Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, its southern tip reaches the Red Sea, and to the east is Earth's lowest point near the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is the government seat and proclaimed capital,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." while Tel Aviv is Israel's largest urban area and economic centre.
The Land of Israel, also called Palestine or the Holy Land, was home to the ancient Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and Hasmonean Judea. Located near continental crossroads, its demographics shifted under various empires. 19th-century Jewish nationalism, alongside European antisemitism, fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with an overwhelming Arab majority. The movement gained British support with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. After World War I, Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine. British rule and Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust intensified Arab-Jewish tensions with Arab opposition to Zionism driven largely by concerns of displacement and dispossession. Also quoted, among many, by Mark M. Ayyash (2019). Hermeneutics of Violence: A Four-Dimensional Conception. University of Toronto Press, p. 195 , . Accessed 22 March 2024. The 1947 UN Partition Plan proposed separate Arab and Jewish states. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan while the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it, arguing it violated the principle of self-determination and constituted Western colonial interference. Civil war followed, and Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, shortly before the end of the mandate. The conflict subsequently escalated with the intervention of Arab states.
The 1949 armistice left Israel controlling more territory than had been allocated to it under the UN partition plan. No independent Palestinian Arab state was established, leaving Gaza under Egyptian control and the West Bank ruled by Jordan. Most Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the Nakba, while Israeli independence prompted antisemitism in the Arab world and Jewish exodus therefrom, mainly to Israel. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and Egyptian Sinai, and annexed East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Peace treaties were signed with Egypt in 1979 (the Sinai being returned in 1982) and Jordan in 1994. The 1993 Oslo Accords introduced limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza, while the 2020 Abraham Accords normalised ties with more Arab states, but the Israeli–Palestinian conflict persists. Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories has drawn international criticism, with most Middle East experts arguing that Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank in relation to Israeli settlers constitutes a system of apartheid. After the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, Israel began committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.Multiple sources: Israel and its allies, including the United States, deny that Israel's actions constitute genocide.
The Basic Laws of Israel establish the Knesset as a proportionally elected parliament. It shapes the government, led by the prime minister, and elects the largely ceremonial president. Israel has one of the Middle East's largest economies, one of Asia's highest living standards, and globally ranks 25th in nominal GDP and 14th in nominal GDP per capita. One of the world's most technologically advanced countries, Israel allocates a larger share of its economy to research and development than any other state and is believed to possess nuclear weapons. The only country with a revived official language, Hebrew, the culture of Israel combines Jewish traditions with Arab influences.
Etymology
The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively. The name Israel (Hebrew: ; Septuagint , , "El (God) persists/rules") refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he successfully wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. The earliest known archaeological artefact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late-13th century BCE).. "The Merneptah Stele ... is arguably the oldest evidence outside the Bible for the existence of Israel as early as the 13th century BCE."K.L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion, A&C Black, 2012, rev.ed. pp. 137ff.Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources, Brill, 2000 pp. 275–276
Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the entire region was known as Palestine. Upon establishment in 1948, the country formally adopted the name State of Israel (, ; , , ) after other proposed names including Land of Israel (), Ever (from ancestor Eber), Zion, and Judea, were considered but rejected. The name Israel was suggested by David Ben-Gurion and passed by a vote of 6–3. In the early weeks after establishment, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of the state.
History
Prehistory
The Ubeidiya prehistoric site in northern Israel shows the presence of archaic humans around 1.5 million years ago. The second-oldest evidence of anatomically modern humans outside Africa is a 200,000-year-old fossil from Misliya Cave on Mount Carmel. The Natufian culture ( 10,000 BCE) may be linked to the Proto-Afroasiatic language and is notable for adopting sedentism before the advent of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution.
Bronze and Iron Ages
Early references to "Canaan" and "Canaanites" appear in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian texts ( 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as politically independent city-states. During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), large parts of Canaan formed vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt. As a result of the Late Bronze Age collapse, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control over the region collapsed.Dever, William G. Beyond the Texts, Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2017, pp. 89–93S. Richard, "Archaeological sources for the history of Palestine: The Early Bronze Age: The rise and collapse of urbanism", The Biblical Archaeologist (1987) Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area. Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the settlement of the central highlands and the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centered on Yahweh.Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5 They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew, known as Biblical Hebrew.Steiner, Richard C. (1997), "Ancient Hebrew", in Hetzron, Robert (ed.), The Semitic Languages, Routledge, pp. 145–173, Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain.
Most modern scholars agree that the Exodus narrative in the Torah and Old Testament did not take place as depicted; however, some elements of these traditions do have historical roots.: "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.": "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." There is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. While it is unclear if there was a United Kingdom of Israel, historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by 850 BCE.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..."The Pitcher Is Broken: Memorial Essays for Gosta W. Ahlstrom, Steven W. Holloway, Lowell K. Handy, Continuum, 1 May 1995 Quote: "For Israel, the description of the battle of Qarqar in the Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III (mid-ninth century) and for Judah, a Tiglath-pileser III text mentioning (Jeho-) Ahaz of Judah (IIR67 = K. 3751), dated 734–733, are the earliest published to date." The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two and soon developed into a regional power, with a capital at Samaria;: 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. during the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the plain of Sharon and large parts of Transjordan. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered around 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah, under Davidic rule with its capital in Jerusalem, later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. It is estimated that the region's population was around 400,000 in the Iron Age II.Broshi, M., & Finkelstein, I. (1992). "The Population of Palestine in Iron Age II" . Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 287(1), 47–60. In 587/6 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple,: "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." dissolved the kingdom and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon.
Classical antiquity