The Merneptah Stele (13th century BCE). The majority of biblical archeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs as Israel, the first instance of the name in the record.
A people named Israel appear for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription which dates to about 1200 BCE.[56][57][fn 5][59] Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area.[60]:78–79 Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centered on Yahweh.[61][62] They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew, known as Biblical Hebrew.[63] Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain.[64][65]
A second uprising known as the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) initially allowed the Jews to form an independent state, but the Romans brutally crushed the rebellion, devastating and depopulating Judea's countryside.[87][88][89][90][91] Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony (Aelia Capitolina), and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina.[92][93] Jews were expelled from the districts surrounding Jerusalem.[94][90] Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence, and Galilee became its religious center.[95][96]
Under the Ottoman Empire's millet system, Christians and Jews were considered dhimmi (meaning "protected") under Ottoman law in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax.[115][116] Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects faced geographic and lifestyle restrictions, though these were not always enforced.[117][118][119] The millet system organized non-Muslims into autonomous communities on the basis of religion.[120]
The concept of the "return" remained a symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasized that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action.[121] Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: "Jews did not relate to the vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming." The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism.[122] The Jewish population of Palestine from the Ottoman rule to the beginning of the Zionist movement, known as the Old Yishuv, comprised a minority and fluctuated in size. During the 16th century, Jewish communities struck roots in the Four Holy Cities—Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron, and Safed—and in 1697, Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid led a group of 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem.[123] A 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias.[110] In the second half of the 18th century, Eastern European Jews who were opponents of Hasidism, known as the Perushim, settled in Palestine.[124][125]
In the late 18th century, local Arab Sheikh Zahir al-Umar created a de facto independent emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the sheikh failed. After Zahir's death the Ottomans regained control of the area. In 1799, governor Jazzar Pasha repelled an assault on Acre by Napoleon's troops, prompting the French to abandon the Syrian campaign.[126] In 1834, a revolt by Palestinian Arab peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies under Muhammad Ali was suppressed; Muhammad Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840.[127] The Tanzimat reforms were implemented across the Ottoman Empire.
The first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, known as the First Aliyah, began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe.[128] The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews, and restricted where they could live.[129][130] In response, political Zionism took form, a movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, thus offering a solution to the Jewish question of the European states.[131][bettersourceneeded] Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies, in tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than as a response to pogroms or economic insecurity.[121]
The Second Aliyah (1904–1914) began after the Kishinev pogrom; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left eventually. Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainly Orthodox Jews.[132] The Second Aliyah included Zionist socialist groups who established the kibbutz movement based on the idea of establishing a separate Jewish economy based exclusively on Jewish labor.[133][134] Those of the Second Aliyah who became leaders of the Yishuv in the coming decades believed that the Jewish settler economy should not depend on Arab labor. This would be a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, with the new Yishuv's nationalist ideology overpowering its socialist one.[135] Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal Jewish agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv was established as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. Jewish armed militias emerged during this period, the first being Bar-Giora in 1907. Two years later, the larger Hashomer organization was founded as its replacement.
Chaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement eventually secured the Balfour Declaration of 1917,[136] stating Britain's support for the creation of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine.[137][138] Weizmann's interpretation of the declaration was that negotiations on the future of the country were to happen directly between Britain and the Jews, excluding Arabs. Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine deteriorated dramatically in the following years.[139]
In 1918 the Jewish Legion, primarily Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine.[140] In 1920 the territory was divided between Britain and France under the mandate system, and the British-administered area (including modern Israel) was named Mandatory Palestine.[109][141][142] Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of a Jewish militia known as the Haganah as an outgrowth of Hashomer, from which the Irgun and Lehi paramilitaries later split.[143] In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine under terms which included the Balfour Declaration with its promise to the Jews and with similar provisions regarding the Arab Palestinians.[144] The population of the area was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11%[145] and Arab Christians about 9.5% of the population.[146]
"Jews and Arabs in Grim Struggle for Holy Land", article from 1938
The Third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924–1929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The rise of Nazism, and the increasing persecution of Jews in 1930s Europe led to the Fifth Aliyah, with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–39, which was suppressed by British security forces and Zionist militias. Several hundred British security personnel and Jews were killed; 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 were wounded, and 12,622 were detained.[147][148][149] An estimated ten percent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled.[150]
The British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939. With countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, a clandestine movement known as Aliyah Bet was organized to bring Jews to Palestine. By the end of World War II, 31% of the population of Palestine was Jewish.[151] The UK found itself facing a Jewish insurgency over immigration restrictions and continued conflict with the Arab community over limit levels. The Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle against British rule.[152] The Haganah attempted to bring tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors to Palestine by ship. Most of the ships were intercepted by the Royal Navy and the refugees placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus.[153][154]
UN Map, "Palestine plan of partition with economic union"
On 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, killing 91.[155][156][157][158] The attack was a response to Operation Agatha (a series of raids, including one on the Jewish Agency, by the British) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era.[157][158] The Jewish insurgency continued throughout 1946 and 1947 despite concerted efforts by the British military and Palestine Police Force to suppress it. British efforts to mediate with Jewish and Arab representatives also failed as the Jews were unwilling to accept any solution that did not involve a Jewish state and suggested a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, while the Arabs were adamant that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was unacceptable and that the only solution was a unified Palestine under Arab rule. In February 1947, the British referred the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations. On 15 May 1947, the UN General Assembly resolved that a Special Committee be created "to prepare ... a report on the question of Palestine".[159] The Report of the Committee[160]proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem [...] the last to be under an International Trusteeship System".[161] Meanwhile, the Jewish insurgency continued and peaked in July 1947, with a series of widespread guerrilla raids culminating in the Sergeants affair, in which the Irgun took two British sergeants hostage as attempted leverage against the planned execution of three Irgun operatives. After the executions were carried out, the Irgun killed the two British soldiers, hanged their bodies from trees, and left a booby trap at the scene which injured a British soldier. The incident caused widespread outrage in the UK.[162] In September 1947, the British cabinet decided to evacuate Palestine as the Mandate was no longer tenable.[163]
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II).[164] The plan attached to the resolution was essentially that proposed in the report of 3 September. The Jewish Agency, the recognized representative of the Jewish community, accepted the plan, which assigned 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6–7% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners.[165][166][167] The Arab League and Arab Higher Committee of Palestine rejected it on the basis that the partition plan privileged European interests over those of the Palestinians,[168] and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition.[169][170] On 1 December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem.[171] The situation spiraled into a civil war. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948, at which point the British would evacuate. As Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas, they were faced mainly by the Haganah as well as the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah moved onto the offensive.[172][173]
On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel".[174] The following day, the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War;[175] contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan joined the war.[176][177] The purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state and to "sweep them [Jews] into the sea".[166][178][179] The Arab League stated the invasion was to restore order and prevent further bloodshed.[180]
Raising of the Ink Flag on 10 March 1949, marking the end of the 1948 war
By United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel was admitted as a member of the UN on 11 May 1949.[184] In the early years of the state, the Labor Zionist movement led by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dominated Israeli politics.[185][186] Immigration to Israel during the late 1940s and early 1950s was aided by the Israeli Immigration Department and the non-government sponsored Mossad LeAliyah Bet (lit. "Institute for Immigration B").[187] The latter engaged in clandestine operations in countries, particularly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the lives of Jews were in danger and exit was difficult. Mossad LeAliyah Bet was disbanded in 1953.[188] The immigration was in accordance with the One Million Plan. Some immigrants held Zionist beliefs or came for the promise of a better life, while others moved to escape persecution or were expelled from their homes.[189][190]
An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel during the first three years increased the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000. By 1958, the population had risen to two million.[191] Between 1948 and 1970, approximately 1,150,000 Jewish refugees relocated to Israel.[192] Some immigrants arrived as refugees and were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot; by 1952, over 200,000 people were living in these tent cities.[193]Jews of European background were often treated more favorably than Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries—housing units reserved for the latter were often re-designated for the former, so Jews newly arrived from Arab lands generally ended up staying longer in transit camps.[194][195] During this period, food, clothes and furniture were rationed in what became known as the austerity period. The need to solve the crisis led Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany that triggered mass protests by Jews angered at the idea that Israel could accept monetary compensation for the Holocaust.[196]
During the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen, nearly always against civilians,[197] mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip,[198] leading to several Israeli reprisal operations. In 1956, the UK and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, together with increasing fedayeen attacks against Israel's southern population and recent Arab threatening statements, prompted Israel to attack Egypt.[199][200][201] Israel joined a secret alliance with the UK and France and overran the Sinai Peninsula in the Suez Crisis but was pressured to withdraw by the UN in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights.[202][203][204] The war resulted in significant reduction of Israeli border infiltration.[205]
In the early 1960s, Israel captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial.[206] Eichmann remains the only person executed in Israel by conviction in an Israeli civilian court.[207] In 1963, Israel was engaged in a diplomatic standoff with the United States in relation to the Israeli nuclear programme.[208][209]
Since 1964 Arab countries, concerned over Israeli plans to divert waters of the Jordan River into the coastal plain,[210] had been trying to divert the headwaters to deprive Israel of water resources, provoking tensions between Israel on the one hand, and Syria and Lebanon on the other. Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognize Israel and called for its destruction.[211][212][213] By 1966 Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of battles taking place between Israeli and Arab forces.[214]
In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea.[215][216][217] Other Arab states mobilized their forces.[218] Israel reiterated that these actions were a casus belli and launched a pre-emptive strike (Operation Focus) against Egypt in June. Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked Israel. In the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria.[219] Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem. The 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories.[220]
On 6 October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, opening the Yom Kippur War. The war ended on 25 October with Israel repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but suffering great losses.[225] An internal inquiry exonerated the government of responsibility for failures before and during the war, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign.[226][bettersourceneeded] In July 1976, an airliner was hijacked in flight from Israel to France by Palestinian guerrillas; Israeli commandos rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages.
The 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history as Menachem Begin's Likud party took control from the Labor Party.[227] Later that year, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat made a trip to Israel and spoke before the Knesset in what was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state.[228] Sadat and Begin signed the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty (1979).[229] In return, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to enter negotiations over autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[229]
On 11 March 1978, a PLO guerilla raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road massacre. Israel responded by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. Most PLO fighters withdrew, but Israel was able to secure southern Lebanon until a UN force and the Lebanese army could take over. The PLO soon resumed its insurgency against Israel, and Israel carried out numerous retaliatory attacks.
On 7 June 1981, during the Iran–Iraq War, the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's sole nuclear reactor, then under construction, in order to impede the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.[236] Following a series of PLO attacks in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases.[237] In the first six days, Israel destroyed the military forces of the PLO in Lebanon and decisively defeated the Syrians. An Israeli government inquiry (the Kahan Commission) held Begin and several Israeli generals indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and held Defense MinisterAriel Sharon as bearing "personal responsibility".[238] Sharon was forced to resign.[239] In 1985, Israel responded to a Palestinian terrorist attack in Cyprus by bombing the PLO headquarters in Tunisia. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but maintained a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, from where Israeli forces engaged in conflict with Hezbollah. The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule,[240] broke out in 1987, with waves of uncoordinated demonstrations and violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Over the following six years, the intifada became more organized and included economic and cultural measures aimed at disrupting the Israeli occupation. Over 1,000 people were killed.[241] During the 1991 Gulf War, the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi missile attacks against Israel. Despite public outrage, Israel heeded American calls to refrain from hitting back.[242][243]
During Benjamin Netanyahu's premiership at the end of the 1990s, Israel agreed to withdraw from Hebron,[253] though this was never ratified or implemented,[254] and he signed the Wye River Memorandum, giving greater control to the PNA.[255]Ehud Barak, elected prime minister in 1999, withdrew forces from southern Lebanon and conducted negotiations with PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit. Barak offered a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state, including the entirety of the Gaza Strip and over 90% of the West Bank with Jerusalem as a shared capital.[256] Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks.
In late 2000, after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada began. Palestinian suicide bombings were a recurrent feature.[258] Some commentators contend that the intifada was pre-planned by Arafat after the collapse of peace talks.[259][260][261][262] Sharon became prime minister in a 2001 election; he carried out his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the construction of the West Bank barrier,[263] ending the intifada.[264] Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed.[265]
Satellite images of Israel and neighboring territories during the day and night
Israel is located in the Levant area of the Fertile Crescent. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, it is bounded by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank to the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip to the southwest. It lies between latitudes 29° and 34° N, and longitudes 34° and 36° E.
The sovereign territory of Israel (according to the demarcation lines of the 1949 Armistice Agreements and excluding all territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War) is approximately 20,770 square kilometers (8,019sqmi), of which twopercent is water.[284] However Israel is so narrow (100km at its widest, compared to 400km from north to south) that the exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean is double the land area of the country.[285] The total area under Israeli law, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, is 22,072 square kilometers (8,522sqmi),[286] and the total area under Israeli control, including the military-controlled and partially Palestinian-governed territory of the West Bank, is 27,799 square kilometers (10,733sqmi).[287]
The Jordan Rift Valley is the result of tectonic movements within the Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault system. The DST forms the transform boundary between the African Plate to the west and the Arabian Plate to the east. The Golan Heights and all of Jordan are part of the Arabian Plate, while the Galilee, West Bank, Coastal Plain, and Negev along with the Sinai Peninsula are on the African Plate. This tectonic disposition leads to a relatively high seismic activity. The entire Jordan Valley segment is thought to have ruptured repeatedly, for instance during the last two major earthquakes along this structure in 749 and 1033. The deficit in slip that has built up since the 1033 event is sufficient to cause an earthquake of Mw~7.4.[295]
The most catastrophic known earthquakes occurred in 31 BCE, 363, 749, and 1033 CE, that is every ca. 400 years on average.[296] Destructive earthquakes strike about every 80 years, leading to serious loss of life .[297] While stringent construction regulations are in place and recently built structures are earthquake resistant, as of 2007[update] many public buildings as well as 50,000 residential buildings did not meet the new standards and were "expected to collapse" if exposed to a strong earthquake.[297]
The projections of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report show clearly the impacts of climate change on Israel even at 2 degrees of warming.
Temperatures vary widely, especially during the winter. Coastal areas, such as those of Tel Aviv and Haifa, have a typical Mediterranean climate with cool, rainy winters and long, hot summers. The area of Beersheba and the northern Negev have a semi-arid climate with hot summers, cool winters, and fewer rainy days. The southern Negev and the Arabah areas have a desert climate with very hot, dry summers, and mild winters with few days of rain. The highest temperature of 54°C (129°F) was recorded in 1942 in the Tirat Zvi kibbutz.[298][299] Mountainous regions can be windy and cold, and areas at elevation of 750 metres (2,460ft) or more (same elevation as Jerusalem) usually receive at least one snowfall each year.[300] From May to September, rain is rare.[301][302]
Israel is governed by a 120-member parliament, known as the Knesset. Membership of the Knesset is based on proportional representation of political parties,[311][312] with a 3.25% electoral threshold, which in practice has resulted in coalition governments. Residents of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are eligible to vote,[313] and after the 2015 election 10 of the 120 members of the Knesset (8%) were settlers.[314] Parliamentary elections are scheduled every four years, but unstable coalitions or a no-confidence vote can dissolve a government earlier.[34] The first Arab-led party was established in 1988,[315] and as of 2022 Arab-led parties hold about 10% of seats.[316] The Basic Law: The Knesset (1958) and its amendments prevent a party list from running for election to the Knesset if its objectives or actions include the "negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people".
Israel has no official religion,[319][320][321] but the definition of the state as "Jewish and democratic" creates a strong connection with Judaism. On 19 July 2018, the Knesset passed a Basic Law that characterizes the State of Israel as principally a "Nation State of the Jewish People" and Hebrew as its official language. The bill ascribes an undefined "special status" to the Arabic language.[322] The same bill gives Jews a unique right to national self-determination and views the developing of Jewish settlement in the country as "a national interest", empowering the government to "take steps to encourage, advance and implement this interest".[323]
The State of Israel is divided into six main administrative districts, known as mehozot (Hebrew: מחוזות; sg.: mahoz)—Center, Haifa, Jerusalem, North, South, and Tel Aviv, as well as the Judea and Samaria Area in the West Bank. All of the Judea and Samaria Area and parts of the Jerusalem and Northern districts are not recognized internationally as part of Israel. Districts are divided into 15 sub-districts known as nafot (Hebrew: נפות; sg.: nafa), which are partitioned into 50 natural regions.[324]
The two primary pieces of legislation relating to Israeli citizenship are the 1950 Law of Return and 1952 Citizenship Law. The law of return grants Jews the unrestricted right to immigrate to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship. Individuals born within the country receive birthright citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen.[327] Israeli law defines Jewish nationality as distinct from Israeli nationality, and the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that an Israeli nationality does not exist.[328][329] A Jewish national is defined as any person practicing Judaism and their descendants.[328] Legislation has defined Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people since 2018.[330]
Map of Israel showing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights
In 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Israel also captured the Sinai Peninsula but returned it to Egypt as part of the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.[229] Between 1982 and 2000, Israel occupied part of southern Lebanon, in what was known as the Security Belt. Since capture of these territories, Israeli settlements and military installations have been built within each of them, except Lebanon.
The Golan Heights and East Jerusalem have been fully incorporated under Israeli law but not under international law. Israel has applied civilian law to both areas and granted their inhabitants permanent residency status and the ability to apply for citizenship. The UN Security Council has declared the annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem to be "null and void" and continues to view the territories as occupied.[331][332] The status of East Jerusalem in any future peace settlement has at times been a difficult issue in negotiations between Israeli governments and representatives of the Palestinians.
Israeli West Bank barrier is a separation barrier built by Israel along the Green Line and inside parts of the West Bank.
The West Bank excluding East Jerusalem is known as the Judea and Samaria Area. The almost 400,000 Israeli settlers residing in the area are considered part of Israel's population, have Knesset representation, are subject to a large part of Israel's civil and criminal laws, and their output is considered part of Israel's economy.[333][fn 4] The land is not considered part of Israel under Israeli law, as Israel has consciously refrained from annexing the territory, without ever relinquishing its legal claim to the land or defining a border.[333] Israeli political opposition to annexation primarily stems from the perceived "demographic threat" of incorporating the West Bank's Palestinian population into Israel.[333] Outside of the Israeli settlements, the West Bank remains under direct Israeli military rule, and Palestinians in the area cannot become Israeli citizens.
The international community maintains that Israel does not have sovereignty in the West Bank and considers Israel's control of the area to be the longest military occupation in modern history.[336] The West Bank was occupied and annexed by Jordan in 1950, following the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Only Britain recognized this annexation, and Jordan has since ceded its claim to the territory to the PLO. The population is mainly Palestinians, including refugees of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.[337] From their occupation in 1967 until 1993, the Palestinians living in these territories were under Israeli military administration. Since the Israel–PLO letters of recognition, most of the Palestinian population and cities have been under the internal jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, and only partial Israeli military control, although Israel has redeployed its troops and reinstated full military administration during periods of unrest. Israel's claim of universal suffrage has been questioned due to its blurred territorial boundaries and its simultaneous extension of voting rights to Israeli settlers in the occupied territories and denial of voting rights to their Palestinian neighbours, as well as the alleged ethnocratic nature of the state.[338][339]
The Gaza Strip is considered to be a "foreign territory" under Israeli law. Israel and Egypt operate a land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel after 1967. In 2005, as part of a unilateral disengagement plan, Israel removed its settlers and forces from the territory but continues to maintain control of its airspace and waters. The international community, including numerous international humanitarian organizations and UN bodies, consider Gaza to remain occupied.[340][341][342][343][344] Following the 2007 Battle of Gaza, when Hamas assumed power in the Gaza Strip,[345] Israel tightened control of the Gaza crossings along its border, as well as by sea and air, and prevented persons from entering and exiting except for isolated cases it deemed humanitarian.[345] Gaza has a border with Egypt, and an agreement between Israel, the EU, and the PA governs how border crossings take place.[346] The application of democracy to its Palestinian citizens and the selective application of Israeli democracy in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian territories have been criticized.[347][348]
The International Court of Justice said, in its 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of the construction of the West Bank barrier, that the lands captured by Israel in the Six-Day War, including East Jerusalem, are occupied territory and found that the construction of the wall within the occupied Palestinian territory violates international law.[349] Most negotiations relating to the territories have been on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which emphasizes "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war", and calls on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories in return for normalization of relations with Arab states ("Land for peace").[350][351][352] Israel has been criticized for engaging in systematic and widespread violations of human rights in the occupied territories, including occupation[353] and war crimes against civilians.[354][355][356][357] The allegations include violations of international humanitarian law[358] by the UN Human Rights Council.[359] The U.S. State Department has called reports of abuses of significant human rights of Palestinians "credible" both within Israel[360] and the occupied territories.[361]Amnesty International and other NGOs have documented mass arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings, systemic abuses and impunity[362][363][364][365] in tandem with a denial of the right to Palestinian self-determination.[366][367][368][369][370] Prime Minister Netanyahu has defended the country's security forces for protecting the innocent from terrorists[371] and expressed contempt for what he describes as a lack of concern about the human rights violations committed by "criminal killers".[372]
In a 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice stated that occupation of the Palestinian territories violated international law; Israel should end its occupation as quickly as possible and pay reparations. The court also advised that other states were under an obligation not to recognise the occupation as lawful nor to aid or assist it. In addition, the court found that Israel was in breach of article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which requires states to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of racial segregation and apartheid.[377][378][379]
In February 2024, The ICJ held public hearings in regards to the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem. During the hearings, 24 states and three international organizations said that Israeli practices amount to a breach of the prohibition of apartheid and/or amount to prohibited acts of racial discrimination.[397] The International Court of Justice in its 2024 advisory opinion found that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories constitutes systemic discrimination and is in breach of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. The opinion is silent as to whether the discrimination amounts to apartheid; individual judges were split on the question.[398][399][400][401][402][403]
Despite the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Israel is still widely considered an enemy country among Egyptians.[406] Iran withdrew its recognition of Israel during the Islamic Revolution.[407] Israeli citizens may not visit Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen without permission from the Ministry of the Interior.[408] As a result of the 2008–09 Gaza War, Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia, and Venezuela suspended political and economic ties with Israel,[409] though Bolivia renewed ties in 2019.[410]
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the signing ceremony of the Oslo Accords with then US President Bill Clinton
The United States and the Soviet Union were the first two countries to recognize the State of Israel, having declared recognition roughly simultaneously.[411] Diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were broken in 1967 following the Six-Day War and renewed in 1991.[412] The United States regards Israel as its "most reliable partner in the Middle East",[413] based on "common democratic values, religious affinities, and security interests".[414] The US has provided $68billion in military assistance and $32billion in grants to Israel since 1967, under the Foreign Assistance Act (period beginning 1962),[415] more than any other country for that period until 2003.[415][416][417] Most surveyed Americans have held consistently favorable views of Israel.[418][419] The United Kingdom is seen as having a "natural" relationship with Israel because of the Mandate for Palestine.[420]By 2007[update], Germany had paid 25billion euros in reparations to Israel and individual Israeli Holocaust survivors.[421] Israel is included in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy.[422]
Although Turkey and Israel did not establish full diplomatic relations until 1991,[423] Turkey has cooperated with the Jewish state since its recognition of Israel in 1949. Turkey's ties to other Muslim-majority nations in the region have at times resulted in pressure from Arab and Muslim states to temper its relationship with Israel.[424] Relations took a downturn after the 2008–09 Gaza War and Israel's raid of the Gaza flotilla.[425] Relations between Greece and Israel have improved since 1995 after decline of Israeli–Turkish relations.[426] The two countries have a defense cooperation agreement and in 2010, the Israeli Air Force hosted Greece's Hellenic Air Force in a joint exercise. The joint Cyprus-Israel oil and gas explorations centered on the Leviathan gas field are an important factor for Greece, given its strong links with Cyprus.[427] Cooperation in the world's longest submarine power cable, the EuroAsia Interconnector, has strengthened Cyprus–Israel relations.[428]
Azerbaijan is one of the few majority Muslim countries to develop strategic and economic relations with Israel.[429] Kazakhstan also has an economic and strategic partnership with Israel.[430] India established full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992 and has fostered a strong military, technological and cultural partnership with the country since then.[431] India is the largest customer of the Israeli military equipment, and Israel is the second-largest military partner of India after Russia.[432]Ethiopia is Israel's main ally in Africa due to common political, religious and security interests.[433]
Foreign aid
Israel has a history of providing emergency foreign aid and humanitarian response to disasters across the world.[434] In 1955 Israel began its foreign aid programme in Burma. The programme's focus subsequently shifted to Africa.[435] Israel's humanitarian efforts officially began in 1957 with the establishment of Mashav, the Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation.[436] In this early period, whilst Israel's aid represented only a small percentage of total aid to Africa, its programme was effective in creating goodwill; however, following the 1967 war relations soured.[437] Israel's foreign aid programme subsequently shifted its focus to Latin America.[435]
Since the late 1970s Israel's foreign aid has gradually decreased, although in recent years Israel has tried to reestablish aid to Africa.[438] There are additional Israeli humanitarian and emergency response groups that work with the government, including IsraAid, a joint programme run by Israeli organizations and North American Jewish groups,[439]ZAKA,[440] The Fast Israeli Rescue and Search Team,[441] Israeli Flying Aid,[442]Save a Child's Heart[443] and Latet.[444] Between 1985 and 2015, Israel sent 24 delegations of their search and rescue unit the Home Front Command to 22 countries.[445] Currently Israeli foreign aid ranks low among OECD nations, spending less than 0.1% of its GNI on development assistance.[446] The country ranked 38th in the 2018 World Giving Index.[447]
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces and is headed by its Chief of the General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Cabinet. The IDF consists of the army, air force and navy. It was founded during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by consolidating paramilitary organizations—chiefly the Haganah.[448] The IDF also draws upon the resources of the Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman).[449] The IDF have been involved in several major wars and border conflicts, making it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world.[450]
Most Israelis are conscripted at age 18. Men serve two years and eight months, and women serve two years.[451] Following mandatory service, Israeli men join the reserve forces and usually do up to several weeks of reserve duty every year until their forties. Most women are exempt from reserve duty. Arab citizens of Israel (except the Druze) and those engaged in full-time religious studies are exempt, although the exemption of yeshiva students has been a source of contention.[452][453] An alternative for those who receive exemptions on various grounds is Sherut Leumi, or national service, which involves a programme of service in social welfare frameworks.[454] A small minority of Israeli Arabs also volunteer in the army.[455] As a result of its conscription programme, the IDF maintains approximately 176,500 active troops and 465,000 reservists, giving Israel one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training.[456]
Since Israel's establishment, military expenditure constituted a significant portion of the country's gross domestic product, with peak of 30.3% of GDP in 1975.[470] In 2021, Israel ranked 15th in the world by total military expenditure, with $24.3 billion, and 6th by defense spending as a percentage of GDP, with 5.2%.[471] Since 1974, the United States has been a particularly notable contributor of military aid.[472] Under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2016, the U.S. is expected to provide the country with $3.8billion per year, or around 20% of Israel's defense budget, from 2018 to 2028.[473] Israel ranked 9th globally for arms exports in 2022.[474] The majority of Israel's arms exports are unreported for security reasons.[475] Israel is consistently rated low in the Global Peace Index, ranking 134th out of 163 nations in 2022.[476]
Israel has a three-tier court system. At the lowest level are magistrate courts, situated in most cities across the country. Above them are district courts, serving as both appellate courts and courts of first instance; they are situated in five of Israel's six districts. The third and highest tier is the Supreme Court, located in Jerusalem; it serves a dual role as the highest court of appeals and the High Court of Justice. In the latter role, the Supreme Court rules as a court of first instance, allowing individuals, both citizens and non-citizens, to petition against the decisions of state authorities.[477]
Despite limited natural resources, intensive development of the agricultural and industrial sectors over the past decades has made Israel largely self-sufficient in food production, apart from grains and beef. Imports, totaling $96.5 billion in 2020, include raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, and consumer goods.[284] Leading exports include machinery, equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles, and apparel; in 2020, exports reached $114 billion.[284] The Bank of Israel holds $201 billion of foreign-exchange reserves, the 17th highest in the world.[284] Since the 1970s, Israel has received military aid from the United States, as well as economic assistance in the form of loan guarantees, which account for roughly half of Israel's external debt. Israel has one of the lowest external debts in the developed world, and is a lender in terms of net external debt (assets vs. liabilities abroad), which in 2015[update] stood at a surplus of $69 billion.[494]
The days which are allocated to working times are Sunday through Thursday (for a five-day workweek), or Friday (for a six-day workweek). In observance of Shabbat, in places where Friday is a work day and the majority of population is Jewish, Friday is a "short day". Several proposals have been raised to adjust the work week with the majority of the world.[504]
In 2012, Israel was ranked ninth in the world by the Futron's Space Competitiveness Index.[517] The Israel Space Agency coordinates all space research programmes with scientific and commercial goals, and have designed and built at least 13 commercial, research and spy satellites.[518] Some satellites are ranked among the world's most advanced space systems.[519]Shavit is a space launch vehicle produced by Israel to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit.[520] It was first launched in 1988, making Israel the eighth nation to have a space launch capability. In 2003, Ilan Ramon became Israel's first astronaut, serving on the fatal mission of Space Shuttle Columbia.[521]
The ongoing water shortage has spurred innovation in water conservation techniques, and a substantial agricultural modernization, drip irrigation, was invented in Israel. Israel is also at the technological forefront of desalination and water recycling. The Sorek desalination plant is the largest seawater reverse osmosis desalination facility in the world.[522] By 2014, desalination programmes provided roughly 35% of the drinking water, and it is expected to supply 70% by 2050.[523]As of 2015[update], over 50 percent of the water for households, agriculture and industry is artificially produced.[524] In 2011, Israel's water technology industry was worth around $2 billion per year with annual exports of products and services in the tens of millions of dollars. As a result of innovations in reverse osmosis technology, Israel is set to become a net exporter of water.[525]
Israel has embraced solar energy; its engineers are on the cutting edge of solar energy technology,[527] and its solar companies work on projects around the world.[528][529] Over 90% of homes use solar energy for hot water, the highest per capita.[307][530] According to government figures, the country saves 8% of its electricity consumption per year because of its solar energy use in heating.[531] The high annual incident solar irradiance at its geographic latitude creates ideal conditions for what is an internationally renowned solar research and development industry in the Negev.[527][528][529] Israel had a modern electric car infrastructure involving a countrywide network of charging stations;[532][533][534] however, its electric car company Better Place shut down in 2013.[535]
Israel began producing natural gas from its own offshore gas fields in 2004. In 2009 Tamar gas field was discovered near the coast, and Leviathan gas field was discovered in 2010.[536] The natural gas reserves in these two fields could make Israel energy-secure for more than 50 years. Commercial production of natural gas from the Tamar field began in 2013, with over 7.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) produced annually.[537] Israel had 199 billion bcm of proven reserves of natural gas as of 2016.[538] The Leviathan gas field started production in 2019.[539]
Ketura Sun is Israel's first commercial solar field. Built in 2011 by the Arava Power Company, the field consists of 18,500 photovoltaic panels made by Suntech, which will produce about 9 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year.[540] In the next 20 years, the field will spare the production of some 125,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.[541]
Israel has 19,224 kilometres (11,945mi) of paved roads[542] and 3 million motor vehicles.[543] The number of motor vehicles per 1,000 persons is 365, relatively low among developed countries.[543] The country aims to have 30% of vehicles on its roads powered by electricity by 2030.[544]
Israel has 5,715 buses on scheduled routes,[545] operated by several carriers, the largest and oldest of which is Egged, serving most of the country.[546]Railways stretch across 1,277 kilometres (793mi) and are operated by government-owned Israel Railways.[547] Following major investments beginning in the early to mid-1990s, the number of train passengers per year has grown from 2.5 million in 1990, to 53 million in 2015; railways transport 7.5 million tons of cargo per year.[547]
Tourism, especially religious tourism, is an important industry, with beaches, archaeological, other historical and biblical sites, and unique geography also drawing tourists. In 2017, a record 3.6 million tourists visited Israel, yielding a 25 percent growth since 2016 and contributed NIS 20 billion to the economy.[549][550]
Housing prices are listed in the top third of all countries,[551] with an average of 150 salaries required to buy an apartment.[552] As of 2022, there are about 2.7 million properties in Israel, with an annual increase of over 50,000.[553] However, the demand for housing exceeds supply, with a shortage of about 200,000 apartments as of 2021.[554] As a result, by 2021 housing prices rose by 5.6%.[555] In 2021, Israelis took a record of NIS 116.1 billion in mortgages, an increase of 50% from 2020.[556]
Israel has the largest Jewish population in the world and is the only country where Jews are the majority.[557]As of 31May2024[update], the population was an estimated 9,907,100. In 2022, the government recorded 73.6% of the population as Jews, 21.1% as Arabs, and 5.3% as "Others" (non-Arab Christians and people who have no religion listed).[558] Over the last decade, large numbers of migrant workers from Romania, Thailand, China, Africa, and South America have settled in Israel. Exact figures are unknown, as many of them are living in the country illegally,[559] but estimates run from 166,000 to 203,000.[560] By June 2012, approximately 60,000 African migrants had entered Israel.[561]
About 93% of Israelis live in urban areas.[562] 90% of Palestinian Israelis reside in 139 densely populated towns and villages concentrated in the Galilee, Triangle and Negev regions, with the remaining 10% in mixed cities and neighbourhoods.[563] The OECD in 2016 estimated the average life expectancy at 82.5 years, the 6th-highest in the world.[564] Israeli Arab life expectancy lags by 3 to 4 years[565][566] and is higher than in most Arab and Muslim countries.[567][568] The country has the highest fertility rate in the OECD and the only one which is above the replacement figure of 2.1.[569] Retention of Israel's population since 1948 is about even or greater, when compared to other countries with mass immigration.[570] Jewish emigration from Israel (called yerida), primarily to the United States and Canada, is described by demographers as modest,[571] but is often cited by Israeli government ministries as a major threat to Israel's future.[572][573]
Approximately 80% of Israeli Jews are born in Israel, 14% are immigrants from Europe and the Americas, and 6% are immigrants from Asia and Africa.[574] Jews from Europe and the former Soviet Union and their descendants born in Israel, including Ashkenazi Jews, constitute approximately 44% of Jewish Israelis. Jews from Arab and Muslim countries and their descendants, including both Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews,[575] form most of the rest of the Jewish population.[576] Jewish intermarriage rates run at over 35% and recent studies suggest that the percentage of Israelis descended from both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews increases by 0.5 percent yearly, with over 25% of schoolchildren now originating from both.[577] Around 4% of Israelis (300,000), ethnically defined as "others", are Russian descendants of Jewish origin or family who are not Jewish according to rabbinical law, but were eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return.[578][579][580]
Israeli settlers beyond the Green Line number over 600,000 (≈10% of the Jewish Israeli population).[581]In 2016[update], 399,300 Israelis lived in West Bank settlements,[325] including those that predated the establishment of the State of Israel and which were re-established after the Six-Day War, in cities such as Hebron and Gush Etzion bloc. Additionally there were more than 200,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem[326] and 22,000 in the Golan Heights.[325] Approximately 7,800 Israelis lived in settlements in the Gaza Strip, known as Gush Katif, until they were evacuated by the government as part of its 2005 disengagement plan.[582]
Israeli Arabs (including the Arab population of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) comprise 21.1% of the population or 1,995,000 people.[583] In a 2017 poll, 40% of Arab citizens of Israel identified as "Arab in Israel" or "Arab citizen of Israel", 15% identified as "Palestinian", 8.9% as "Palestinian in Israel" or "Palestinian citizen of Israel", and 8.7% as "Arab"; a poll found that 60% of Israeli Arabs have a positive view of the state.[584][585]
Israel has four major metropolitan areas: Gush Dan (Tel Aviv metropolitan area; population 3,854,000), Jerusalem (population 1,253,900), Haifa (924,400), and Beersheba (377,100).[586] The largest municipality, in population and area, is Jerusalem with 981,711 residents in an area of 125 square kilometres (48sqmi).[587] Statistics on Jerusalem include the population and area of East Jerusalem, the status of which is in international dispute.[588] Tel Aviv and Haifa rank as Israel's next most populous cities, with populations of 474,530 and 290,306, respectively.[587] The (mainly Haredi) city of Bnei Brak is the most densely populated city in Israel and one of the 10 most densely populated cities in the world.[589]
The official language is Hebrew. Hebrew is the primary language of the state and is spoken daily by the majority of the population. Prior to 1948, opposition to Yiddish, the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews, was common among supporters of the Zionist movement, including the Yishuv, who sought to promote Hebrew's revival as a unifying national language.[593] These sentiments were reflected in the early policies of the Israeli government, which largely banned Yiddish theatre performances and publications.[594] Until 2018, Arabic was also an official language;[11] in 2018 it was downgraded to having a "special status in the state".[9][10] Arabic is spoken by the Arab minority, with Arabic and Hebrew taught in Arab schools.[595]
Due to mass immigration from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia (some 130,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel),[596][597]Russian and Amharic are widely spoken.[598] Over one million Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in Israel between 1990 and 2004.[599] French is spoken by around 700,000 Israelis,[600] mostly originating from France and North Africa (see Maghrebi Jews). English was an official language during the Mandate period;[601] it lost this status after the establishment of Israel, but retains a role comparable to that of an official language.[602][603] Many Israelis communicate reasonably well in English, as many television programmes are broadcast in English with subtitles and the language is taught from the early grades in elementary school. Israeli universities offer courses in the English language on various subjects.[604][bettersourceneeded]
The estimated religious affiliation as of 2022 was 73.5% Jewish, 18.1% Muslim, 1.9% Christian, 1.6% Druze, and 4.9% other.[12] The religious affiliation of Israeli Jews varies widely: a 2016 survey by Pew Research indicates that 49% self-identify as Hiloni (secular), 29% as Masorti (traditional), 13% as Dati (religious) and 9% as Haredi (ultra-Orthodox).[605] Haredi Jews are expected to represent over 20% of the Jewish population by 2028.[606]Muslims constitute the largest religious minority, making up about 18.1% of the population. About 1.9% of the population is Christian, and 1.6% is Druze.[12] The Christian population comprises primarily Arab Christians and Aramean Christians but also includes post-Soviet immigrants, foreign laborers, and followers of Messianic Judaism, considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity.[607] Members of many other religious groups, including Buddhists and Hindus, maintain a presence in Israel, albeit in small numbers.[608] Out of over one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, about 300,000 are considered not Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.[609]
Education is highly valued and was viewed as a fundamental block of ancient Israelites.[616] In 2015, the country ranked third among OECD members for the percentage of 25–64 year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 49% compared with the OECD average of 35%.[617] In 2012, the country ranked third in the number of academic degrees per capita (20 percent of the population).[618]
Israel has a school life expectancy of 16 years and a literacy rate of 97.8%.[284] The State Education Law (1953) established five types of schools: state secular, state religious, ultra orthodox, communal settlement schools, and Arab schools. The public secular is the largest school group and is attended by the majority of Jewish and non-Arab pupils. Most Arabs send their children to schools where Arabic is the language of instruction.[595] Education is compulsory for children between the ages of three and eighteen.[619] Schooling is divided into three tiers—primary school (grades 1–6), middle school (grades 7–9), and high school (grades 10–12)—culminating with Bagrut matriculation exams. Proficiency in core subjects such as mathematics, the Hebrew language, Hebrew and general literature, the English language, history, Biblical scripture and civics is necessary to receive a Bagrut certificate.[620]
The Jewish population maintains a relatively high level of educational attainment where just under half of all Israeli Jews (46%) hold post-secondary degrees.[621][622] Israeli Jews (among those ages 25 and older) have average of 11.6 years of schooling making them one of the most highly educated of all major religious groups in the world.[623][624] In Arab, Christian and Druze schools, the exam on Biblical studies is replaced by an exam on Muslim, Christian or Druze heritage, respectively.[625] In 2020, 68.7% of all 12th graders earned a matriculation certificate.[626]
Israeli literature is primarily poetry and prose written in Hebrew, as part of the renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language since the mid-19th century, although a small body of literature is published in other languages. By law, two copies of all printed matter published in Israel must be deposited in the National Library of Israel. In 2001, the law was amended to include audio and video recordings, and other non-print media.[637] In 2016, 89percent of the 7,300 books transferred to the library were in Hebrew.[638]
Israeli Jewish art has been particularly influenced by the Kabbalah, the Talmud and the Zohar. Another art movement that held a prominent role in the 20th century was the School of Paris. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Yishuv's art was dominated by art trends emanating Bezalel. Beginning in the 1920s, the local art scene was heavily influenced by modern French art, first introduced by Isaac Frenkel Frenel.[655][656] Jewish masters of the school of Paris, such as Soutine, Kikoine, Frenkel, Chagall heavily influenced the subsequent development of Israeli art.[657][658] Israeli sculpture took inspiration from modern European sculpture as well Mesopotamian, Assyrian and local art.[659][660]Avraham Melnikov's roaring lion, David Polus' Alexander Zaid and Ze'ev Ben Zvi's cubist sculpture exemplify some of the different streams in sculpture.[659][661][662]
Common themes in art are the mystical cities of Safed and Jerusalem, the bohemian café culture of Tel Aviv, agricultural landscapes, biblical stories and war. Today Israeli art has delved into optical art, AI art, digital art and the use of salt in sculpture.[658]
Due to the immigration of Jewish architects, architecture has come to reflect different styles. In the early 20th century Jewish architects sought to combine Occidental and Oriental architecture producing buildings that showcase a myriad of infused styles.[663] The eclectic style gave way to the modernist Bauhaus style with the influx of German Jewish architects (among them Erich Mendelsohn) fleeing Nazi persecution.[664][665] The White City of Tel Aviv is a UNESCO heritage site.[666] Following independence, multiple government projects were commissioned, a grand part built in a brutalist style with heavy emphasis on the use of concrete and acclimatization to the desert climate.[667][668]
Several novel ideas such as the Garden City were implemented Israeli cities; the Geddes plan of Tel Aviv became renowned internationally for its revolutionary design and adaptation to the local climate.[669] The design of kibbutzim also came to reflect ideology, such as the planning of the circular kibbutz Nahalal by Richard Kauffmann.[670]
Media is diverse, reflecting the spectrum of audiences. Notable newspapers include the leftwing Haaretz,[671] centrist Yedioth Ahronoth,[672] and center-right Israel Hayom.[673] There are several major TV channels which cater to different audiences, from Russian language Channel 9[674] to Arabic language Kan 33.[675] The 2024 Freedom House report found Israeli media is "vibrant and free to criticize government policy".[676] In the 2024 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Israel was placed 101st of 180 countries, second in the Middle East and North Africa.[677][678] Reporters Without Borders noted that the Israel Defense Forces had killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza. Since the Israel–Hamas war, Israel had been "been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem."[678] On 5 May 2024, Israel shut down the local offices of Qatari channelAl Jazeera.[679] Israel later briefly seized equipment belonging to the Associated Press, saying that its video stream of Gaza was being provided to Al Jazeera; after an intervention by the U.S. government the equipment was returned.[680][681][682]
Israel has the highest number of museums per capita.[687] Several museums are devoted to Islamic culture, including the Rockefeller Museum and the L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art, both in Jerusalem. The Rockefeller specializes in archaeological remains from Middle East history. It is also the home of the first hominid fossil skull found in Western Asia, called Galilee Man.[688]
Roughly half of the Jewish population attests to keeping kosher at home.[690][691]Kosher restaurants make up around a quarter of the total as of 2015[update].[689] Together with non-kosher fish, rabbits and ostriches, pork—often called "white meat" in Israel[692]—is produced and consumed, though it is forbidden by both Judaism and Islam.[693]
The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has seen many conflicts and come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.
Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish identity or ethnicity, and have been constructed on lands that Israel has militarily occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967. The international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel's occupation was illegal and ruled that Israel had "an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers" from the occupied territories. The expansion of settlements often involves the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities and creating a source of tension and conflict. Settlements are often protected by the Israeli military and are frequently flashpoints for violence against Palestinians. Furthermore, the presence of settlements and Jewish-only bypass roads creates a fragmented Palestinian territory, seriously hindering economic development and freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group native to the region of Palestine.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security, water rights, the permit regime, Palestinian freedom of movement, and the Palestinian right of return.
The history of the State of Palestine describes the creation and evolution of the State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the British mandate period, numerous plans of partition of Palestine were proposed but without the agreement of all parties. In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was voted for. The leaders of the Jewish Agency for Palestine accepted parts of the plan, while Arab leaders refused it. This triggered the 1947–1949 Palestine war and led, in 1948, to the establishment of the state of Israel on a part of Mandate Palestine as the Mandate came to an end.
The occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. These territories make up the State of Palestine, which was self-declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988 and is recognized by 146 out of 193 UN member states.
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the southern Levant region of West Asia recognized by 146 out of 193 UN member states. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the occupied Palestinian territories, within the broader geographic and historical Palestine region. Palestine shares most of its borders with Israel, and it borders Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million people. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its administrative center. Gaza City was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.
The history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict traces back to the late 19th century when Zionists sought to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants to the region. Following World War II and the Holocaust, international pressure mounted for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Jordanian administration of the West Bank officially began on 24 April 1950, and ended with the decision to sever ties on 31 July 1988. The period started during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the portion of Mandatory Palestine that became known as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The territory remained under Jordanian control until it was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War and eventually Jordan renounced its claim to the territory in 1988.
The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout the history of Palestine.
The region of Palestine, also known as historic Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes modern-day Israel and the State of Palestine, as well as parts of northwestern Jordan in some definitions. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land.
The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined on 5 May 1945. Since its formation the Arab League has promoted the Palestinian Arab cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including by imposing the Arab League boycott of Israel. The Arab League opposed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. On 15 May 1948, the then seven Arab League members coordinated an invasion of what was by then the former British Mandate, marking the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. It previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to 1967, the Palestinian territories was split between the Gaza Strip controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan, while the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights are parts of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, where Israel had transferred its parts of population there and built large settlements, is the longest military occupation in modern history.
The Arab–Israeli conflict began in the 20th century, evolving from earlier Intercommunal violence in Mandatory Palestine. The conflict became a major international issue with the birth of Israel in 1948. The Arab–Israeli conflict has resulted in at least five major wars and a number of minor conflicts. It has also been the source of two major Palestinian uprisings (intifadas).
Demographic features of the population of the area commonly described as the Palestinian territories includes information on ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of that population.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th 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; this 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.
Situated between three continents, the region of Palestine has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region was among the earliest to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. In the Bronze Age, the Canaanites established city-states influenced by surrounding civilizations, among them Egypt, which ruled the area in the Late Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, two related Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah, controlled much of Palestine, while the Philistines occupied its southern coast. The Assyrians conquered the region in the 8th century BCE, then the Babylonians in c. 601 BCE, followed by the Persians who conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late 330s BCE, beginning Hellenization.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
↑ Jerusalem is Israel's largest city if including East Jerusalem, which is widely recognized as occupied territory.[7] If East Jerusalem is not counted, the largest city would be Tel Aviv.
↑ Arabic has a "special status" as set by the Basic Law of 2018, which allows it to be used by official institutions.[9][10] Prior to that law's passage, Arabic had been an official language alongside Hebrew.[11]
1 2 Israeli population and economic data covers the economic territory of Israel, including the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.[334][335]
↑ "Czech Republic announces it recognizes West Jerusalem as Israel's capital". The Jerusalem Post. 6 December 2017. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 6 December 2017. The Czech Republic currently, before the peace between Israel and Palestine is signed, recognizes Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967." The Ministry also said that it would only consider relocating its embassy based on "results of negotiations.
↑ Akram, Susan M., Michael Dumper, Michael Lynk, and Iain Scobbie, eds. 2010. International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Rights-Based Approach to Middle East Peace. Routledge. p. 119: "UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended the creation of an international zone, or corpus separatum, in Jerusalem to be administered by the UN for a 10-year period, after which there would be a referendum to determine its future. This approach applies equally to West and East Jerusalem and is not affected by the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. To a large extent it is this approach that still guides the diplomatic behaviour of states and thus has greater force in international law."
↑ Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther (Fall 2018). "Turning Points in the Historiography of Jewish Immigration from Arab Countries to Israel". Israel Studies. 23 (3). Indiana University Press: 114–122. doi:10.2979/israelstudies.23.3.15. JSTOR10.2979/israelstudies.23.3.15. S2CID150208821. The mass immigration from Arab countries began in mid-1949 and included three communities that relocated to Israel almost in their entirety: 31,000 Jews from Libya, 50,000 from Yemen, and 125,000 from Iraq. Additional immigrants arrived from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, India, and elsewhere. Within three years, the Jewish population of Israel doubled. The ethnic composition of the population shifted as well, as immigrants from Muslim counties and their offspring now comprised one third of the Jewish population—an unprecedented phenomenon in global immigration history. From 1952–60, Israel regulated and restricted immigration from Muslim countries with a selective immigration policy based on economic criteria, and sent these immigrants, most of whom were North African, to peripheral Israeli settlements. The selective immigration policy ended in 1961 when, following an agreement between Israel and Morocco, about 100,000 Jews immigrated to the State. From 1952–68 about 600,000 Jews arrived in Israel, three quarters of whom were from Arab countries and the remaining immigrants were largely from Eastern Europe. Today fewer than 30,000 remain in Muslim countries, mostly concentrated in Iran and Turkey.
↑ Slater 2020, pp.81–92, 350, "[p. 350] It is no longer a matter of serious dispute that in the 1947–48 period—beginning well before the Arab invasion in May 1948—some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their villages and homes in Israel in fear of their lives—an entirely justifiable fear, in light of massacres carried out by Zionist forces."
↑ Cleveland, William L.; Bunton, Martin (2016). A History of the Modern Middle East. Westview Press. p.270. ISBN978-0-429-97513-4. Not only was there no Palestinian Arab state, but the vast majority of the Arab population in the territory that became Israel-over 700,000 people-had become refugees. The Arab flight from Palestine began during the intercommunal war and was at first the normal reaction of a civilian population to nearby fighting-a temporary evacuation from the zone of combat with plans to return once hostilities ceased. However, during spring and early summer 1948, the flight of the Palestinian Arabs was transformed into a permanent mass exodus... .
↑ Barton & Bowden 2004, p.126. "The Merneptah Stele ... is arguably the oldest evidence outside the Bible for the existence of Israel as early as the 13th century BCE."
↑ Dever, William G. Beyond the Texts, Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2017, pp. 89–93
↑ S. Richard, "Archaeological sources for the history of Palestine: The Early Bronze Age: The rise and collapse of urbanism", The Biblical Archaeologist (1987)
↑ Hasel, Michael G. (1 January 1994). "Israel in the Merneptah Stela". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 296 (296): 45–61. doi:10.2307/1357179. JSTOR1357179. S2CID164052192. * Bertman, Stephen (14 July 2005). Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-518364-1. * Meindert Dijkstra (2010). "Origins of Israel between history and ideology". In Becking, Bob; Grabbe, Lester (eds.). Between Evidence and Ideology Essays on the History of Ancient Israel read at the Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oud Testamentisch Werkgezelschap Lincoln Nebraska, July 2009. Brill. p.47. ISBN978-90-04-18737-5. As a West Semitic personal name it existed long before it became a tribal or a geographical name. This is not without significance, though is it rarely mentioned. We learn of a maryanu named ysr"il (*Yi¡sr—a"ilu) from Ugarit living in the same period, but the name was already used a thousand years before in Ebla. The word Israel originated as a West Semitic personal name. One of the many names that developed into the name of the ancestor of a clan, of a tribe and finally of a people and a nation.
↑ Faust 2015, p.476: "While there is a consensus among scholars that the Exodus did not take place in the manner described in the Bible, surprisingly most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some of the highland settlers came, one way or another, from Egypt."
↑ Redmount 2001, p.61: "A few authorities have concluded that the core events of the Exodus saga are entirely literary fabrications. But most biblical scholars still subscribe to some variation of the Documentary Hypothesis, and support the basic historicity of the biblical narrative."
↑ Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2001). The Bible unearthed: archaeology's new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its stories (1st Touchstoneed.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-86912-4.
↑ Finkelstein, Israel, (2020). "Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem", in Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart (eds.), Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives, SBL Press, Atlanta, GA, p. 48, footnote 57: "...They became territorial kingdoms later, Israel in the first half of the ninth century BCE and Judah in its second half..."
↑ Finkelstein & Silberman 2002, pp.146–147: Put simply, while Judah was still economically marginal and backward, Israel was booming. ... In the next chapter we will see how the northern kingdom suddenly appeared on the ancient Near Eastern stage as a major regional power.
1 2 Finkelstein, Israel (2013). The Forgotten Kingdom: the archaeology and history of Northern Israel. pp.65–66, 73, 74, 78, 87–94. ISBN978-1-58983-911-3. OCLC880456140.
↑ Finkelstein & Silberman 2002, p.307: "Intensive excavations throughout Jerusalem have shown that the city was indeed systematically destroyed by the Babylonians. The conflagration seems to have been general. When activity on the ridge of the City of David resumed in the Persian period, the-new suburbs on the western hill that had flourished since at least the time of Hezekiah were not reoccupied."
↑ Wheeler, P. (2017). "Review of the book Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137, by David W. Stowe". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 79 (4): 696–697. doi:10.1353/cbq.2017.0092. S2CID171830838.
↑ Helyer, Larry R.; McDonald, Lee Martin (2013). "The Hasmoneans and the Hasmonean Era". In Green, Joel B.; McDonald, Lee Martin (eds.). The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts. Baker Academic. pp.45–47. ISBN978-0-8010-9861-1. OCLC961153992. The ensuing power struggle left Hyrcanus with a free hand in Judea, and he quickly reasserted Jewish sovereignty... Hyrcanus then engaged in a series of military campaigns aimed at territorial expansion. He first conquered areas in the Transjordan. He then turned his attention to Samaria, which had long separated Judea from the northern Jewish settlements in Lower Galilee. In the south, Adora and Marisa were conquered; (Aristobulus') primary accomplishment was annexing and Judaizing the region of Iturea, located between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains
↑ Ben-Sasson, H.H. (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. p.226. ISBN978-0-674-39731-6. The expansion of Hasmonean Judea took place gradually. Under Jonathan, Judea annexed southern Samaria and began to expand in the direction of the coast plain... The main ethnic changes were the work of John Hyrcanus... it was in his days and those of his son Aristobulus that the annexation of Idumea, Samaria and Galilee and the consolidation of Jewish settlement in Trans-Jordan was completed. Alexander Jannai, continuing the work of his predecessors, expanded Judean rule to the entire coastal plain, from the Carmel to the Egyptian border... and to additional areas in Trans-Jordan, including some of the Greek cities there.
↑ Ben-Eliyahu, Eyal (30 April 2019). Identity and Territory: Jewish Perceptions of Space in Antiquity. Univ of California Press. p.13. ISBN978-0-520-29360-1. OCLC1103519319. From the beginning of the Second Temple period until the Muslim conquest—the land was part of imperial space. This was true from the early Persian period, as well as the time of Ptolemy and the Seleucids. The only exception was the Hasmonean Kingdom, with its sovereign Jewish rule—first over Judah and later, in Alexander Jannaeus's prime, extending to the coast, the north, and the eastern banks of the Jordan.
1 2 Schwartz, Seth (2014). The ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad. Cambridge University Press. pp.85–86. ISBN978-1-107-04127-1. OCLC863044259. Archived from the original on 3 April 2024. Retrieved 4 February 2024. The year 70 ce marked transformations in demography, politics, Jewish civic status, Palestinian and more general Jewish economic and social structures, Jewish religious life beyond the sacrificial cult, and even Roman politics and the topography of the city of Rome itself. [...] The Revolt's failure had, to begin with, a demographic impact on the Jews of Palestine; many died in battle and as a result of siege conditions, not only in Jerusalem. [...] As indicated above, the figures for captives are conceivably more reliable. If 97,000 is roughly correct as a total for the war, it would mean that a huge percentage of the population was removed from the country, or at the very least displaced from their homes.
↑ Werner Eck, "Sklaven und Freigelassene von Römern in Iudaea und den angrenzenden Provinzen", Novum Testamentum 55 (2013): 1–21
↑ Raviv, Dvir; Ben David, Chaim (2021). "Cassius Dio's figures for the demographic consequences of the Bar Kokhba War: Exaggeration or reliable account?". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 34 (2): 585–607. doi:10.1017/S1047759421000271. ISSN1047-7594. S2CID245512193. Scholars have long doubted the historical accuracy of Cassius Dio's account of the consequences of the Bar Kokhba War (Roman History 69.14). According to this text, considered the most reliable literary source for the Second Jewish Revolt, the war encompassed all of Judea: the Romans destroyed 985 villages and 50 fortresses, and killed 580,000 rebels. This article reassesses Cassius Dio's figures by drawing on new evidence from excavations and surveys in Judea, Transjordan, and the Galilee. Three research methods are combined: an ethno-archaeological comparison with the settlement picture in the Ottoman Period, comparison with similar settlement studies in the Galilee, and an evaluation of settled sites from the Middle Roman Period (70–136 CE). The study demonstrates the potential contribution of the archaeological record to this issue and supports the view of Cassius Dio's demographic data as a reliable account, which he based on contemporaneous documentation.
1 2 Mor, Menahem (18 April 2016). The Second Jewish Revolt. BRILL. pp.483–484. doi:10.1163/9789004314634. ISBN978-90-04-31463-4. Land confiscation in Judaea was part of the suppression of the revolt policy of the Romans and punishment for the rebels. But the very claim that the sikarikon laws were annulled for settlement purposes seems to indicate that Jews continued to reside in Judaea even after the Second Revolt. There is no doubt that this area suffered the severest damage from the suppression of the revolt. Settlements in Judaea, such as Herodion and Bethar, had already been destroyed during the course of the revolt, and Jews were expelled from the districts of Gophna, Herodion, and Aqraba. However, it should not be claimed that the region of Judaea was completely destroyed. Jews continued to live in areas such as Lod (Lydda), south of the Hebron Mountain, and the coastal regions. In other areas of the Land of Israel that did not have any direct connection with the Second Revolt, no settlement changes can be identified as resulting from it.
↑ Oppenheimer, A'haron and Oppenheimer, Nili. Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society. Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 2.
↑ H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, ISBN978-0-674-39731-6, page 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."
↑ Ariel Lewin. The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications, 2005 p. 33. "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name – one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus – Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land." ISBN978-0-89236-800-6
↑ Cohn-Sherbok, Dan (1996). Atlas of Jewish History. Routledge. p.58. ISBN978-0-415-08800-8.
↑ Lehmann, Clayton Miles (18 January 2007). "Palestine". Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
↑ Judaism in late antiquity, Jacob Neusner, Bertold Spuler, Hady R Idris, Brill, 2001, p. 155
↑ הר, משה דוד (2022). "היהודים בארץ-ישראל בימי האימפריה הרומית הנוצרית" [The Jews in the Land of Israel in the Days of the Christian Roman Empire]. ארץ-ישראל בשלהי העת העתיקה: מבואות ומחקרים[Eretz Israel in Late Antiquity: Introductions and Studies] (in Hebrew). Vol.1. ירושלים: יד יצחק בן-צבי. pp.210–212. ISBN978-965-217-444-4.
1 2 Ehrlich, Michael (2022). The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634–1800. Arc Humanities Press. pp.3–4. ISBN978-1-64189-222-3. OCLC1302180905. The Jewish community strove to recover from the catastrophic results of the Bar Kokhva revolt (132–135 CE). Although some of these attempts were relatively successful, the Jews never fully recovered. During the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, many Jews emigrated to thriving centres in the diaspora, especially Iraq, whereas some converted to Christianity and others continued to live in the Holy Land, especially in Galilee and the coastal plain. During the Byzantine period, the three provinces of Palestine included more than thirty cities, namely, settlements with a bishop see. After the Muslim conquest in the 630s, most of these cities declined and eventually disappeared. As a result, in many cases the local ecclesiastical administration weakened, while in others it simply ceased to exist. Consequently, many local Christians converted to Islam. Thus, almost twelve centuries later, when the army led by Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in the Holy Land, most of the local population was Muslim.
↑ David Goodblatt (2006). "The Political and Social History of the Jewish Community in the Land of Israel, c. 235–638". In Steven Katz (ed.). The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol.IV. Cambridge University Press. pp.404–430. ISBN978-0-521-77248-8. Few would disagree that, in the century and a half before our period begins, the Jewish population of Judah () suffered a serious blow from which it never recovered. The destruction of the Jewish metropolis of Jerusalem and its environs and the eventual refounding of the city... had lasting repercussions. [...] However, in other parts of Palestine the Jewish population remained strong [...] What does seem clear is a different kind of change. Immigration of Christians and the conversion of pagans, Samaritans and Jews eventually produced a Christian majority
↑ Bar, Doron (2003). "The Christianisation of Rural Palestine during Late Antiquity". The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 54 (3): 401–421. doi:10.1017/s0022046903007309. ISSN0022-0469. The dominant view of the history of Palestine during the Byzantine period links the early phases of the consecration of the land during the fourth century and the substantial external financial investment that accompanied the building of churches on holy sites on the one hand with the Christianisation of the population on the other. Churches were erected primarily at the holy sites, 12 while at the same time Palestine's position and unique status as the Christian 'Holy Land' became more firmly rooted. All this, coupled with immigration and conversion, allegedly meant that the Christianisation of Palestine took place much more rapidly than that of other areas of the Roman empire, brought in its wake the annihilation of the pagan cults and meant that by the middle of the fifth century there was a clear Christian majority.
↑ "Roman Palestine". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 30 October 2023. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
1 2 לוי-רובין, מילכה; Levy-Rubin, Milka (2006). "The Influence of the Muslim Conquest on the Settlement Pattern of Palestine during the Early Muslim Period / הכיבוש כמעצב מפת היישוב של ארץ-ישראל בתקופה המוסלמית הקדומה". Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv / קתדרה: לתולדות ארץ ישראל ויישובה (121): 53–78. ISSN0334-4657. JSTOR23407269.
1 2 Ellenblum, Ronnie (2010). Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-511-58534-0. OCLC958547332. From the data given above it can be concluded that the Muslim population of Central Samaria, during the early Muslim period, was not an autochthonous population which had converted to Christianity. They arrived there either by way of migration or as a result of a process of sedentarization of the nomads who had filled the vacuum created by the departing Samaritans at the end of the Byzantine period [...] To sum up: in the only rural region in Palestine in which, according to all the written and archeological sources, the process of Islamization was completed already in the twelfth century, there occurred events consistent with the model propounded by Levtzion and Vryonis: the region was abandoned by its original sedentary population and the vacuum was apparently filled by nomads who, at a later stage, gradually became sedentarized
↑ Gil, Moshe (1997). A History of Palestine, 634–1099. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-59984-9.
1 2 Joel Rappel, History of Eretz Israel from Prehistory up to 1882 (1980), vol. 2, p. 531. "In 1662 Sabbathai Sevi arrived to Jerusalem. It was the time when the Jewish settlements of Galilee were destroyed by the Druze: Tiberias was completely desolate and only a few of former Safed residents had returned...."
↑ D. Tamar, "On the Jews of Safed in the Days of the Ottoman Conquest" Cathedra 11 (1979), cited Dan Ben Amos, Dov Noy (eds.),Folktales of the Jews, V. 3 (Tales from Arab Lands), Jewish Publication Society 2011 p.61, n.3: Tamar . .challenges David's conclusion concerning the severity of the riots against the Jews, arguing that the support of the Egyptian Jews saved the community of Safed from destruction'.
↑ The Solomon Goldman lectures. Spertus College of Judaica Press. 1999. p.56. ISBN978-0-935982-57-2. The Turks' conquest of the city in 1517, was marked by a violent pogrom of murder, rape, and plunder of Jewish homes. The surviving Jews fled to the "land of Beirut", not to return until 1533.
↑ Toby Green (2007). Inquisition; The Reign of Fear. Macmillan Press ISBN978-1-4050-8873-2 pp. xv–xix.
↑ Eisen, Yosef (2004). Miraculous journey: a complete history of the Jewish people from creation to the present. Targum Press. p.700. ISBN978-1-56871-323-6.
↑ Morgenstern, Arie (2006). Hastening redemption: Messianism and the resettlement of the land of Israel. Oxford University Press. p.304. ISBN978-0-19-530578-4.
↑ Barnai, Jacob (1992). The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: Under the Patronage of the Istanbul committee of Officials for Palestine. University Alabama Press. p.320. ISBN978-0-8173-0572-7.
↑ Stein 2003, p.88. "As with the First Aliyah, most Second Aliyah migrants were non-Zionist orthodox Jews..."
↑ Moris, Beni (2001). Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881 – 2001 (1. Vintage Booksed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. ISBN9780679744757. Many of these newcomers possessed a mixture of socialist and nationalist values, and they eventually succeeded in setting up a separate Jewish economy, based wholly on Jewish labor.
↑ Moris, Beni (2001). Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881 – 2001 (1. Vintage Booksed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. ISBN9780679744757. Another major cause of antagonism was the labor controversy. The hard core of Second Aliyah socialists, who were to become the Yishuv's leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, believed that the settler economy must not depend on or exploit Arab labor... But, in reality, rather than "meshing," the nationalist ethos had simply overpowered and driven out the socialist ethos... There were other reasons for the "conquest of labor." The socialists of the Second Aliyah used the term to denote three things: overcoming the Jews' traditional remove from agricultural labor and helping them transform into the "new Jews"; struggling against employers for better conditions; and replacing Arabs with Jews in manual jobs.
↑ Schechtman, Joseph B. (2007). "Jewish Legion". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol.11. Macmillan Reference. p.304. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
↑ "Mandate for Palestine," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 11, p. 862, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1972
↑ Scharfstein 1996, p.269. "During the First and Second Aliyot, there were many Arab attacks against Jewish settlements ... In 1920, Hashomer was disbanded and Haganah ("The Defense") was established."
↑ Levenberg, Haim (1993). Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945–1948. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-3439-5, pp. 74–76
↑ Khalidi, Walid (1987). From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN978-0-88728-155-6
↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, Village Statistics, 1945.
Smith, Paul J. (2007). The Terrorism Ahead: Confronting Transnational Violence in the Twenty-First. M. E. Sharpe. p.27.
Louis, William Roger (1986). The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism. Oxford University Press. p.430.
Avneri, Aryeh L. (1984). The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-Settlement and the Arabs, 1878–1948. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-87855-964-0. Retrieved 2 May 2009, p. 224.
Stein, Kenneth W. (1987) [Original in 1984]. The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-4178-5. pp. 3–4, 247
Imseis 2021, pp.13–14: "As to territorial boundaries, under the plan the Jewish State was allotted approximately 57 percent of the total area of Palestine even though the Jewish population comprised only 33 percent of the country. In addition, according to British records relied upon by the ad hoc committee, the Jewish population possessed registered ownership of only 5.6 percent of Palestine, and was eclipsed by the Arabs in land ownership in every one of Palestine's 16 sub-districts. Moreover, the quality of the land granted to the proposed Jewish state was highly skewed in its favour. UNSCOP reported that under its majority plan "[t]he Jews will have the more economically developed part of the country embracing practically the whole of the citrus-producing area"—Palestine's staple export crop—even though approximately half of the citrus-bearing land was owned by the Arabs. In addition, according to updated British records submitted to the ad hoc committee's two sub-committees, "of the irrigated, cultivable areas" of the country, 84 per cent would be in the Jewish State and 16 per cent would be in the Arab State"."
Morris 2008, p.75: "The night of 29–30 November passed in the Yishuv's settlements in noisy public rejoicing. Most had sat glued to their radio sets broadcasting live from Flushing Meadow. A collective cry of joy went up when the two-thirds mark was achieved: a state had been sanctioned by the international community."
1 2 Morris 2008, p.396: "The immediate trigger of the 1948 War was the November 1947 UN partition resolution. The Zionist movement, except for its fringes, accepted the proposal."
↑ Imseis 2021, pp.14–15: 'Although the Zionists had coveted the whole of Palestine, the Jewish Agency leadership pragmatically, if grudgingly, accepted Resolution 181(II). Although they were of the view that the Jewish national home promised in the Mandate was equivalent to a Jewish state, they well understood that such a claim could not be maintained under prevailing international law..Based on its own terms, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the partition plan privileged European interests over those of Palestine's indigenous people and, as such, was an embodiment of the Eurocentricity of the international system that was allegedly a thing of the past. For this reason, the Arabs took a more principled position in line with prevailing international law, rejecting partition outright . .This rejection has disingenuously been presented in some of the literature as indicative of political intransigence,69 and even hostility towards the Jews as Jews'
↑ Morris 2008, p. 66: at 1946 "The League demanded independence for Palestine as a "unitary" state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews.", p. 67: at 1947 "The League's Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16–19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called "aggression," "without mercy." The League promised them, in line with Bludan, assistance "in manpower, money and equipment" should the United Nations endorse partition.", p. 72: at December 1947 "The League vowed, in very general language, "to try to stymie the partition plan and prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.""
↑ Morris 2008, p.187: "A week before the armies marched, Azzam told Kirkbride: "It does not matter how many [Jews] there are. We will sweep them into the sea." ... Ahmed Shukeiry, one of Haj Amin al-Husseini's aides (and, later, the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization), simply described the aim as "the elimination of the Jewish state." ... al-Quwwatli told his people: "Our army has entered ... we shall win and we shall eradicate Zionism""
↑ Anita Shapira (1992). Land and Power. Stanford University Press. pp.416, 419.
↑ Segev, Tom. 1949: The First Israelis. "The First Million". Trans. Arlen N. Weinstein. New York: The Free Press, 1986. Print. pp. 105–107
↑ Shulewitz, Malka Hillel (2001). The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands. Continuum. ISBN978-0-8264-4764-7.
↑ Laskier, Michael "Egyptian Jewry under the Nasser Regime, 1956–70" pp. 573–619 from Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 31, Issue #3, July 1995 p. 579.
↑ "Population, by Religion". Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. 2016. Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
↑ Bard, Mitchell (2003). The Founding of the State of Israel. Greenhaven Press. p.15.
↑ Hakohen, Devorah (2003). Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After. Syracuse University Press. ISBN978-0-8156-2969-6.; for ma'abarot population, see p. 269.
↑ Clive Jones, Emma Murphy, Israel: Challenges to Identity, Democracy, and the State,Routledge 2002 p. 37: "Housing units earmarked for the Oriental Jews were often reallocated to European Jewish immigrants; Consigning Oriental Jews to the privations of ma'aborot (transit camps) for longer periods."
↑ Isaac Alteras (1993). Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953–1960. University Press of Florida. pp.192–. ISBN978-0-8130-1205-6. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2018. the removal of the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran at the entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba. The blockade closed Israel's sea lane to East Africa and the Far East, hindering the development of Israel's southern port of Eilat and its hinterland, the Nege. Another important objective of the Israeli war plan was the elimination of the terrorist bases in the Gaza Strip, from which daily fedayeen incursions into Israel made life unbearable for its southern population. And last but not least, the concentration of the Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, armed with the newly acquired weapons from the Soviet bloc, prepared for an attack on Israel. Here, Ben-Gurion believed, was a time bomb that had to be defused before it was too late. Reaching the Suez Canal did not figure at all in Israel's war objectives.
↑ Dominic Joseph Caraccilo (2011). Beyond Guns and Steel: A War Termination Strategy. ABC-CLIO. pp.113–. ISBN978-0-313-39149-1. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2018. The escalation continued with the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956. On October 14, Nasser made clear his intent:"I am not solely fighting against Israel itself. My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Israel's intrigue, which has its roots abroad. Our hatred is very strong. There is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations." Less than two weeks later, on October 25, Egypt signed a tripartite agreement with Syria and Jordan placing Nasser in command of all three armies. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, combined with the increased fedayeen attacks and the bellicosity of recent Arab statements, prompted Israel, with the backing of Britain and France, to attack Egypt on October 29, 1956.
↑ Alan Dowty (2005). Israel/Palestine. Polity. pp.102–. ISBN978-0-7456-3202-5. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2018. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who declared in one speech that "Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of Pharaoh and the sons of Islam and they will cleanse the land of Palestine....There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death."...The level of violence against Israelis, soldiers and civilians alike, seemed to be rising inexorably.
↑ Benny Morris (25 May 2011). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1998. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp.300, 301. ISBN978-0-307-78805-4. [p. 300] In exchange (for Israeli withdrawal) the United states had indirectly promised to guarantee Israel's right of passage through the straits (to the Red sea) and its right to self defense if the Egyptian closed them....(p 301) The 1956 war resulted in a significant reduction of...Israeli border tension. Egypt refrained from reactivating the Fedaeen, and...Egypt and Jordan made great effort to curb infiltration
↑ Shlomo Shpiro (2006). "No place to hide: Intelligence and civil liberties in Israel". Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 19 (44): 629–648. doi:10.1080/09557570601003361. S2CID144734253.
↑ Samir A. Mutawi (2002). Jordan in the 1967 War. Cambridge University Press. p.93. ISBN978-0-521-52858-0. Archived from the original on 31 October 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2021. Although Eshkol denounced the Egyptians, his response to this development was a model of moderation. His speech on 21 May demanded that Nasser withdraw his forces from Sinai but made no mention of the removal of UNEF from the Straits nor of what Israel would do if they were closed to Israeli shipping. The next day Nasser announced to an astonished world that henceforth the Straits were, indeed, closed to all Israeli ships
↑ Bennet, James (13 March 2005). "The Interregnum". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 16 April 2009. Retrieved 11 February 2010.
↑ Sela-Shayovitz, R. (2007). Suicide bombers in Israel: Their motivations, characteristics, and prior activity in terrorist organizations. International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV), 1(2), 163. "The period of the second Intifada significantly differs from other historical periods in Israeli history, because it has been characterized by intensive and numerous suicide attacks that have made civilian life into a battlefront."
↑ Ferry M.; Meghraoui M.; Karaki A.A.; Al-Taj M.; Amoush H.; Al-Dhaisat S.; Barjous M. (2008). "A 48-kyr-long slip rate history for the Jordan Valley segment of the Dead Sea Fault". Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 260 (3–4): 394–406. Bibcode:2007E&PSL.260..394F. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2007.05.049.
↑ American Friends of the Tel Aviv University, Earthquake Experts at Tel Aviv University Turn to History for Guidance (4 October 2007). Quote: The major ones were recorded along the Jordan Valley in the years 31 B.C.E., 363 C.E., 749 C.E., and 1033 C.E. "So roughly, we are talking about an interval of every 400 years. If we follow the patterns of nature, a major quake should be expected any time because almost a whole millennium has passed since the last strong earthquake of 1033." (Tel Aviv University Associate Professor Dr. Shmuel (Shmulik) Marco). Archived 11 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine
1 2 Zafrir Renat, Israel Is Due, and Ill Prepared, for Major Earthquake, Haaretz, 15 January 2010. "On average, a destructive earthquake takes place in Israel once every 80 years, causing serious casualties and damage." Archived 15 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Watzman, Haim (8 February 1997). "Left for dead". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 14 November 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
↑ "WMO Region 6: Highest Temperature". World Meteorological Organization's World Weather & Climate Extremes Archive. Arizona State University. Archived from the original on 13 September 2021. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
↑ In 1996, direct elections for the prime minister were inaugurated, but the system was declared unsatisfactory and the old one reinstated. See "Israel's election process explained". BBC News. 23 January 2003. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
↑ Jewish settlers can vote in Israeli elections, though West Bank is officially not Israel, Fox News, February 2015: "When Israelis go to the polls next month, tens of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank will also be casting votes, even though they do not live on what is sovereign Israeli territory. This exception in a country that doesn't allow absentee voting for citizens living abroad is a telling reflection of Israel's somewhat ambiguous and highly contentious claim to the territory, which has been under military occupation for almost a half century."
↑ Charbit, Denis (2014). "Israel's Self-Restrained Secularism from the 1947 Status Quo Letter to the Present". In Berlinerblau, Jacques; Fainberg, Sarah; Nou, Aurora (eds.). Secularism on the Edge: Rethinking Church-State Relations in the United States, France, and Israel. Palgrave Macmillan. pp.167–169. ISBN978-1-137-38115-6. The compromise, therefore, was to choose constructive ambiguity: as surprising as it may seem, there is no law that declares Judaism the official religion of Israel. However, there is no other law that declares Israel's neutrality toward all confessions. Judaism is not recognized as the official religion of the state, and even though the Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy receive their salaries from the state, this fact does not make Israel a neutral state. This apparent pluralism cannot dissimulate the fact that Israel displays a clear and undoubtedly hierarchical pluralism in religious matters.... It is important to note that from a multicultural point of view, this self-restrained secularism allows Muslim law to be practiced in Israel for personal matters of the Muslim community. As surprising as it seems, if not paradoxical for a state in war, Israel is the only Western democratic country in which Sharia enjoys such an official status.
↑ Sharot, Stephen (2007). "Judaism in Israel: Public Religion, Neo-Traditionalism, Messianism, and Ethno-Religious Conflict". In Beckford, James A.; Demerath, Jay (eds.). The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Sage Publications. pp.671–672. ISBN978-1-4129-1195-5. It is true that Jewish Israelis, and secular Israelis in particular, conceive of religion as shaped by a state-sponsored religious establishment. There is no formal state religion in Israel, but the state gives its official recognition and financial support to particular religious communities, Jewish, Islamic and Christian, whose religious authorities and courts are empowered to deal with matters of personal status and family law, such as marriage, divorce, and alimony, that are binding on all members of the communities.
↑ Jacoby, Tami Amanda (2005). Women in Zones of Conflict: Power and Resistance in Israel. McGill-Queen's University Press. pp.53–54. ISBN978-0-7735-2993-9. Although there is no official religion in Israel, there is also no clear separation between religion and state. In Israeli public life, tensions frequently arise among different streams of Judaism: Ultra-Orthodox, National-Religious, Mesorati (Conservative), Reconstructionist Progressive (Reform), and varying combinations of traditionalism and non-observance. Despite this variety in religious observances in society, Orthodox Judaism prevails institutionally over the other streams. This boundary is an historical consequence of the unique evolution of the relationship between Israel nationalism and state building.... Since the founding period, in order to defuse religious tensions, the State of Israel has adopted what is known as the 'status quo,' an unwritten agreement stipulating that no further changes would be made in the status of religion, and that conflict between the observant and non-observant sectors would be handled circumstantially. The 'status quo' has since pertained to the legal status of both religious and secular Jews in Israel. This situation was designed to appease the religious sector, and has been upheld indefinitely through the disproportionate power of religious political parties in all subsequent coalition governments.... On one hand, the Declaration of Independence adopted in 1948 explicitly guarantees freedom of religion. On the other, it simultaneously prevents the separation of religion and state in Israel.
↑ Quarterly Economic and Social MonitorArchived 9 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine , Volume 26, October 2011, p. 57: "When Israel bid in March 2010 for membership in the 'Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development'... some members questioned the accuracy of Israeli statistics, as the Israeli figures (relating to gross domestic product, spending and number of the population) cover geographical areas that the Organization does not recognize as part of the Israeli territory. These areas include East Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights."
↑ See for example: * Hajjar, Lisa (2005). Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. University of California Press. p.96. ISBN978-0-520-24194-7. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the longest military occupation in modern times. * Anderson, Perry (July–August 2001). "Editorial: Scurrying Towards Bethlehem". New Left Review. 10. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 9 January 2015. longest official military occupation of modern history—currently entering its thirty-fifth year * Makdisi, Saree (2010). Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN978-0-393-33844-7. longest-lasting military occupation of the modern age * Kretzmer, David (Spring 2012). "The law of belligerent occupation in the Supreme Court of Israel"(PDF). International Review of the Red Cross. 94 (885): 207–236. doi:10.1017/S1816383112000446. S2CID32105258. This is probably the longest occupation in modern international relations, and it holds a central place in all literature on the law of belligerent occupation since the early 1970s * Alexandrowicz, Ra'anan (24 January 2012). "The Justice of Occupation". The New York Times (opinion). Israel is the only modern state that has held territories under military occupation for over four decades * Weill, Sharon (2014). The Role of National Courts in Applying International Humanitarian Law. Oxford University Press. p.22. ISBN978-0-19-968542-4. Although the basic philosophy behind the law of military occupation is that it is a temporary situation modem occupations have well demonstrated that rien ne dure comme le provisoire A significant number of post-1945 occupations have lasted more than two decades such as the occupations of Namibia by South Africa and of East Timor by Indonesia as well as the ongoing occupations of Northern Cyprus by Turkey and of Western Sahara by Morocco. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, which is the longest in all occupation's history has already entered its fifth decade. * Azarova, Valentina. 2017, Israel's Unlawfully Prolonged Occupation: Consequences under an Integrated Legal Framework, European Council on Foreign Affairs Policy Brief: "June 2017 marks 50 years of Israel's belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory, making it the longest occupation in modern history."
↑ Yiftachel, O. (1999). "'Ethnocracy': The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine"(PDF). Constellations. 6 (3): 364–390. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.00151. Israel's political structure and settlement activity have [...] in effect undermined the existence of universal suffrage (as Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories can vote to the parliament that governs them, but their Palestinian neighbours cannot).[permanent dead link]
↑ Ghanem, A. A.; Rouhana, N.; Yiftachel, O. (1998). "Questioning" ethnic democracy": A response to Sammy Smooha". Israel Studies. 3 (2): 253–267. doi:10.2979/ISR.1998.3.2.253. JSTOR30245721. S2CID3524173. settlers remain fully enfranchised Israeli citizens while their Palestinian neighbors have no voting rights and no impact on Israeli policies
↑ Jerome Slater (1 October 2020). Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917–2020. Oxford University Press. p.15. ISBN978-0-19-045909-3. It is now clear that Israel is a true democracy in its broadest sense only for its Jewish citizens. The Arab-Israeli (or, as some prefer, the Palestinian-Israeli) peoples, roughly 20 percent of the total population of Israel its pre-1967 boundaries, are citizens and have voting rights, but they face political, economic, and social discrimination. And, of course, Israeli democracy is inapplicable to the nearly 4 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, conquered by Israel in June 1967, who are occupied, repressed, and in many ways, directly and indirectly, effectively ruled by Israel.
↑ 'Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; arbitrary detention, often extraterritorial detention of Palestinians from the occupied territories in Israel; restrictions on Palestinians residing in Jerusalem including arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, and home; substantial interference with the freedom of association; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; harassment of nongovernmental organizations; significant restrictions on freedom of movement within the country; violence against asylum seekers and irregular migrants; violence or threats of violence against national, racial, or ethnic minority groups; and labor rights abuses against foreign workers and Palestinians from the West Bank.' Israel 2021 Human Rights Report,United States Department of State 17 April 2021.
↑ 'With respect to Israeli security forces in the West Bank: credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings due to unnecessary or disproportionate use of force by Israeli officials; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by Israeli officials; arbitrary arrest or detention; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; restrictions on free expression and media, including violence, threats of violence, unjustified arrests and prosecutions against journalists, and censorship; restrictions on internet freedom; restrictions on Palestinians residing in Jerusalem, including arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, and home; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including harassment of nongovernmental organizations; and restrictions on freedom of movement and residence.' 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza,United States Department of State 12 April 2022
↑ Barak-Erez, Daphne (1 July 2006). "Israel: The security barrier—between international law, constitutional law, and domestic judicial review". International Journal of Constitutional Law. 4 (3): 548. doi:10.1093/icon/mol021. The real controversy hovering over all the litigation on the security barrier concerns the fate of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Since 1967, Israel has allowed and even encouraged its citizens to live in the new settlements established in the territories, motivated by religious and national sentiments attached to the history of the Jewish nation in the land of Israel. This policy has also been justified in terms of security interests, taking into consideration the dangerous geographic circumstances of Israel before 1967 (where Israeli areas on the Mediterranean coast were potentially threatened by Jordanian control of the West Bank ridge). The international community, for its part, has viewed this policy as patently illegal, based on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibit moving populations to or from territories under occupation.
↑ "Massive Israel protests hit universities" (Egyptian Mail, 16 March 2010) "According to most Egyptians, almost 31 years after a peace treaty was signed between Egypt and Israel, having normal ties between the two countries is still a potent accusation and Israel is largely considered to be an enemy country"
↑ Pfeffer, Anshel (28 April 2015). "The Downsides of Israel's Missions of Mercy Abroad". Haaretz. Retrieved 22 November 2015. And even when no Israelis are involved, few countries are as fast as Israel in mobilizing entire delegations to rush to the other side of the world. It has been proved time and again in recent years, after the earthquake in Haiti, the typhoon in the Philippines and the quake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan. For a country of Israel's size and resources, without conveniently located aircraft carriers and overseas bases, it is quite an impressive achievement.
↑ "Background Information". 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). United Nations. 27 May 2005. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
↑ Ziv, Guy, "To Disclose or Not to Disclose: The Impact of Nuclear Ambiguity on Israeli Security", Israel Studies Forum, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Winter 2007): 76–94
↑ "Popeye Turbo". Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
↑ "Glossary". Israel Homeowner. Archived from the original on 17 May 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
↑ Sharp, Jeremy M. (22 December 2016). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel(PDF) (Report). Congressional Research Service. p.36. Archived from the original(PDF) on 31 July 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
↑ "Microsoft Israel R&D center: Leadership". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 19 March 2012. Avi returned to Israel in 1991, and established the first Microsoft R&D Center outside the US...
↑ Shteinbuk, Eduard (22 July 2011). "R&D and Innovation as a Growth Engine"(PDF). National Research University – Higher School of Economics. Archived from the original(PDF) on 8 August 2019. Retrieved 11 May 2013.
↑ Berner, Joachim (January 2008). "Solar, what else?!"(PDF). Sun & Wind Energy. Israel Special. p.88. Archived from the original(PDF) on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
↑ Adriana Kemp, "Labour migration and racialisation: labour market mechanisms and labour migration control policies in Israel", Social Identities 10:2, 267–292, 2004
↑ DellaPergola, Sergio (2000). "Still Moving: Recent Jewish Migration in Comparative Perspective". In Daniel J. Elazar; Morton Weinfeld (eds.). The Global Context of Migration to Israel. Transaction Publishers. pp.13–60. ISBN978-1-56000-428-8.
↑ Herman, Pini (1 September 1983). "The Myth of the Israeli Expatriate". Moment Magazine. Vol.8, no.8. pp.62–63.
↑ Gould, Eric D.; Moav, Omer (2007). "Israel's Brain Drain". Israel Economic Review. 5 (1): 1–22. SSRN2180400.
↑ Citizenship, Identity and Political Participation: Measuring the Attitudes of the Arab Citizens in Israel (Report). Konrad Adenauer Foundation. December 2017. pp.22, 25, 28. (p.28) "The positions of the participants in the focus groups reflect the strength of Palestinian-Arab identity among Arab citizens and the fact that they do not see a contradiction between Palestinian-Arab national identity and Israeli civic identity. The designation "Israeli-Arab" aroused great opposition in the focus groups, as did Israel's Independence Day. ... The collective position presented in the focus group discussions finds expression in the public sphere and emphasizes the Palestinian national identity. Conversely, the responses of the survey participants reveal individual attitudes that assign a broader (albeit secondary, identity) dimension to the component of Israeli civic identity"; quote (p.25): The designation "Arab citizens of Israel" was acceptable to them on the basis of the understanding that it is impossible to live without citizenship, and as long as Israeli citizenship does not harm the national consciousness. Conversely, the participants spoke out against the designation "Arab-Israeli"...
↑ Roberts 1990, p.60 Although East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been brought directly under Israeli law, by acts that amount to annexation, both of these areas continue to be viewed by the international community as occupied, and their status as regards the applicability of international rules is in most respects identical to that of the West Bank and Gaza.
↑ Spolsky, Bernard (1999). Round Table on Language and Linguistics. Georgetown University Press. pp.169–170. ISBN978-0-87840-132-1. In 1948, the newly independent state of Israel took over the old British regulations that had set English, Arabic, and Hebrew as official languages for Mandatory Palestine but, as mentioned, dropped English from the list. In spite of this, official language use has maintained a de facto role for English, after Hebrew but before Arabic.
↑ Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, Hava (2004). "Part I: Language and Discourse". In Diskin Ravid, Dorit; Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, Hava (eds.). Perspectives on Language and Development: Essays in Honor of Ruth A. Berman. Kluwer Academic Publishers. p.90. ISBN978-1-4020-7911-5. English is not considered official but it plays a dominant role in the educational and public life of Israeli society. ... It is the language most widely used in commerce, business, formal papers, academia, and public interactions, public signs, road directions, names of buildings, etc.
↑ Shohamy, Elana (2006). Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches. Routledge. pp.72–73. ISBN978-0-415-32864-7. While English is not declared anywhere as an official language, the reality is that it has a very high and unique status in Israel. It is the main language of the academy, commerce, business, and the public space.
↑ Levine, Lee I. (1999). Jerusalem: its sanctity and centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Continuum International Publishing Group. p.516. ISBN978-0-8264-1024-5.
↑ Education at a Glance: Israel (Report). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 15 September 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
↑ "Israel: IT Workforce". Information Technology Landscape in Nations Around the World. Archived from the original on 13 September 2006. Retrieved 14 August 2007.
↑ "The Israeli Matriculation Certificate". United States-Israel Educational Foundation via the University of Szeged University Library. January 1996. Archived from the original on 15 September 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2007.
↑ Ewbank, Alison J.; Papageorgiou, Fouli T. (1997). Whose Master's Voice?: The Development of Popular Music in Thirteen Cultures. Greenwood Press. p.117. ISBN978-0-313-27772-6.
Faust, Avraham (28 March 2015). "The Exodus Group". In Levy, Thomas E.; Schneider, Thomas; Propp, William H. C. (eds.). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. ISBN978-3-319-04768-3.
Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (6 March 2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts. Simon and Schuster. ISBN978-0-7432-2338-6.
Redmount, Carol A. (7 June 2001). "The Literary and Historical Character of the Exodus Narrative". In Coogan, Michael D. (ed.). The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-988148-2.
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$541.343 billion [18] (47th)
37.9 [19] 
