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The State of Israel - is a parliamentary
republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of
the Mediterranean 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. Israel is
defined as a Jewish and democratic state in its Basic Laws and
is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the 1947 United Nations decision to partition
Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head
of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish
Agency for Palestine, declared Israel a state independent from
the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states
invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel
has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in
the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai
Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these
territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by
Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not
yet been permanently defined. Israel has signed peace treaties
with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
The population of Israel, defined by the Israel Central Bureau
of Statistics to include all citizens or nationals, but not
foreign workers, within Israel itself and in the Israeli
settlements in the occupied territories, was estimated in June
2011 to be 7,751,000 people, of whom 5,818,200 are Jewish. Arabs
form the country's second-largest ethnic group, which includes
both Muslims and Christians. Other minorities are Druze,
Circassians and Samaritans. At the end of 2005, 93% of the Arab
population of East Jerusalem had permanent residency and 5% had
Israeli citizenship. In the Golan Heights, Druze are entitled to
citizenship but most have rejected it in favor of "loyalty to
Syria."
Israel is a developed country and a representative democracy
with a parliamentary system and universal suffrage. The Prime
Minister serves as head of government and the Knesset serves as
Israel's unicameral legislative body. Israel has one of the
highest life expectancies in the world. The economy, based on
the nominal gross domestic product, was the 42nd-largest in the
world in 2010, and has a very high rating on the Human
Development Index. Jerusalem is the country's capital, although
it is not recognized internationally as such.[a] In 2010, Israel
joined the OECD. Upon independence in 1948, the new Jewish state
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. 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.
The name Israel has historically been used, in common and
religious usage, to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel or
the entire Jewish nation. According to the Hebrew Bible the name
"Israel" was given to the patriarch Jacob after he successfully
wrestled with an angel of God. Jacob's twelve sons became the
ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of
Israel or Children of Israel. Jacob and his sons had lived in
Canaan but 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). 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 whole region was known by various other names
including Southern Syria, Syria Palestina, Kingdom of Jerusalem,
Iudaea Province, Coele-Syria, Retjenu, Canaan and, particularly,
Palestine.
The notion of the "Land of Israel", known in Hebrew as Eretz
Yisrael (or Eretz Yisroel), has been important and sacred to the
Jewish people since Biblical times. According to the Torah, God
promised the land to the three Patriarchs of the Jewish people.
On the basis of scripture, the period of the three Patriarchs
has been placed somewhere in the early 2nd millennium BCE,[39]
and the first Kingdom of Israel was established around the 11th
century BCE. Subsequent Israelite kingdoms and states ruled
intermittently over the next four hundred years, and are known
from various extra-biblical sources.
Between the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE
and the Muslim conquests of the 7th century CE (a period of over
1500 years), the region came under Assyrian, Babylonian,
Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanid, and Byzantine rule. Jewish
presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure
of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE.
Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence and
Galilee became its religious center. The Mishnah and part of the
Talmud, central Jewish texts, were composed during the 2nd to
4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem. In 635 CE, the
region, including Jerusalem, was conquered by the Arabs and was
to remain under Muslim control for the next 1300 years. Control
of the region transferred between the Umayyads, Abbasids, and
Crusaders throughout the next six centuries, before being
conquered by the Mamluk Sultanate, in 1260. In 1516, the region
was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, and remained under Turkish
rule until the 20th century. |
