterday that the Zionist entity is facing a deepening brain drain from the high-tech sector as highly skilled professionals flee the occupied territories.
According to Calcalist, a ‘large proportion’ of the 69,000 Israeli settlers who emigrated in 2025 were employed in technology and advanced industries.
Central to the high-tech industry is Israel’s arms industry, the only section of the economy that hasn’t collapsed.
The rest, from construction to its very valuable tourist industry, has crashed and the entire Israeli economy is only kept from bankruptcy through arms sales and the massive injection of money from the US, including $14 billion in military ‘aid’ last year.
This makes the threat from the mass reverse-migration of high-tech professionals a damaging blow to the Israeli economy.
This was emphasised by Nadav Tzafrir, former commander of Israel’s elite military intelligence and current chief executive of cybersecurity firm Check Point, who warned last week that the emigration of skilled workers posed the main threat to Israel’s economy.
The fact that these high-tech professionals are fleeing the sinking ship comes as no surprise.
Those with the ability to leave and find paid work abroad are heading for the door, leaving behind a regime hated and despised for its deliberate murder of over 71,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, in Gaza and still unable to destroy Palestinian resistance and claim victory.
The Zionist state has become a pariah amongst workers and the masses of the world – a weak and precarious state that relies exclusively on the arms and support of the US and minor imperialist nations in the UK and EU.
The working class in the UK, US and EU has the power to end Zionist genocide by demanding its trade union leaders take action to end this support by calling general strikes to bring down the governments that enable Zionist genocide, and replacing them with workers governments.
Workers governments will immediately break with the Israeli regime, recognise the independent state of Palestine and provide all the necessary financial and military support required to defeat occupation and Zionist genocide, going forward to a free Palestine where all races and religions can live in peace.
This is the way forward.
