With the Jewish New Year approaching, Israel's population is approaching 8 million, the Central Bureau of Statistics said. A report released on Monday said the total number of Israelis stands at 7.79 million, including 5.8 million Jews and 1.6 million Arabs, and some 323,000 people of other ethnicity. In the past year Israel's population grew by 1.7 percent, and the Arab sector by 2.5 percent, the CBS report said. In the past year some 166,255 babies were born showing an increase of 3.2 percent to 2009. Jerusalem showed an above average birth rate of 2.3 percent, central Israel had a birth rate of 2.2 percent and the Tel Aviv region recorded the lowest birth rate with 0.6 percent.
