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With the holiday season fast approaching and with the Jewish year coming to an end, the Central Bureau of Statistics has released its annual tables analyzing Israel's population.Israel has 8.9 million residents, 89% of whom claim to be happy with their lives.These numbers include approximately 6.6 million Jews (74.4%), 1.8 million Arabs (20.9%) and a half million (4.7%) belonging to other minority groups.This past year has proven to be one of new beginnings and development in the small Middle Eastern country. Throughout this past year alone, 25,000 new olim (immigrants) moved to Israel and 175,000 babies were born here.The State of Israel contains 2.51 million households. 52,809 couples got married throughout this year, while 14,819 separated.With 1,215 towns, Israel is not the biggest country. Unemployment saw a slight increase over the summer, with 4.2% of the population unemployed.Although the country is small, travel is easy, with 4.2 million drivers, 3.3 million vehicles and an additional 19.6 kilometers of roads. Seventy percent of households in the state own at least one vehicle.The start-up nation is not shy about its high-ranking education systems, especially with the recent report in which both the Technion University in Haifa and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were ranked in the top 100 universities in the world.Altogether throughout the country, there are 63 institutions of higher education with 313,000 students.