A Palestinian and Israeli boy hug in this StandWithUs billboard, reminding viewers that Israel Needs a Partner for Peace.

Israel’s central bureau of statistics has released figures showing that the total population of Israel has reached 7.98 million. Of those citizens, 75.4 percent are Jewish, 20 percent are Arab and four percent are defined as “other.”

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the population of Israel increased by 145,000 people, or 1.8 percent, in 2012. About 170,000 babies were born in Israel in 2012, and 16,500 new immigrants came to Israel.

“Before the Holocaust there were around 18 million Jews in the world; after it, a bit more than 13 million. We are still at a bit more than 13 million. But now Israel’s Jewish population is close to half the Jewish nation worldwide,” said Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and the head of the Kantor Center for the study of contemporary European Jewry according to theGuardian. “It puts Israel in a very central place. We are almost the only Jewish community that is growing,” she added.