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Jewish Topical
"Israel"
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WIKIPEDIA
Israel (
i /ˈɪzriəl/; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל, Yiśraˀel; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل, ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: 
מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל (help·info),Medīnat Yisrā'el; Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat ʾIsrāʾīl), is a parliamentary republic in Western Asia, located on the eastern shore of theMediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area.[6][7] Israel is the world's only Jewish-majority state,[8] and is defined as "a Jewish and democratic state" by Israeli constitutional law.[citation needed]
In 1948, the country was formally named Medinat Yisrael, or the State of Israel, after other proposed historical and religious names including Eretz Israel ("the Land of Israel"), Zion, and Judea, were considered and rejected.[28] In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett.[29]
The name Israel has historically been used, in common and religious usage, to refer to the Land of Israel, the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish nation.[30] According to the Bible, the name "Israel" was given to the patriarch Jacob (Standard Yisraʾel, Isrāʾīl; Septuagint Greek: Ἰσραήλ; "persevere with God"[31]) after he successfully wrestled with an angel of God.[32] Jacob's twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. According to the Bible, Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan and were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob, led the Israelites back into Canaan in the Exodus. The earliest archaeological artifact to mention the word "Israel" is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late 13th century BCE).[33]
The area is also known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith. Prior to the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence, the region was known by various other names including Palestine, Southern Syria, Syria Palestina, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Iudaea Province, Coele-Syria, Retjenu and Canaan.
Jewish History in the Southern Levant
The Land of Israel, known in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael (or Eretz Yisroel), has been sacred and important to the Jewish people since Biblical times. According to the Torah, God promised the Land of Israel to the three Patriarchs of the Jewish people.[34][35] On the basis of scripture, the period of the three Patriarchs has been placed somewhere in the early 2nd millennium BCE.[36] According to Biblical evidence the firstKingdom of Israel was established around the 11th century BCE. Subsequent Israelite kingdoms and states ruled intermittently over the next thousand years, and are known from various extra-biblical sources.[37][38][39][40]
Between the time of the First Kingdom of Israel and the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, the Land of Israel fell under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Byzantine rule.[9][41] Jewish presence in the region dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE.[42] Nevertheless, Jewish presence in the Land of Israel remained continuous and the Galileebecame its religious center.[43][44] The Mishnah and part of the Talmud, central Jewish texts, were composed during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem.[45] Following years of persecution at the hands of Byzantine rulers, the Jews revolted in 610 CE, allying themselves with the Persian invaders. After capturing Jerusalem, the Persians and Jews killed thousands of Christians and destroyed many churches.[46] The Byzantine emperor Heracliusrecaptured Jerusalem in 628–629 CE, and was responsible for the massacre and expulsion of the Jews.[47][48] During the initial Muslim conquests, in 635 CE, the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem, was captured from the Byzantine Empire.[49] Control of the region transferred between theUmayyads,[49] Abbasids,[49] and Crusaders throughout the next six centuries,[49] before falling in the hands of the Mamluk Sultanate, in 1260.[50] In 1516, the Land of Israel was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until the 20th century.[50]
Zionism and the British Mandate
Many Jews living in the Diaspora have long aspired to return to Zion and the Land of Israel,[53] though the amount of human effort that should be spent towards such aim is a matter of dispute in Judaism.[54][55] That hope and yearning was articulated in the Bible,[56] and is an important theme of the Jewish belief system.[54] After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, some communities settled in Palestine.[57] During the 16th century, 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.[58] In the second half of the 18th century, Eastern European opponents of Hasidism, known as the Perushim, settled in Palestine.[59][60][61]
The first large wave of "modern" immigration, known as the First Aliyah, began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe.[62] Although the Zionist movement already existed in theory, Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl is credited with founding political Zionism,[63] a movement which sought to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, by elevating the Jewish Question to the international plane.[64] In 1896, Herzl publishedDer Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), offering his vision of a future state; the following year he presided over the firstWorld Zionist Congress.[65]
The Second Aliyah (1904–1914), began after the Kishinev pogrom; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, but nearly half of them left.[62] Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainly Orthodox Jews,[66] but those in the Second Aliyah included socialist pioneers who established the kibbutz movement.[67] During World War I, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued what became known as the Balfour Declaration, which "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". At the request of Edwin Samuel Montaguand Lord Curzon, a line was also inserted stating "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".[68]
The Jewish Legion, a group of battalions composed primarily of Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine. Arab opposition to the plan led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of the Jewish organization known as the Haganah (meaning "The Defense" in Hebrew), from which the Irgun and Lehi paramilitary groups split off.[69] In 1922, the League of Nations granted the United Kingdom a mandate over Palestine under terms similar to the Balfour Declaration.[70] The population of the area at that time was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11% of the population.[71]
The Third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924–1929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine.[62] Finally, the rise of Nazism in the 1930s led to the Fifth Aliyah, with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This caused the Arab revolt of 1936–1939 and led the British to cap immigration 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.[62] By the end of World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine had increased to 33% of the total population.[72]
Independence and first years
After 1945, Britain found itself in fierce conflict with the Jewish community, as the Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in armed struggle against British rule.[73]At the same time, thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe sought shelter in Palestine and were turned away or rounded up and placed in detention camps by the British. In 1947, the British government withdrew from the Mandate of Palestine, stating it was unable to arrive at a solution acceptable to both Arabs and Jews.[74] The newly created United Nations approved the Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181) on November 29, 1947, which sought to divide the country into two states—one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to be designated an international city—a corpus separatum—administered by the UN.[75]
The Jewish community accepted the plan,[76] but the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected it.[77] On December 1, 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and Arab bands began attacking Jewish targets.[78] Jews were initially on the defensive as civil war broke out, but they gradually moved onto the offensive.[79] The Palestinian Arab economy collapsed and 250,000 Palestinian-Arabs fled or were expelled.[80]
On May 14, 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, the Jewish Agency proclaimed independence, naming the country Israel.[81] The following day, the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq—attacked Israel, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War;[82][83] Saudi Arabia sent a military contingent to operate under Egyptian command; Yemen declared war but did not take military action.[84] After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established.[85] Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. About 700,000 Palestinian refugees were expelled or fled the country during the conflict.
Israel was accepted as a member of the United Nations by majority vote on May 11, 1949.[86]
In the early years of the state, the Labor Zionist movement led by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion dominated Israeli politics.[87][88] These years were marked by an influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab lands, many of whom faced persecution in and expulsion from their original countries.[89] Consequently, the population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million between 1948 and 1958.[90] Some arrived as refugees with no possessions and were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot; by 1952, over 200,000 immigrants were living in these tent cities.[91] 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 of Israel accepting financial compensation from Germany for the Holocaust.[92]
In the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip.[93] In 1956, Israel joined a secret alliance with Great Britain and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal, which the Egyptians had nationalized (see the Suez Crisis). Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula but was pressured to withdraw by the United States and the Soviet Union in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights in the Red Sea and the Canal.[94][95]
In the early 1960s, Israel captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Final Solution, in Argentina and brought him to trial.[96] The trial had a major impact on public awareness of the Holocaust,[97] and Eichmann remains the only person ever to be executed by order of an Israeli court.[98]
Conflicts and peace treaties
Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognize Israel, calling for its destruction.[14][99] By 1966, Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of actual battles taking place between official Israeli and Arab forces.[100] In 1967, Egypt expelled UN peacekeepers, stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and announced a partial blockade of Israel's access to the Red Sea.[101] Israel saw these actions as a casus belli for a pre-emptive strike that launched a Six-Day War, in which Israel was able to occupy the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.[102] Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem, and the 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories.
As the Arab states lost in the 1967 war against Israel, Arab non-state actors came to have a more central role in the conflict. Most important among them is the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, which initially committed itself to "armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland".[103][104] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched a wave of attacks[105][106] against Israeli targets around the world,[107] including a massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
On October 6, 1973, as Jews were observing Yom Kippur, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israel. The war ended on October 26 with Israel successfully repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but suffering massive losses.[108] 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.[109]
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.[110] 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.[111] In the two years that followed, Sadat and Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.[112] Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to enter negotiations over an autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[113] Begin's government encouraged Israelis to settle in the West Bank, leading to friction with the Palestinians in that area.[114]
Basic Law: Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel, passed in 1980, was widely believed to have reaffirmed Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by government decree and reignited international controversy over the status of the city. However, there has never been an official act that defined the territory of Israel, which specifically included East Jerusalem therein.[115] The position of the majority of UN member states is reflected in numerous resolutions declaring that actions taken by Israel to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the whole of Jerusalem are illegal and have no validity.[116]
In 1982, Israel intervened in the Lebanese Civil War to destroy the bases from which the PLO launched attacks and missiles at northern Israel; that move developed into the First Lebanon War.[117] Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986, but maintained a borderland buffer zoneuntil 2000. The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule,[118] broke out in 1987 with waves of violence occurring in the occupied territories. Over the following six years, more than a thousand people were killed in the ensuing violence, much of which was internal Palestinian violence.[119] During the 1991 Gulf War, the PLO and many Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi missile attacks against Israel, though Israel did not participate in that war.[120][121]
In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister following an election in which his party promoted compromise with Israel's neighbors.[122][123] The following year, Shimon Peres andMahmoud Abbas, on behalf of Israel and the PLO, signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian National Authority the right to self-govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[124] The PLO also recognized Israel's right to exist and pledged an end to terrorism.[125] In 1994, the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel.[126] Arab public support for the Accords was damaged by the continuation of Israeli settlements[127] and checkpoints, and the deterioration of economic conditions.[128] Israeli public support for the Accords waned as Israel was struck by Palestinian suicide attacks.[129] Finally, while leaving a peace rally in November 1995,Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a far-right-wing Jew who opposed the Accords.[130]
At the end of the 1990s, Israel, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, withdrew from Hebron,[131] and signed the Wye River Memorandum, giving greater control to the Palestinian National Authority.[132] Ehud Barak, elected Prime Minister in 1999, began the new millennium by withdrawing forces from Southern Lebanon and conducting negotiations with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit. During the summit, Barak offered a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected it.[133] After the collapse of the talks and a controversial visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada began. Sharon became prime minister in a 2001 special election. During his tenure, Sharon carried out his plan tounilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and also spearheaded the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier.[134]
In July 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers sparked the month-long Second Lebanon War.[135][136] Two years later, in May 2008, Israel confirmed it had been discussing a peace treaty with Syria for a year, with Turkey as a go-between.[137] However, at the end of the year, Israel entered another conflict as a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed. The Gaza War lasted three weeks and ended after Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire.[138][139] Hamas announced its own ceasefire, with its own conditions of complete withdrawal and opening of border crossings. Despite neither the rocket launchings nor Israeli retaliatory strikes having completely stopped, the fragile ceasefire remained in order.[140]
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