History of Israel | Britannica (original) (raw)

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• major treatment
  • 
    In Israel: History of Israel
    This discussion focuses primarily on the modern state of Israel. For treatment of earlier history and of the country in its regional context, see Palestine, history of.
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• Beta Israel
  • In Beta Israel
    …war-stricken Ethiopia and emigrated to Israel (see Researcher’s Note: Beta Israel migration to Israel, 1980–92). The number of the Beta Israel remaining in Ethiopia was uncertain, but estimates suggested a few thousand at most. The ongoing absorption of the Beta Israel community into Israeli society was a source of controversy…
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• creation
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The creation of Israel
    Islāmic and South Asian nationalism, first awakened in the era of the first World War, triumphed in the wake of the second, bringing on in the years 1946–50 the first great wave of decolonization. The British and French fulfilled their wartime promises by evacuating…
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• nuclear strategy
  • 
    In nuclear strategy: After the Cold War
    Israel began developing a nuclear weapons program in the mid-1950s, although it has never officially acknowledged this. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, tasked Shimon Peres, director general of the Ministry of Defense, with the administration of the project. Peres secured crucial support from abroad,…
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• Oriental Jews
  • In Mizrahi Jew
    …vast majority migrated to the State of Israel following its establishment in 1948. The early waves of Mizrahi immigration were marked by discrimination and mistreatment from those already established in Israel, who were predominantly Ashkenazi. Still they became an integral part of Israeli society and polity.
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conflicts

• anti-Semitism
  • 
    In anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism in the 21st century
    …leaders of the State of Israel had presumed that the normalization of the Jewish condition—that is, the achievement of statehood and with it a flag and an army—would seriously diminish anti-Semitism; however, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 onward, the existence of the Israeli state seemed to have the…
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  • 
    In anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism after the Holocaust
    …creation of the State of Israel (1948) in a formerly Arab region aroused new currents of hostility within the Arab world. Arab hostility to the State of Israel was primarily political (or anti-Zionist) and religious rather than racial. Whatever the motivation, however, the result was the adoption of many anti-Jewish…
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• Beirut
  • 
    In Beirut: Modern Beirut
    …destroyed by heavy fighting between Israeli forces and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1982, when Israel launched a full-scale attack on PLO bases operating in the city. Israeli troops surrounded West Beirut, where most PLO guerrilla bases were located, and a series of negotiations brought about the…
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• Entebbe raid
  • 
    In Entebbe raid
    …3–4, 1976), rescue by an Israeli commando squad of 103 hostages from a French jet airliner hijacked en route from Israel to France. After stopping at Athens, the airliner was hijacked on June 27 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Red Army Faction…
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• Israel-Hamas War of 2023
  • 
    In Israel-Hamas War
    >Israel and Palestinian militants, especially Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a land, sea, and air assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The October 7 attack resulted in more than 1,200 deaths, primarily Israeli…
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• Jerusalem
  • 
    In Jerusalem: Modern Jerusalem
    …end, and the State of Israel was proclaimed.
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• Lebanon
  • 
    In Lebanon: Civil war
    …an LNM-PLO victory would provoke Israeli intervention against the Palestinians and lead Syria into a confrontation with Israel, thereby complicating Syria’s own interests. As a result, in June 1976 it launched a large-scale intervention to redress the emerging imbalance of power in favour of the Christians. Syria’s intervention sparked a…
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• War of Attrition
  • 
    In War of Attrition
    between Egypt and Israel. The conflict, launched by Egypt, was meant to wear down Israel by means of a long engagement and so provide Egypt with the opportunity to dislodge Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized from Egypt in the Six-Day (June) War of…
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international relations

Palestinian Authority

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  In Palestinian Authority
  …Oslo Accords peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (see two-state solution).
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• Abbas

  • 
    In Mahmoud Abbas: Peace process and international relations
    Peace talks between Israel and the PA were renewed in November 2007, and direct negotiations continued into 2008. At the peak of these negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—whose premiership was coming to an end amid a corruption scandal—offered Abbas more than 93 percent of the territory the…
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• Camp David Accords

  • 
    In Camp David Accords
    >Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries, the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbours. Brokered by U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter (this author) between Israeli Prime…
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• Egypt

  • 
    In Egypt: The Nasser regime
    …Sudan, the British presence, and Israel. An agreement signed in February 1953 established a transitional period of self-government for the Sudan, which became an independent republic in January 1956. Prolonged negotiations led to the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement, under which British troops were to be evacuated gradually from the canal zone.…
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  • 
    In United States: Foreign affairs
    between Egypt and Israel. Further torturous negotiations followed before the peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1979.
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• Gaza Strip

  • 
    In Gaza Strip: Occupation
    …the strip was taken by Israel. The strip reverted to Egyptian control in 1957 following strong international pressures on Israel.
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• Golan Heights

  • 
    In annexation
    Israel made such a declaration when it annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, as did Russia following its annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea in 2014. The subsequent recognition of annexation by other states may be explicit or implied. Annexation based on the…
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  • 
    In Golan Heights
    …1967, when it came under Israeli military occupation, and in December 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan it held. The area’s name is from the biblical city of refuge Golan in Bashan (Deuteronomy 4:43; Joshua 20:8).
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• Ḥamās

  • 
    In Hamas: Formation and ideology
    …and West Bank) occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War. In Gaza they were active in many mosques, while their activities in the West Bank generally were limited to the universities. The Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in these areas were generally nonviolent, but a number of small groups in the…
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• Hezbollah

  • 
    In Hezbollah
    …as a militia after the Israeli invasion of that country in 1982. Since the 2000s it has been one of the foremost political forces in Lebanon.
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• Iraq

  • 
    In Iraq: Iraqi foreign policy, 1958–68
    …strongly influenced Qāsim’s approach to Israel. While he paid lip service to anti-Zionist sentiments in Iraq, there was no way that he and Nasser could collaborate against Israel, and tension with the Hāshimite monarchy of Jordan made it impossible for him to send an expeditionary force to Jordan, even had…
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  • 
    In Iraq: Foreign policy 1968–80
    …to any immediate war against Israel. As Saddam explained it to his domestic audience, the Arabs were not ready for such a war, because there was a need to first achieve strategic superiority over the Jewish state. Saddam’s vision was that Iraq first would concentrate exclusively on economic, technological, and…
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  • In law of war: Aggression
    …and in the attack by Israeli aircraft against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981—that although there had been a use of force in certain cases, that force was not directed against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or against the purposes of the UN. In the Corfu…
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• Jordan

  • 
    In Hussein
    … after the 1948–49 war with Israel—and political unrest precluded his joining the pro-Western mutual defense treaty between the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, known as the Central Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact (1955), which he had helped initiate. In an effort to build domestic support, in 1956 he…
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  • 
    In Jordan: Transjordan, the Hashemite Kingdom, and the Palestine war
    …proclaimed the independent state of Israel and immediately following the British withdrawal from Palestine, Transjordan joined its Arab neighbours in the first Arab-Israeli war. The Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha (John [later Sir John] Bagot Glubb), and Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi troops entered Palestine. Abdullah’s primary purpose, which…
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• mediated aggression

  • In aggression
    … and Pakistan in 1948, between Israel and its neighbours in 1949, between Israel, Great Britain, France, and Egypt in 1956, and between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in 1970. None of these states was at the time declared an aggressor. On the other hand, Japan was found to be an aggressor…
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• Middle East peace accords

  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Middle East
    Fourth, weary Palestinians and Israelis began to look for an alternative to the ongoing strife of the intifada in the disputed territories. Sensing the opportunity born of these changes, Bush sent Secretary of State Baker to the Middle East twice in the spring of 1991 in order to revive…
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• Palestine

  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Middle East
    …stabilizing influence: the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Throughout his years as U.S. secretary of state, George Shultz had tried to promote the peace process in the Middle East by brokering direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Such talks would require the PLO to renounce terrorism…
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  • 
    In Palestine: Civil war in Palestine
    …same day the State of Israel was declared and within a few hours won de facto recognition from the United States and de jure recognition from the Soviet Union. Early on May 15 units of the regular armies of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, and Egypt crossed the frontiers of Palestine.
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  • 
    In Palestine: The birth of the Palestinian Authority
    …was elected prime minister of Israel in May 1996. Netanyahu left office following defeat at the hands of the Labour Party led by Ehud Barak in May 1999. Although Netanyahu reached some accords with the Palestinians, his term in office was marked by increasing mistrust between the two sides.
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• Palestine Liberation Organization

  • In Palestine Liberation Organization
    …there of the State of Israel in 1948. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various Palestinian groups that previously had operated as clandestine resistance movements. It came into prominence only after the Six-Day War of June 1967, however, and engaged in a protracted guerrilla war against…
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  • In flag of Palestine Liberation Organization
    Israel lifted long-standing restrictions on flying the flag in 1993 after negotiations with the PLO; the flag was subsequently used by the Palestinian National Authority.
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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Regional crises
    -Israeli refusal to negotiate with the PLO. In June 1982 the Begin government determined to put an end to terrorist raids by forcibly clearing out PLO strongholds inside Lebanon. In fact the Israeli army advanced all the way to Beirut in a bitter campaign that…
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• Persian Gulf War

  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: UN coalition and ultimatum
    …prewar pledge to attack neutral Israel, firing 39 Soviet-made Scud surface-to-surface missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Most fell harmlessly, none contained the poison gas warheads Hussein had threatened to use, and after the first days many were destroyed in flight by American Patriot antimissile missiles. Furthermore, Hussein’s purpose in…
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• Sadat and peace initiative

  • 
    In Anwar Sadat
    …made a historic visit to Israel (November 19–20, 1977), during which he traveled to Jerusalem to place his plan for a peace settlement before the Israeli Knesset (parliament). This initiated a series of diplomatic efforts that Sadat continued despite strong opposition from most of the Arab world and the Soviet…
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• Saudi Arabia

  • 
    In Saudi Arabia: Foreign policy since the end of the Persian Gulf War
    -led peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. In the aftermath of the war, however, the kingdom also sought to cultivate closer relations with other regional powers, particularly with Iran.
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• Six-Day War

  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Six-Day War
    …pan-Arab unity around resistance to Israel’s plans to divert the waters of the Jordan. Also with both eyes on Israel, the conference restored an Arab High Command and elevated the Palestinian refugees (scattered among several Arab states since 1948) to a status approaching sovereignty, with their own army and headquarters…
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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy
    The sweeping Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 had forced every Arab state to rethink its own foreign policy and the extent of its commitment to the cause of Arab unity. Egypt, having lost the Sinai, faced Israelis entrenched in the Bar-Lev line directly across…
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• Suez Crisis

  • 
    In Suez Crisis
    …found a ready ally in Israel, whose hostility toward Egypt had been exacerbated by Nasser’s blockage of the Straits of Tīrān (at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba) and the numerous raids by Egyptian-supported commandos into Israel during 1955–56.
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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Suez Crisis
    …from the Middle East, efface Israel, and restore Islāmic grandeur. Egypt began sponsoring acts of violence against Israel from the Gaza Strip and cut off shipping through the Strait of Tīrān. The British were understandably hostile to Nasser, as were the French, who were battling Islāmic nationalists in Morocco, Algeria,…
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• United Kingdom

  • 
    In United Kingdom: Withdrawal from the empire
    …proclamation of the State of Israel. It has been argued that the orderly and dignified ending of the British Empire, beginning in the 1940s and stretching into the 1960s, was Britain’s greatest international achievement. However, like the notion of national unity during World War II, this interpretation can also be…
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• United Nations

  • 
    In international law: Recognition
    …UN also has declared that Israel’s purported annexation of the Golan Heights (conquered from Syria in 1967) is invalid and has ruled similarly with regard to Israel’s extension of its jurisdiction to formerly Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem.
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• United Nations Resolution 181

  • 
    In United Nations Resolution 181
    …basis for the establishment of Israel, and which was rejected by the Arab community—was succeeded almost immediately by violence.
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• West Bank

  • 
    In West Bank: History
    During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank and established a military administration throughout the area, except in East Jerusalem, which Israel incorporated into itself, extending Israeli citizenship, law, and civil administration to the area. During the first decade of Israeli occupation, there was comparatively little civil resistance…
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• Yom Kippur War

  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy
    …especially damaging for the outnumbered Israelis. Syrian forces also stormed the Golan Heights. The United States and the Soviet Union reacted with subtle attempts to fine-tune the outcome by alternately withholding or providing arms to the belligerents and by urging or discouraging a UN cease-fire. Nixon denied Israel an airlift…
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military organizations

• Haganah
  • In Haganah
    …creation of the State of Israel (1948) the Haganah controlled not only most of the settled areas allocated to Israel by the partition but also such Arab cities as ʿAkko (Acre) and Yafo (Jaffa). By order of the provisional government of Israel (May 31, 1948) the Haganah as a private…
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• Stern Gang
  • In Stern Gang
    …creation of the state of Israel (1948), the group, which had always been condemned by moderate leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, was suppressed, some of its units being incorporated in the Israeli defense forces. Unlike the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a precursor of the Ḥerut (“Freedom”) Party, the Stern…
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