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Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from that country, and in late 1987 an uprising broke out among Palestinians of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (see intifāḍah). Peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states and Palestinians began in 1991.
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Israel, country in the Middle East, located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded to the north by Lebanon, to the northeast by Syria, to the east and southeast by Jordan, to the southwest by Egypt, and to the west by the Mediterranean Sea. Jerusalem is the seat of government and the proclaimed capital, although the latter status has not received wide international recognition.
Israel is a small country with a relatively diverse topography, consisting of a lengthy coastal plain, highlands in the north and central regions, and the Negev desert in the south. Running the length of the country from north to south along its eastern border is the northern terminus of the Great Rift Valley.
The State of Israel is the only Jewish nation in the modern period, and the region that now falls within its borders has a lengthy and rich history that dates from prebiblical times. The area was a part of the Roman Empire and, later, the Byzantine Empire before falling under the control of the fledgling Islamic caliphate in the 7th century ce. Although the object of dispute during the Crusades, the region, then generally known as Palestine, remained under the sway of successive Islamic dynasties until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, when it was placed under British mandate from the League of Nations.
Even before the mandate, the desire for a Jewish homeland prompted a small number of Jews to immigrate to Palestine, a migration that grew dramatically during the second quarter of the 20th century with the increased persecution of Jews worldwide and subsequent Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. This vast influx of Jewish immigrants into the region, however, caused tension with the native Palestinian Arabs, and violence flared between the two groups leading up to the United Nations plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors and Israel’s ensuing declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948.
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Despite its small size, about 290 miles (470 km) north-to-south and 85 miles (135 km) east-to-west at its widest point, Israel has four geographic regions—the Mediterranean coastal plain, the hill regions of northern and central Israel, the Great Rift Valley, and the Negev—and a wide range of unique physical features and microclimates.
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The coastal plain is a narrow strip about 115 miles (185 km) long that widens to about 25 miles (40 km) in the south. A sandy shoreline with many beaches borders the Mediterranean coast. Inland to the east, fertile farmland is giving way to growing agricultural settlements and the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa and their suburbs.
In the north of the country, the mountains of Galilee constitute the highest part of Israel, reaching an elevation of 3,963 feet (1,208 metres) at Mount Meron (Arabic: Jebel Jarmaq). These mountains terminate to the east in an escarpment overlooking the Great Rift Valley. The mountains of Galilee are separated from the hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the south by the fertile Plain of Esdraelon (Hebrew: ʿEmeq Yizreʿel), which, running approximately northwest to southeast, connects the coastal plain with the Great Rift Valley. The Mount Carmel range, which culminates in a peak 1,791 feet (546 metres) high, forms a spur reaching northwest from the highlands of the West Bank, cutting almost to the coast of Haifa.
The Great Rift Valley, a long fissure in Earth’s crust, begins beyond the northern frontier of Israel and forms a series of valleys running generally south, the length of the country, to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Jordan River, which marks part of the frontier between Israel and Jordan, flows southward through the rift from Dan on Israel’s northern frontier, where it is 500 feet (152 metres) above sea level, first into the Ḥula Valley (Hebrew: ʿEmeq HaḤula), then into the freshwater Lake Tiberias, also known as the Sea of Galilee (Hebrew: Yam Kinneret), which lies 686 feet (209 metres) below sea level. The Jordan continues south along the eastern edge of the West Bank—now through the Jordan Valley (Hebrew: ʿEmeq HaYarden)—and finally into the highly saline Dead Sea, which, at 1,312 feet (400 metres) below sea level, is the lowest point of a natural landscape feature on the Earth’s surface. South of the Dead Sea, the Jordan continues through the rift, where it now forms the ʿArava Valley (Hebrew: “savannah”), an arid plain that extends to the Red Sea port of Eilat.
The principal drainage system comprises Lake Tiberias and the Jordan River. Other rivers in Israel are the Yarqon, which empties into the Mediterranean near Tel Aviv; the Qishon, which runs through the western part of the Plain of Esdraelon to drain into the Mediterranean at Haifa; and a small section of the Yarmūk, a tributary of the Jordan that f...
The coastal plain is covered mainly by alluvial soils. Parts of the arid northern Negev, where soil development would not be expected, have windblown loess soils because of proximity to the coastal plain. The soils of Galilee change from calcareous rock in the coastal plain, to Cenomanian and Turonian limestone (deposited from about 99 to 89 millio...
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia.It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest.
12 July. 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid: Hezbollah forces crossed into Israel and ambushed two IDF vehicles, killing three soldiers and capturing two others. 2006 Lebanon War: Israeli forces began shelling Lebanese territory in response to the Hezbollah attack of earlier that morning. 2007.
YearDateEvent194725 NovemberUnited Nations Partition Plan for ...194814 MayOn the last day of the British Mandate, ...194815 May1948 Arab–Israeli War: Hours after the ...194925 January1949 Israeli legislative election: ...History of Israel. In 1948, following the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight from the land that the State of Israel came to control and subsequently led to waves of Jewish ...
The State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, with the Declaration of Independence by David Ben-Gurion. Hours after declaring the State, Arab armies invaded and the second phase of the War of Independence began. Since then, Israel has experienced periods of relative quiet as well as times of heightened tension and violence, including a ...
