Israel: A nurse holds a newborn baby at a nursery in Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem

As Israel's population booms, could it run out of room?

Population expected to nearly double by 2059, with the average Israeli women having three babies in her life and the government providing benefits to encourage having children; birth rate even higher in Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities, which have lower participation in the workforce.

Israel's birth rate, the highest in the developed world and once seen as a survival tactic in a hostile region, could be its undoing unless measures are taken to reverse the trend. The average Israeli woman has three babies in her lifetime, nearly double the fertility rate for the rest of the industrialized countries in the OECD. That, accompanied by heavy Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union, has seen Israel's population double in the last 25 years.

The birth rate is even higher among Israel's Arab community and more than double among its ultra-Orthodox Jews, two groups that also have low participation in the workforce, dragging the economy down.

Today's population of 8.4 million is forecast to reach 15.6 million by 2059 and 20.6 million in a high case scenario, meaning the small country could simply run out of room.

"Israel is on the road to an ecological, social and quality of life disaster because as the population density rises it becomes more violent, congested and unpleasant to live in and with absolutely no room for any species other than humans," said Alon Tal, a professor at Ben-Gurion University's Institutes for Desert Research and founder of the Green Movement party.

Israel has 352 people per square kilometers, up from 215 in 1990, and forecast by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) to reach 501-880 in 2059.

When you exclude the nearly empty Negev desert, which occupies more than half of Israel, population density jumps to 980 people per square kilometer, just a little below Bangladesh.

Perhaps most troubling, activists say, is that there is no national discourse or recognition that a problem exists. On the contrary, government policies are geared to encouraging a high birth rate.

The reasons are various, from the biblical command "Be fruitful and multiply" to the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, to fears of being outnumbered by Arabs.

"Historically, Israeli demographic policy was formed by hysteria with regard to fear of an Arab demographic takeover, fuelled by the rhetoric of politicians," Tal said.

Palestinian population growth easily outpaces Israel's, with the average woman in the Palestinian territories having four children.