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, while Tel Aviv is Israel's largest urban area and economic centre.
Israel is located in a region known in Jewish tradition as the Land of Israel, synonymous with Canaan, Palestine, and the Holy Land. In antiquity it was home to the Canaanite civilisation, followed by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Situated at a continental crossroad, the region experienced demographic changes under the rule of empires from the Romans to the Ottomans. European antisemitism in the late 19th century galvanised Zionism, which sought to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine and gained British support with the Balfour Declaration. After World War I, Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration in the lead-up to the Holocaust and British foreign policy in the Middle East led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and the Arab-majority population, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after the United Nations (UN) proposed partitioning the land between them.
After the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948. Neighbouring Arab states invaded the area the next day, beginning the First Arab–Israeli War. 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 Israel's population increased greatly over the following decades as the country received an influx of Jews who emigrated, fled or were expelled from the Arab world. 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. 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 24th in nominal GDP and 12th 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: Yīsrāʾēl; Septuagint Ancient Greek: Ἰσραήλ, Israēl, "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).
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 (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'elⓘ [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel]; Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]) after other proposed names including Land of Israel (Eretz 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 (c. 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 (c. 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. 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. They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew, known as Biblical Hebrew. 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. 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 ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two and soon developed into a regional power, with a capital at Samaria; 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. In 587/6 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, dissolved the kingdom and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon.
Classical antiquity
After capturing Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, issued a proclamation allowing the exiled Judean population to return. The construction of the Second Temple was completed c. 520 BCE. The Achaemenids ruled the region as the province of Yehud Medinata. In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Achaemenid Empire. After his death, the area was controlled by the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires as a part of Coele-Syria. Under the Hellenistic kingdoms, ongoing Hellenisation generated cultural tensions among the Jewish population that culminated under Antiochus IV, whose decrees outlawed Jewish practices and triggered the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE. The revolt weakened Seleucid control over Judea; by 142/141 BCE the Hasmoneans had secured autonomy and soon established an independent Jewish kingdom that, in the late 2nd–early 1st century BCE, expanded into neighbouring territories. The Hasmonean civil war ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE.
In 37 BCE, Herod the Great was installed as a dynastic vassal of Rome following the Roman–Parthian Wars. In 6 CE, the area was annexed as the Roman province of Judaea; tensions with Roman rule led to a series of Jewish–Roman wars, resulting in widespread destruction. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and a sizable portion of the population being killed or displaced. 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. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony (Aelia Capitolina), and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were expelled from the districts surrounding Jerusalem. Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence, and Galilee became its religious center.
Late antiquity and the medieval period
During the Byzantine period, Early Christianity displaced Roman paganism in the 4th century CE, with Constantine embracing and promoting the Christian religion and Theodosius I making it the state religion. A series of laws were passed that discriminated against Jews and Judaism, and Jews were persecuted by both the church and the authorities. Many Jews had emigrated to flourishing diaspora communities, while locally there was both Christian immigration and local conversion. By the middle of the 5th century, there was a Christian majority. Towards the end of the 5th century, Samaritan revolts erupted, continuing until the late 6th century and resulting in a large decrease in the Samaritan population. After the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and the short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius in 614 CE, the Byzantine Empire reconsolidated control of the area in 628.
In 634–641 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant. Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–644) lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem and permitted them to worship there. Over the next six centuries, control of the region transferred between the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, and subsequently the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties. The population drastically decreased during the following several centuries, dropping from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period, and there was steady Arabisation and Islamisation. The end of the 11th century brought the Crusades, papally-sanctioned incursions of Christian crusaders intent on wresting Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control and establishing crusader states. The Ayyubids pushed back the crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in 1291.
Modern period and the emergence of Zionism
In 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and ruled it as part of Ottoman Syria. Two violent incidents took place against Jews, the 1517 Safed attacks and Hebron attacks, after the Ottomans ousted the Mamluks during the Ottoman–Mamluk War. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Levant was cosmopolitan, with freedoms for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. In 1561 the Ottoman sultan invited Sephardic Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition to settle and rebuild the city of Tiberias.
Under the Ottoman Empire's millet system, Christians and Jews were considered dhimmi ("protected") under Ottoman law in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax. Non-Muslim subjects faced geographic and lifestyle restrictions, though they were not always enforced. The millet system organised non-Muslims into autonomous communities on the basis of religion.
The concept of an eventual Return to Zion remained a symbol within Jewish belief which emphasised their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. The Jewish population of Palestine from Ottoman rule to the beginning of the Zionist movement, known as the Old Yishuv, comprised a minority. 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 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem. A 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias. In the 18th century, Eastern European Jews who were opponents of Hasidism, known as the Perushim, settled in Palestine.
In the late 18th century, Arab Sheikh Daher al-Umar created an independent emirate in the Galilee. After Daher'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 their Syrian campaign. In 1834, a revolt by Palestinian peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation under Muhammad Ali was suppressed; Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840. 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. The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews, and restricted where they could live. Antisemitism, pogroms and policies in tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of whom went to Palestine. Those who went were driven by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than pogroms or economic insecurity. Zionism emerged as a political movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The revival of the Hebrew language, during which Hebrew was adapted for modern use and gradually became the primary language of Jews in Palestine, also began.
The Second Aliyah (1904–14) began after the Kishinev pogrom; 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left. The first and second waves were mainly Orthodox Jews. The Second Aliyah included Zionist socialist groups who established the kibbutz movement based on the idea of establishing a separate Jewish economy based on Jewish labour. Those of the Second Aliyah who became leaders of the Yishuv believed the Jewish settler economy should not depend on Arab labour. This would be a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, with Yishuv's nationalist ideology overpowering its socialist one. Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah sought to create communal Jewish agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv was established as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. Jewish militias emerged, the first being Bar-Giora in 1907; two years later, the larger Hashomer organisation replaceed it.
British Mandate for Palestine
Chaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement secured the 1917 Balfour Declaration, stating Britain's support for the creation of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. Balfour was aware of the developing principle of self-determination and its implications for Palestine. In a letter to a leader of the Zionist movement he wrote: