JERUSALEM, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli population has reached 8.97 million by the end of 2018, up 2 percent from 2017, said an official report published on Monday.
About 6.67 million are Jews (74.3 percent), while 1.88 million are Arabs (20.9 percent), according to the report by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The total population is expected to hit 9 million by February 2019, it added.
In 2018, about 173,000 people were added to the Israeli population, with 81 percent due to natural increase and the rest from the balance of international migration.
In addition, about 45,000 Israelis died and 7,000 had stayed abroad for more than a year.
Notably, most of the 27,500 new Jewish immigrants, or about 21,100, came from Europe.
The main countries from which Jewish immigrants arrived in 2018 were Russia (31.5 percent), Ukraine (21.8 percent), France (8 percent) and the United States (7.9 percent).
