Israelis have 16,805 patents. Arabs have 836.

A Palestinian Arab researcher has written a study showing in stark terms Israel's technological edge over the combined Arab world.

Firas Press (Arabic) reports that Dr. Khalid Said, a Palestinian researcher from the Center for Informatics Research in Arab-American University in the West Bank, wrote a study comparing the scientific research and patents between Israel and all Arab countries.

Some of his findings:

[Research has] confirmed beyond reasonable doubt Israeli superiority in the field of science and technology to all Arab countries. Israeli universities have been centers are advanced at the global level by international classifications, especially the Hebrew University, which ranked 64 in the world, while no mention of any of the universities of the Arab League in the first five hundred.

There are nine Israeli scientists that have won Nobel Prizes, while the Arabs won 6 Nobels, three of them for political (not scientific) reasons.

Israel will spend on scientific research twice as much as the entire Arab world. The total amount spent in Israel on non-military scientific research is about 9 billion dollars, according to 2008 data.

Israel is spending 4.7% of its national output on research, and this represents the highest proportion of spending in the world, while Arab countries are spending 0.2% of their national income on research and the Arab States in Asia spend only 0.1% of their GDP on scientific research.

As for patents, the statistics are even more lopsided between the Arabs and Israel. Israel has recorded 16805 patents, while the Arabs as a whole have about 836 patents total, only 5% of the number of patents registered in Israel.

Just in 2008, Israel registered 1166 patents, more than all Arab states have done in history. [Arab nations had 71 patents in 2008. Luxembourg has more patents in history than the combined Arab nations.]

The article says that the number of research papers published between Israel and Arab nations is roughly equal, about 140,000 papers. However, the Israeli research is of a higher quality as judged by the number of times such research is cited by others, 1.7 million times versus Arab research being quoted 600,000 times.