Israeli settlements are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish ethnicity, built in violation of international law on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli settlements currently exist in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, and had previously existed within the Egyptian territory of the Sinai Peninsula, and within the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip; however, Israel evacuated and dismantled the 18 Sinai settlements following the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace agreement and all of the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, along with four in the West Bank, in 2005 as part of its unilateral disengagement from Gaza.
Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority claim Jerusalem as their capital, as Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power; however, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, it is equivalent to the historical region of Syria, which included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and most of Turkey south-east of the middle Euphrates. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece to Cyrenaica in eastern Libya.
The Middle East is a transcontinental region in Afro-Eurasia which generally includes Western Asia, all of Egypt, and Turkey. The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. The broader concept of the "Greater Middle East" also includes the Maghreb, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, the Comoros, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and sometimes Transcaucasia and Central Asia into the region. The term "Middle East" has led to some confusion over its changing definitions.
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between 5 and 10 June 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.
The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the south, west and north. Under Israeli occupation since 1967, the area is split into 167 Palestinian "islands" under partial Palestinian National Authority civil rule, and 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is "pipelined".
The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The war took place mostly in Sinai and the Golan—occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War—with some fighting in African Egypt and northern Israel. Egypt's initial war objective was to use its military to seize a foothold on the east bank of the Suez Canal and use this to negotiate the return of the rest of Sinai.
Zionism is both an ideology and nationalist movement among the Jewish people that espouses the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel. Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians that began in the mid-20th century amidst the greater Arab–Israeli conflict. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. It has been referred to as the world's "most intractable conflict," with the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 53 years.
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the tripartite aggression in the Arab world and Sinai War in Israel, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had just nationalised the canal. After the fighting had started, political pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations led to a withdrawal by the three invaders. The episode humiliated the United Kingdom and France and strengthened Nasser.
The term "Palestinian territories" has been used for many years to describe the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. More recently, the official United Nations (UN) terminology has been used, occupied Palestinian territory increasingly replacing other terms since 1999. The European Union (EU) also has adopted this usage. The term Occupied Palestinian Territory was used by the UN and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority. The EU had utilized a parallel term Palestinian Authority territories occasionally during the same period. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory" and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in the ruling in July 2004.
The Camp David Accords were a pair of political agreements signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David, the country retreat of the President of the United States in Maryland. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House and were witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The second of these frameworks led directly to the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. Due to the agreement, Sadat and Begin received the shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The first framework, which dealt with the Palestinian territories, was written without participation of the Palestinians and was condemned by the United Nations.
Palestine, recognized officially as the State of Palestine by the United Nations and other entities, is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative center is currently located in Ramallah. The entirety of territory claimed by the State of Palestine has been occupied since 1948, first by Egypt and Jordan and then by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestine has a population of 5,051,953 as of February 2020, ranked 121st in the world.
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem is the sector of Jerusalem that was occupied by Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as opposed to the western sector of the city, West Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel. Since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, East Jerusalem has been considered occupied by Israel by the international community.
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים), also referred to as Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי), Edot HaMizrach, or Oriental Jews, are the descendants of the local Jewish communities that had existed in the Middle East and North Africa from biblical times into the modern era.
The Arab–Israeli conflict includes the political tension, military conflicts and disputes between Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century, but had mostly faded out in the early 21st century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
Israel, officially known as the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although international recognition of the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem is limited.
Jews or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and a nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.
The Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement, officially the Abraham Accords Peace Agreement: Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations and Full Normalization Between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel, was initially agreed to in a joint statement by the United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on August 13, 2020, officially referred to as the Abraham Accords. The UAE thus became the third Arab country, after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, to agree to formally normalize its relationship with Israel, as well as the first Persian Gulf country to do so. Concurrently, Israel agreed to suspend plans for annexing parts of the West Bank. The agreement normalized what had long been informal but robust foreign relations between the two countries. The agreement was signed at the White House on September 15, 2020. It was approved unanimously by the Israeli cabinet on October 12 and was ratified by the Knesset on October 15. The UAE parliament and cabinet ratified the agreement on October 19.
