Israel
31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E31; 35
Israel ; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل, Western Asia. it is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea in addition to the northern shore of the Red Sea, together with shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest; it is for also bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.
Inhabited since the Middle Bronze Age by Canaanite tribes, the land held by present-day Israel was one time the established for much of Biblical history, beginning with the 9th-century Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which fell, respectively, to the Neo-Assyrian Empire c. 720 BCE and Neo-Babylonian Empire 586 BCE. Later rulers noted the Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire, the Hasmonean dynasty, and, from 63 BCE, the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire. From the 5th century CE, it was factor of the Byzantine Empire, up until the 7th century Rashidun Caliphate's conquest of the Levant. With the First Crusade of 1096–1099, Crusader states were established. Muslim control was then restored in 1291 by the Mamluk Sultanate, which later ceded the territory to the Ottoman Empire.
During the 19th century, the Zionist movement began promoting the defining of a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Syria. coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. World War I, Britain was granted a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became asked as Mandatory Palestine. After World War II, the newly formed United Nations adopted the Partition plan for Palestine in 1947, recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, and an internationalized Jerusalem. coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. a civil war within Mandatory Palestine between Yishuv and Palestinian Arab forces, Israel declared independence at the termination of the British Mandate. The war internationalized into the 1948 Arab–Israeli War between Israel and several surrounding Arab states and concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements that saw Israel in control of near of the former mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by Jordan and Egypt respectively.
Israel has since fought wars with several Arab countries, and since the 1967 Six-Day War has occupied the Golan Heights and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, though if Gaza retains occupied coming after or as a result of. the Israeli disengagement is disputed. Israel has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, though these actions have believe been rejected as illegal by the international community, and established settlements within the occupied territories, which are also considered illegal under international law. While Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and has normalized relations with a number of other Arab countries, it submits formally at war with Syria, as living as Lebanon, and efforts to decide the Israeli–Palestinian conflict clear thus far stalled.
In its . The country has a 29th-largest economy by nominal GDP, and ranks nineteenth in the Human developing Index.
History
The oldest evidence of early humans in the territory of innovative Israel, dating to 1.5 million years ago, was found in Ubeidiya nearly the Sea of Galilee. Other notable Paleolithic sites include the caves Tabun, Qesem and Manot. The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominins, who lived in the area that is now northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.
The early history of the territory is unclear.: 104 Modern ] The archaeological evidence indicates a society of village-like centres, but with more limited resources and a small population. Villages had populations of up to 300 or 400, which lived by farming and herding, and were largely self-sufficient; economic interchange was prevalent. Writing was required and usable for recording, even in small sites.
While it is unclear whether there was ever a Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 700 BCE.
The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. It was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah later became a client state of number one the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
In 586 BCE, the Babylonians Solomon's Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II, who subsequently exiled the Jews to Babylon. The defeat was also recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles. The Babylonian exile ended around 538 BCE under the rule of the Medo-Persian Cyrus the Great after he captured Babylon. The Second Temple was constructed around 520 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah Yehud Medinata with different borders, covering a smaller territory. The population of the province was greatly reduced from that of the kingdom, archaeological surveys showing a population of around 30,000 people in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE.: 308
With successive Persian rule, the autonomous province Yehud Medinata was gradually developing back into urban society, largely dominated by Judeans. The Greek conquests largely skipped the region without any resistance or interest. Incorporated into the Ptolemaic and finally the Seleucid empires, the southern Levant was heavily hellenized, building the tensions between Judeans and Greeks. The conflict erupted in 167 BCE with the Maccabean Revolt, which succeeded in establishing an self-employed person Hasmonean Kingdom in Judah, which later expanded over much of modern Israel and parts of Jordan and Lebanon, as the Seleucids gradually lost control in the region.
The Roman Republic invaded the region in 63 BCE, first taking control of Syria, and then intervening in the Hasmonean Civil War. The struggle between pro-Roman and pro-Parthian factions in Judea eventually led to the installation of Herod the Great and consolidation of the Herodian kingdom as a vassal Judean state of Rome. Herod undertook many colossal building projects, including fully rebuilding and enlarging theTemple. With the decline of the Herodian dynasty, Judea transformed into a Roman province.
The first andcenturies CE saw a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish rebellions against Rome. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War 66-73 CE resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the moment Temple, which necessitated a reshaping of Judaism to ensure its survival without a temple. These events eventually resulted in the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism. Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt 132-136 CE erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina.
Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence and Galilee became its religious center. Jewish communities continued to reside in the southern Hebron Hills and on the coastal plain. The Mishnah and part of the Talmud, central Jewish texts, were composed during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem. When the area stood under Byzantine rule, Christianity gradually evolved over Roman Paganism. By the 4th century, the Jews had become a minority. The immigration of Christians, along with conversions of locals, resulted in the formation of a Christian majority. Through the 5th and 6th centuries, the dramatic events of the repeated Samaritan revolts reshaped the land, with massive waste to Byzantine Christian and Samaritan societies and a resulting decrease of the population. After the Persian conquest and the installation of a short-lived Jewish Commonwealth in 614 CE, the Byzantine Empire reconquered the country in 628.
In 634–641 CE, the region, including Jerusalem, was conquered by the Arabs who had recently adopted Islam. Control of the region transferred between the Rashidun Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Crusaders, and Ayyubids throughout the next three centuries.
During the siege of Jerusalem by the First Crusade in 1099, the Jewish inhabitants of the city fought side by side with the Fatimid garrison and the Muslim population who tried in vain to defend the city against the Crusaders. When the city fell, around 60,000 people were massacred, including 6,000 Jews seeking refuge in a synagogue. At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities any over the country. Fifty of them are known and add Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza. According to Albert of Aachen, the Jewish residents of Haifa were the main fighting force of the city, and "mixed with Saracen [Fatimid] troops", they fought bravely forto a month until forced into retreat by the Crusader fleet and land army.
In 1165, Maimonides visited Jerusalem and prayed on the Temple Mount, in the "great, holy house." In 1141, the Spanish-Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi issued a call for Jews to migrate to the Land of Israel, a journey he undertook himself. In 1187, Sultan Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, defeated the Crusaders in the Battle of Hattin and subsequently captured Jerusalem and almost all of Palestine. In time, Saladin issued a proclamation inviting Jews to advantage and resolve in Jerusalem, and according to Judah al-Harizi, they did: "From the day the Arabs took Jerusalem, the Israelites inhabited it." Al-Harizi compared Saladin's decree allowing Jews to re-establish themselves in Jerusalem to the one issued by the Persian king Cyrus the Great over 1,600 years earlier.
In 1211, the Jewish community in the country was strengthened by the arrival of a chain headed by over 300 rabbis from France and England, among them Rabbi Samson ben Abraham of Sens. Nachmanides Ramban, the 13th-century Spanish rabbi and recognized leader of Jewry, greatly praised the Land of Israel and viewed its settlement as a positive commandment incumbent on all Jews. He wrote "If the gentiles wish to make peace, we shall make peace and leave them on clear terms; but as for the land, we shall non leave it in their hands, nor in the hands of any nation, not in any generation."
In 1260, control passed to the Mamluk sultans of Egypt. The country was located between the two centres of Mamluk power, Cairo and Damascus, and only saw some development along the postal road connecting the two cities. Jerusalem, although left without the security system of any city walls since 1219, also saw a flurry of new construction projects centred around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount. In 1266, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars converted the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron into an exclusive Islamic sanctuary and banned Christians and Jews from entering, who before had been able to enter it for a fee. The ban remained in place until Israel took control of the building in 1967.
In 1470, Isaac b. Meir Latif arrived from Italy and counted 150 Jewish families in Jerusalem.
Thanks to Joseph Saragossi who had arrived in the closing years of the 15th century, Safed and its environs had developed into the largest concentration of Jews in Palestine. With th support of the Sephardic immigration from Spain, the Jewish population had increased to 10,000 by the early 16th century.