History

Brief History

Zionists settled in Palestine in the 1880s when it was under Ottoman rule, and the British declared support for a Jewish 'national home' there in 1917. The British evacuated Palestine after World War II, unable to control a new flood of Jewish immigration. Tension between Arabs and Jews led the UN in 1947 to support the formation of two states in Palestine, one Jewish and the other Arab. When the Arab side rejected this, David Ben-Gurion announced the creation of the independent State of Israel on 14 May 1948. Military conflict with surrounding countries ensued, and further wars took place in 1956 (Suez Crisis) and 1967 (Six-Day War), when Israel gained control of the West Bank of the River Jordan including the eastern sector of Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights in Syria and the Sinai Peninsula as far as the Suez Canal; these areas have since been referred to as the 'occupied territories'. Wars also broke out in 1973 (Yom Kippur War) and in 1982 (Lebanon War).

During the 1990s, there were several attempts to launch peace talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A declaration of principles on Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories was announced in 1993, Jericho and the Gaza Strip were given autonomous status in 1994-5 and Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994. However, in 1996, there were recurrent suicide bombings in Israeli cities, more fighting between West Bank Palestinians and Israeli forces and an armed struggle in south Lebanon. In 1997, in accordance with the terms of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, which required the handover of seven major West Bank towns to Palestinian rule, Israeli troops were withdrawn from the West Bank town of Hebron, however, peace was under threat again soon afterwards when the government's policy of building Jewish settlements in Arab areas ignited violence, and there were further bomb attacks by terrorist fundamentalists. In 1999, Netanyahu's Likud Party was defeated by the Labour Party led by Ehud Barak. The following year, Barak ordered the withdrawal of troops from Southern Lebanon and was involved in negotiations with Yasser Arafat in an attempt to resolve the issue of the administration of Jerusalem. The summer of 2006 was underscored by conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, which led respectively to Operation Summer Rains and a five-week war in Lebanon and northern Israel. The latter conflict resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 people, including over one thousand civilians, and ended only after a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations.

Early History

The first historical record of the word 'Israel' comes from an Egyptian stele documenting military campaigns in Canaan. Although this stele which referred to a people (the determinative for 'country' was absent) is dated to approximately 1211 BC, Jewish tradition holds that the Land of Israel has been a Jewish Holy Land and Promised land for 4,000 years, since the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). The land of Israel holds a special place in Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism's most important sites (such as the remains of the First and Second Temples of the Jewish People). Connected with these two versions of the temple are religiously significant rites which stand as the origin for many aspects of modern Judaism. Starting around the 11th century BC, the first of a series of Jewish kingdoms and states established intermittent rule over the region that lasted more than a millennium.

Under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and (briefly) Sassanian rule, Jewish presence in the region dwindled because of mass expulsions. In particular, the failure of the Bar Kokhba's revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 AD resulted in a large-scale expulsion of Jews. It was during this time that the Romans gave the name Syria Palaestina to the geographic area, in an attempt to erase Jewish ties to the land. Nevertheless, the Jewish presence in Palestine remained constant. The main Jewish population shifted from the Judea region to the Galilee. The Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, two of Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in the region during this period.

The land was conquered from the Byzantine Empire in 638 AD during the initial Muslim conquests. The Hebrew niqqud was invented in Tiberias during this time. The area was ruled by the Omayyads, then by the Abbasids, Crusaders, the Kharezmians and Mongols, before becoming part of the empire of the Mamluks (1260-1516) and the Ottoman Empire in 1517.

Zionism and Immigration

Jews living in the diaspora had sought to emigrate to Israel for many centuries. Yehuda Halevi, a 12th-century philosopher and poet, was one of the first people to promote the emigration of Jews to the land of Israel. In the centuries that followed, the land of Israel would see small waves of immigration from Europe. Nahmanides (1194?c. 1270) and Yosef Karo (1488-1575) migrated to the region on their own, but Yechiel of Paris (c. 1200s), Judah he-Hasid (c. 1650-1700), and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730-1778) each emigrated to the land of Israel with hundreds of followers. Over five hundred of the Vilna Gaon's disciples (the Perushim) and their families moved to Israel in the early 19th century, settling in Tiberias, Safed, and then in Jerusalem. In 1860, the old Jewish community in Jerusalem started building neighbourhoods outside the walls of the Old City (the first one being Mishkenot Sha'ananim). In 1878, the first modern agricultural settlement was founded in the form of Petah Tikva.

In 1862, Jewish philosopher Moses Hess published "Rome and Jerusalem", in which he advocated the establishment of a socialist Jewish state on the land of Israel and a process called "redemption of the soil". Two decades later, in 1881, the first large wave of modern immigration to Israel, or aliyah, began as Jews fled growing persecution in Eastern Europe. However, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austro-Hungarian Jew, is usually credited with founding the Zionist movement. In 1896, he published "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), in which he called for the establishment of a Jewish state. The following year he helped convene the first World Zionist Congress. The establishment of Zionism led to the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) with the influx of around 40,000 Jews. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration that "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Three years later, in 1920, Palestine became a League of Nations mandate - the British Mandate of Palestine.

After World War I, until 1929, waves of Jewish immigration resumed with the Third and Fourth Aliyahs; together they brought over 100,000 Jews to the region. The rise of Nazism throughout the 1930s led to the Fifth Aliyah, in which a quarter million Jews emigrated to Palestine. In 1939, the British introduced, perhaps in response to the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the MacDonald White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration and land purchases over the course of the World War II. The White Paper was seen as a betrayal by the Jewish community and Zionists, who perceived it as being in conflict with the Balfour Declaration. The Arabs were not entirely satisfied either, as they wanted Jewish immigration halted completely. However, the White Paper guided British policy until the end of the term of their Mandate. As a result, many Jews fleeing to Palestine to avoid Nazi persecution and the Holocaust were intercepted and returned to Europe. Two specific examples of this policy involved the ships Struma and Exodus (carrying Holocaust survivors in 1947). Nevertheless, many Jews fled to Israel illegally in a wave of immigration known as Aliyah Bet. By the end of World War II, Jews accounted for 33% of the population of Palestine, up from 11% in 1922.

British Mandate of Palestine

As tensions grew between the Jewish and Arab populations and Arab attacks on Jews increased, and with little apparent support from the British mandate authorities, the Jewish community began to rely on itself for defence.

Meanwhile, many Arabs, opposed to the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, and the idea of a Jewish national home instigated riots and pogroms against Jews in the region. As a result of the 1921 Arab attacks, the Haganah was formed to protect Jewish settlements. The Haganah was mostly defensive in nature, which among other things caused several members to split off and form the Irgun (initially known as Hagana Bet) in 1931. The Irgun adhered to a much more active approach, which included attacks and initiation of armed actions against the British, such as attacking British military headquarters, the King David Hotel, which killed 91 people. A further split occurred when Avraham Stern left the Irgun to form Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang), which was even more extreme in its methods. Unlike the Irgun, they refused any co-operation with the British during World War II and even attempted to work with the Germans to secure European Jewry's escape to Palestine.

These groups had an enormous impact on events preceding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, including Aliyah Bet, the formation of the Israel Defense Forces, and the withdrawal of the British. They also assisted to a great degree in forming the foundation of the political parties that exist in Israel today.

1948: Establishment of the State of Israel

In 1947, with increasing levels of Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine and a feeling of war fatigue following World War II, the British government decided to withdraw from the Mandate of Palestine. The newly-created United Nations approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan, allocating just over half the land for a Jewish state and most of the rest for an Arab country. Jerusalem was to be designated as an international city administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.

On November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion, later the first Prime Minister of Israel, tentatively accepted the UN Partition Plan. The Arab League, meanwhile, rejected it. The Arab Higher Committee immediately ordered a violent three-day strike on Jewish civilians, buildings, shops and neighbourhoods. This and an insurgency organised by underground Jewish militias soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews and the beginnings of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Regardless, the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiry of the British Mandate of Palestine. Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on May 11, 1949.

1948: War of Independence

Following the State of Israel's establishment, the armies of five Arab countries declared war on Israel and began the second phase of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Jordanian forces, invading from the east, captured East Jerusalem and laid siege on the city's west. However, forces of the Haganah successfully stopped most invading forces, and Irgun forces halted Egyptian encroachment from the south.

At the beginning of June 1948, the UN declared a one-month ceasefire during which the Israel Defence Forces were officially formed. After numerous months of war, a ceasefire was declared in 1949 and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Israel had gained an additional 23.5% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan River. Jordan, for its part, held the large mountainous areas of Judea and Samaria, which became known as the West Bank. Egypt took control of a small strip of land along the coast, which became known as the Gaza Strip.

During and after the war, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set about establishing order by dismantling the Palmach and underground organizations like the Irgun and Lehi.

Large numbers of the Arabs fled or were expelled from the newly-created Jewish state during the Palestinian exodus, which is referred to by many Palestinian groups and individuals as the Nakba, meaning 'disaster' or 'cataclysm'. Estimates of the final Palestinian refugee count range from 400,000 to 900,000, with the official United Nations count at 711,000. In addition, the entire Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip fled to Israel.

Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following years approximately 850,000 Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries and Iran. Of these, about 600,000 settled in Israel; the remainder went to Europe and the Americas.

Israel in the 1950s and 1960s

Between 1954 and 1955, under Moshe Sharett as prime minister, the Lavon Affair - a failed attempt to bomb targets in Egypt - caused political disgrace in Israel. Compounding this, in 1956, Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, much to the chagrin of the United Kingdom and France. Following this and a series of Fedayeen attacks, Israel created a secret military alliance with British and French powers and declared war on Egypt. After the Suez Crisis, the three collaborators faced international condemnation, and Israel was forced to withdraw its forces from the Sinai Peninsula.

In 1955, Ben-Gurion once again became prime minister and served as such until his final resignation in 1963. After Ben-Gurion's resignation, Levi Eshkol was appointed to the post.

In 1961, the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had been largely responsible for the Final Solution, the planned extermination of the Jews of Europe, was captured in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Mossad agents and brought to trial in Israel. Eichmann became the only person ever sentenced to death by the Israeli courts.

On the political field, tensions once again arose between Israel and her neighbours in May 1967. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt had expelled UN Peacekeeping Forces from the region, closed the Straits of Tiran, and amassed tanks and aircraft on Israel's borders. Israel deemed these actions a casus belli for pre-emptively attacking Egypt on June 5, 1967. I

In the ensuing Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights. The Green Line of 1949 became the administrative boundary between Israel and the Occupied Territories (more recently called the Disputed Territories). The Sinai was later returned to Egypt following the signing of a peace treaty. East Jerusalem was later annexed into Israel's capital in the 1980 Jerusalem Law, although the law's validity has been contested.

In 1969, Golda Meir, Israel's first (and, to date, only) female prime minister was elected.

Israel in the 1970s

Between 1968 and 1972, a period known as the War of Attrition, numerous scuffles erupted along the border between Israel and Syria and Egypt. During the early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched a wave of attacks against Israeli targets around the world, including a massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, when Palestinian militants held hostage and killed members of the Israeli delegation. Israel responded with Operation Wrath of God, in which Mossad agents assassinated most of those responsible for the Munich massacre. Finally, on October 6, 1973, the day of the Jewish Yom Kippur fast, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israel. Despite early successes against an unprepared Israeli army, Egypt and Syria were eventually repelled by the Israeli forces. A number of years of relative calm ensued, which fostered the environment in which Israel and Egypt could make peace.

In 1974, Yitzhak Rabin, with Meir's resignation, became Israel's fifth prime minister. The 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history, an event that became known in Israel as the 'revolution'. During the elections, the Alignment, (the dominant left-wing political party), which together with its predecessor Mapai had been the ruling party since 1948, was beaten by Menachem Begin's Likud party.

Then, in November of that year, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, making a historic visit to the Jewish State, spoke before the Knesset: the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. Military reserves officers formed the Peace Now movement to encourage this effort. Following the visit, the two nations conducted negotiations which led to the signing of the Camp David Accords. In March 1979, Begin and Sadat signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, DC. As laid out in the treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and evacuated the settlements established there during the 1970s. It was also agreed to lend autonomy to Palestinians across the Green Line.

Israel in the 1980s

On July 7, 1981, the Israeli Air Force bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osiraq in an attempt to foil Iraqi efforts at producing an atomic bomb. This operation was known as Operation Opera.

In 1982, Israel launched an attack against Lebanon claiming to defend Israel's northernmost settlements from terrorism. After establishing a forty-kilometre barrier zone, the IDF continued northward and captured the capital, Beirut. Israeli forces expelled Palestinian Liberation Organisation forces from the country, forcing the organisation to relocate to Tunis. Unable to deal with the stress of the ongoing war, Prime Minister Begin resigned from his post in 1983 and was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir. Less than a year after Begin's resignation, Shimon Peres took over as Prime Minister. Though Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986, a buffer zone was maintained until May 2000 when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon.

Through the rest of the 1980s, the government shifted from the right, led by Yitzhak Shamir, to the left under Shimon Peres. Peres was prime minister from 1984, but handed the position over to Shamir in 1986 under an agreement reached following the creation of the unity coalition in the aftermath of the 1984 elections.

The First Intifadah broke out in 1987 and was accompanied by waves of violence in the Occupied Territories. Over the following six years, over a thousand people, mostly Palestinians, would be killed in the ensuing violence. Following the outbreak, Shamir once again was elected prime minister, in 1988.

Israel in the 1990s

Israelis and Palestinians were further polarized throughout the Gulf War in the early 1990s, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and many Palestinians heralded Iraqi missile attacks against Israel.

The early 1990s were marked by the beginning of a massive immigration of Soviet Jews, who, according to the Law of Return, were entitled to become Israeli citizens upon arrival. About 380,000 arrived in 1990-91 alone. Although initially favouring the right, the new immigrants became the target of an aggressive election campaign by Labour, which blamed their employment and housing problems on the ruling Likud. As a result, in the 1992 elections the immigrants voted en masse for Labour, with the left achieving a 61-59 majority in the 1992 Knesset elections.

Following the elections, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, forming a left-wing government coalition. During the election campaign his Labour party promised Israelis a significant improvement in personal security and achievement of a comprehensive peace with the Arabs "within six to nine months" after the elections.

The following year, Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, on behalf of Israel and the PLO, respectively, signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian Authority the right to self-govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Not long after, in 1994, the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel.

The initial wide public support for the Oslo Accords began to wane as Israel was struck by a wave of attacks by the militant Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) group, which opposed the accords. After the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish nationalist militant named Yigal Amir, support began to increase as widespread dismay created a backlash against the Oslo opponents. This significantly boosted the chances of Shimon Peres, Rabin's successor and Oslo architect, to win the upcoming 1996 elections.

However, a new wave of attacks against Israel in subsequent months, combined with Arafat's statements extolling the Muslim nationalist militant Yahya Ayyash, made the public mood swing back, and in May 1996, Peres narrowly lost to his challenger from Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was often seen as a hard-line opponent of the Oslo Accords.

Despite his stance against the Accords, Netanyahu withdrew from Hebron and signed the Wye River Memorandum, giving greater control to the Palestinian National Authority. During Netanyahu's tenure, Israel experienced a lull in attacks against Israel's civilian population by Palestinian groups, but his government fell in 1999. Labour's Ehud Barak beat Netanyahu by a wide margin in the 1999 elections and succeeded him as prime minister.

Israel in the 21st Century

Barak began the new millennium by initiating unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. This process was intended to frustrate Hezbollah (a Shi'a Islamic political and paramilitary organisation based in Lebanon) attacks on Israel by forcing them to cross Israel's border. Barak and Yassir Arafat once again conducted negotiations with President Clinton at the July 2000 Camp David summit. During the summit, Barak offered a plan to form a Palestinian state (initially on 73% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip), but Arafat rejected the deal and the talks failed.

After the collapse of the talks, Palestinians began a second uprising, known as the Al-Aqsa Intifadah, just after the leader of the opposition Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The failure of the talks and the outbreak of a new war caused many Israelis on both the right and the left to turn away from Barak, and also discredited the peace movement.

Ariel Sharon became the new prime minister in March 2001 special election and consequently was re-elected, along with his Likud party in the Knesset elections of 2003. During his tenure, Sharon initiated a plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and also spearheaded the construction of the controversial Israeli West Bank barrier. This disengagement was executed between August and September 2005.

In January 2006, after Ariel Sharon suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke, the powers of the office were passed to Ehud Olmert, who was designated the 'Acting' Prime Minister. On April 14, 2006, Olmert was elected Prime Minister after his party, Kadima (Hebrew for 'Forward'), won the most seats in the 2006 legislative elections.

That summer was underscored by conflicts with Hamas, which led to Operation Summer Rains. This consisted of heavy bombardment of Hamas targets as well as bridges, roads, and the only power station in Gaza. Israel also deployed troops into the territory.

That summer also saw the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel, primarily between Hezbollah and Israel. This 5-week conflict resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 people, including over one thousand civilians, and ended only after a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations.