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Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a country in the Middle East on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a parliamentary democracy and the world's only Jewish state.

Name and flag

The name "Israel" is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, where Jacob is renamed Israel after wrestling with a mysterious adversary ("a man", and later "God" according to Genesis 32:24-30; or "the angel", according to Hosea 12:4). Israel means "prince of God" or "he who has wrestled with God."

The Israeli flag is rooted in Jewish tradition. The white background symbolizes purity (because according to the Jewish religion, they are God's chosen people). The symbols on the flag are two stripes--one on the top and one on the bottom--and the famous Star of David emblem adorning the center. The stripes and blue color are inspired by the tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl).

History

The earliest known mention of the name 'Israel', probably refering to a group of people rather than to a place, is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele dated to about 1210 BCE. For over 3,000 years, Jews have held the Land of Israel to be their homeland, both as a Holy Land and as a Promised Land. The Land of Israel holds a special place in Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism's most important sites — including the remains of the First and Second Temple, as well as the rites concerning those temples. Starting around 1200 BCE, a series of Jewish kingdoms and states existed intermittently in the region for over a millennium. Recent archeological evidence suggests that the kingdoms of King David and King Solomon may have existed.

Under Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, and (briefly) Sassanian rule, Jewish presence in the province dwindled due to mass expulsions. In particular, the failure of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire resulted in widescale expulsion of Jews. But the Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, two of Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in the region during this period.

The Arabs conquered the land from the Eastern Roman Empire in 638 CE. The area was ruled by various Arab states (interrupted by the rule of the Crusaders) before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517.

Throughout the centuries, the size of the Jewish population in the land fluctuated widely. Circa 1881, in the region approximating present-day Israel, the Jewish population numbered approximately 20-25,000 of a total population of 470,000.

Since 1844, in Jerusalem the Jews have constituted the largest of several ethno-religious groups. By 1896, they were an absolute majority of the population.

The first wave of Jewish immigration to Israel, or Aliyah started in 1881 as Jews fled persecution, or followed Socialist Zionist ideas of Moses Hess and others of "redemption of the soil". Jews bought land from Ottoman and individual Arab landholders. After Jews established agricultural settlements, tensions erupted between the Jews and Arabs.

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), an Austrian Jew, founded the Zionist movement. In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he called for the establishment of a national 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, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration that "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". In 1920, Palestine became a League of Nations mandate administered by Britain.

Jewish immigration resumed in third (1919-1923) and fourth (1924-1929) waves after World War I. Arab riots in Palestine of 1929 killed 133 Jews, including 67 in Hebron.

The rise of Nazism in 1933 led to a fifth wave of Aliyah. The Jews in the region increased from 11% of the population in 1922 to 30% by 1940. The subsequent Holocaust in Europe led to additional immigration from other parts of Europe. By the end of World War II, the number of Jews in Palestine was approximately 600,000.

In 1939, the British abandoned the idea of a Jewish national home, and abandoned partition and negotiations in favour of the White Paper of 1939, which limited Jewish immigration and restricted purchase of land by Jews. Its other stated policy was to establish a system under which both Jews and Arabs were to share one government. The plan was never fully implemented because of a combination of resistance from the Jews and Arabs and Britain's pre-occupation with Europe and World War II. 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[1]. These attempts by Jews to circumvent the blockade and flee Europe became a known as Aliya Beth.

In 1947, following increasing levels of violence by militant groups together with unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the Jewish and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw from the Palestine Mandate. The UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan dividing the territory into two states, Jewish and Arab, giving about half the land area to each state. Jerusalem was planned to be an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.

Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly (on November 29, 1947), the Arab leadership rejected the plan and launched a guerilla war that included attacks on Jewish civilians. The Irgun Tsvai Leumi retaliated with attacks on Arab civilians.

On May 14, 1948, before the expiry of the British Mandate of Palestine at midnight of May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.

The surrounding Arab states supported the Palestinian Arabs in rejecting both the Partition Plan and the establishment of Israel, and the armies of six Arab nations attacked the newly formed State of Israel. Over the next 15 months, Israelis captured and annexed an additional 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan river. Most of the Arab population fled or were expelled during the war. (Estimates of the final refugee count range from 600,000 to 900,000 with the official United Nations' count at 726,000. According to official estimates at the time of the British Mandate, the total count of the non-Jewish population in 1945 was about 1,211,000, so there might be some inconsistency between the estimates.) The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in a lasting displacement that persists to this day.

Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000 Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries, migrated to Israel (with another 300,000 or so settling in France and North America, leaving only a tiny remnant, mostly in Morocco and Tunisia). Israel's Jewish population continued to grow at a very high rate for some years, and was fed by further waves of Jewish immigration following the collapse of the USSR.

After 1948, conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors continued, sometimes escalating to full-scale wars. The state of war between Egypt and Israel ended with the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty on March 26, 1979. The state of war with Jordan officially ended with the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace on October 26, 1994. Sporadic negotiations with Lebanon and Syria have not as yet resulted in peace treaties. Israel is currently also embroiled in an ongoing conflict with Palestinians in the territories controlled since the Six Day War in 1967, despite the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993, and the ongoing efforts of Israeli, Palestinian and global peacemakers.

Geography

Israel is bordered by Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip in the south-west, and has coastlines on the Mediterranean in the west and the Gulf of Eilat (also known as the Gulf of Aqaba) in the south.

During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, Gaza Strip (which was under Egyptian occupation), and Sinai from Egypt. It withdrew all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip on September 12, 2005. The future status of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights remains to be determined.

The total area of the sovereign territory of Israel —excluding all territories captured by Israel in 1967 — is 20,770 (20,330 land) square kilometres or 8,019 (7,849 land) mi²; the total area under Israeli law —including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — is 22,145 (21,671 land) square kilometres or 8,550 (8,367 land) mi²; the total area under Israeli control — including the military-controlled and Palestinian-governed territory of the West Bank — is 28,023 (27,549 land) square kilometres or 10,820 (10,637 land) mi².

Metropolitan areas

As of 2004, The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics defines three metropolitan areas: Tel Aviv (population 2,933,300), Haifa (population 980,600) and Be'er Sheva a.k.a. Be'ersheba (population 511,700) [2]. Jerusalem may also be considered a metropolitan area, though its limits are hard to define since it spans communities in Israel proper and the West Bank, both Israeli and Palestinian, and even the boundaries of Jerusalem city itself are disputed. As of 2005, the official population of Jerusalem city is 706,368.

Economy

A technologically advanced market economy with substantial government participation. It depends on imports of fossil fuels (crude oil, natural gas, and coal), grains, beef, raw materials, and military equipment. Despite limited natural resources, Israel has intensively developed its agricultural and industrial sectors over the past 20 years. Israel is largely self-sufficient in food production except for grains and beef. Diamonds, high-technology, military equipment, software, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and agricultural products (fruits, vegetables and flowers) are leading exports. Israel usually posts sizable current account deficits, which are covered by large transfer payments from abroad and by foreign loans. Israel possesses extensive facilities for oil refining, diamond polishing, and semiconductor fabrication.

Roughly half of the government's external debt is owed to the United States, which is its major source of economic and military aid. A relatively large fraction of Israel's external debt is held by individual investors, via the Israel Bonds program. The combination of American loan guarantees and direct sales to individual investors, allow the state to borrow at competitive and sometimes below-market rates.

The influx of Jewish immigrants from the former USSR topped 750,000 during the period 1989-1999, bringing the population of Israel from the former Soviet Union to 1 million, one-sixth of the total population, and adding scientific and professional expertise of substantial value for the economy's future. The influx, coupled with the opening of new markets at the end of the Cold War, energized Israel's economy, which grew rapidly in the early 1990s. But growth began slowing in 1996 when the government imposed tighter fiscal and monetary policies and the immigration bonus petered out. Those policies brought inflation down to record low levels in 1999.

High technology industries have taken a pre-eminent role in the economy, particularly in the last decade. Israel's limited natural resources and strong emphasis on education have also played key roles in directing industry towards high technology fields. As a result of the country's success in developing cutting edge technologies in software, communications and the life sciences, Israel is frequently referred to as a second Silicon Valley. Israel (as of 2004) receives more venture capital investment than any country in Europe, and has the largest VC/GDP rate in the world, seven times that of the United States.

Another leading industry is tourism, which benefits from the plethora of important historical sites for Judaism and Christianity and from Israel's warm climate and access to water resources. The diamond industry is also of importance, but it has been impacted by changing industry conditions and shifts of certain industry activities to the Far East.

As Israel has liberalized its economy and reduced taxes and spending, the gap between the rich and poor has grown. As of 2005, 20.5% of Israeli families (and 34% of Israeli children) are living below the poverty line, though around 40% of those are lifted above the poverty line through transfer payments.

Israel's GDP per capita, as of 28 July 2005, was $20,551.20 per person (42nd in the world). Israel's overall productivity was $54,510.40, and the amount of patents granted was 74/1,000,000 people.

 

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