Situated at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is a narrow strip of land bordered to the north by Lebanon; to the east by Syria, the West Bank, and Jordan; to the south by the Red Sea; and to the southwest by Egypt. A more recent border, added by Israel’s disengagement in 2005, is that of the Gaza Strip, a slim finger of land pointing along the coast from the Sinai Peninsula, ending just south of the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Israel is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey or the country of Wales, but with a climate and topography that varies greatly from north to south and from east to west. Along the Mediterranean on the verdant coastal plain are two of its three main cities: Tel Aviv–Jaffa, “the city that never sleeps,” and, about 53 miles (85 km) north, Haifa, serene and beautiful on the slopes and crest of Mount Carmel. Haifa is the port city gateway to the Galilee, with its landscape of hills, forests, and olive groves and, at its lowest point, below sea level, the Sea of Galilee. There are no mountains in Israel, only hills.
Jerusalem, Israel’s spiritual capital and the seat of government, nestles in the biblical Judean hills 37 miles (59 km) east of Tel Aviv. East of Jerusalem is the Judean desert, which slopes down to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and the start of the Great Rift Valley that runs south through Africa. About 71 miles (115 km) south of Tel Aviv lies Beersheba, the capital of the Negev desert, and a 150-mile (241 km) journey further south through the desert, to its southernmost point, takes you to the Red Sea port and resort of Eilat.
Israel enjoys a Mediterranean climate with hot, rain-free summers and mild winters, which have intermittent periods of heavy rain, particularly in the north and center of the country. From April to October daily temperatures range from 73.4°F (23°C) low to 86°F (30°C) high, with July and August the hottest months. From November to March temperatures range from 59°F (15°C) low to 68°F (20°C) high. In the winter, from the northern Galilee to the northern Negev, the country is transformed into a deep green. You are unlikely to encounter snow, but if you do it will be in winter in Jerusalem or on the Golan Heights. Temperatures and tempers rise during the occasional hamsin (sharav in Hebrew), a hot, dry, desert wind occurring mostly in early summer and fall.
Jerusalem is cooler than the coastal plain, especially in the evenings, and enjoys lower humidity. Eilat is always warmer, and is a winter sunshine favorite for Israelis and foreign visitors alike, as are the Dead Sea resorts.
The State of Israel was established in 1948, in a land holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Unsurprisingly, interpretations of its history are hotly contested, but to understand the Israelis one must start with the Jewish perspective.
Jewish history began about 4,000 years ago, in around 1600 BCE, with the wanderings of the biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Book of Genesis relates how Abraham, a native of the Sumerian city of Ur, in today’s southern Iraq, was commanded to go to Canaan to found a community that worshiped the One God. When a famine spread through Canaan, Abraham’s grandson Jacob (Israel), his twelve sons, and their families moved to Egypt, where their descendants were forced into slavery.
Modern scholarship is continually refining our understanding of the historical context of the biblical account, but the powerful narrative of the Hebrew Bible is the foundation stone of Jewish identity. Thus, after generations of bondage in Egypt, Moses led the Israelites to freedom, to receive the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, and to be forged into a nation by forty years of wandering in the desert. Joshua spearheaded the conquest of Canaan, the promised land of milk and honey, where the Children of Israel were bound to establish a moral and ethical society that would be “a light unto the Gentiles.” The exodus from Egypt, indelibly implanted in Jewish consciousness, is still celebrated by Jews every year, wherever they may be, at Pesah (Passover), the festival of freedom.
The Israelites settled in the central hill country of Canaan more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ. These were the years of the biblical Judges, Prophets, and Kings. The hero-king David vanquished the Philistine champion Goliath, and his kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital, became a power in the area; his son Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE. Solomon made political alliances through marriage, expanded foreign trade, and promoted domestic prosperity. After his death the kingdom was split into two: Israel in the north with its capital at Shechem (Samaria), and Judah in the south with its capital at Jerusalem.
The small Jewish kingdoms were caught up in the power struggles of the day, between the rival empires of Egypt and Assyria. In about 720 BCE, the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and dispatched its inhabitants into oblivion; in 587 BCE the Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple and transported all but the poorest Jews to Babylon. Throughout the period of exile the Jewish people retained their faith: “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning” (Psalm 137.5). After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great allowed the exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. Many Jews remained in Babylon, and communities grew up in every major city around the Mediterranean. Thus began the pattern of coexistence of a Jewish presence in the land of Israel with Jewish communities in the outside world, known collectively as the Diaspora (dispersal).
In 332 BCE Alexander the Great conquered the region. After his death in 323 BCE his empire was divided up, with Judah eventually falling to the Syrian portion ruled by the Seleucid dynasty. Their Hellenizing policies were resisted, and they were expelled in an insurgency led by the priest Mattathias and his son Judah Maccabee, who rededicated the defiled Temple in 164 BCE, a victory celebrated to this day in the festival of Hanukkah. The Jewish royal house they founded, the Hasmoneans, ruled until Pompey’s siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, after which the Jewish state was absorbed into the Roman Empire.
In 37 BCE Herod, son of an Idumaean chieftain, was appointed King of Judea by the Roman Senate. Granted almost unlimited autonomy in the country’s internal affairs, he became one of the most powerful client kings in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Herod kept his subjects ruthlessly in check, and launched a massive construction program, which included the cities of Caesarea and Sebaste, and the fortresses at Herodium and Masada. He also rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, making it one of the most magnificent buildings of its time. Despite his many achievements he failed to win the trust and support of his Jewish subjects.
Herod’s death in 4 CE was followed by years of political turmoil, civil unrest, and messianic fervor. Cruel and corrupt Roman procurators united the disparate Jewish factions against them, and in 67 CE the Jews rose up in a general revolt. The Emperor Nero sent his general Vespasian to Judea with three legions. After Nero’s suicide in 68 CE, Vespasian ascended the imperial throne, and sent his son Titus to continue the campaign in Judea. In 70 CE the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem, and on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av the Temple was burned to the ground. All other buildings, except for three towers, were razed, and the city’s population was taken captive.
A band of Zealots had taken refuge at Masada, the fortress palace built by Herod on a barely accessible mountain plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. In 73 CE, after years of trying to dislodge them, the Romans besieged the fortress with an army of ten thousand men. When they eventually succeeded in breaching its defenses, they found that all but five of the defenders, men, women and children, had committed suicide rather than face crucifixion or enslavement.
A second, better-coordinated Jewish revolt broke out in 131, under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Akiba and the generalship of Simon Bar Kochba. The Romans were forced to evacuate Jerusalem, and a Jewish administration was set up. After four years, and very heavy Roman losses, the revolt was put down by the Emperor Hadrian in 135 ce. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman city dedicated to Jupiter, Aelia Capitolina, and Jews were forbidden to enter it. Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina.
The story of the dispersal of the Jews outside the land of Israel is long and complex, and the subject of a great body of literature. Ironically, the destruction of the Temple cult gave rise to a vigorous new form of religious and social cohesion—rabbinical Judaism, the system of law and custom that was heir to the scholastic tradition of the Pharisees.
From 135 CE onward, for almost two millennia, the Jews lived as a distinctive minority among other nations. As Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, put it, “We have preserved the Book, and the Book has preserved us.” In the Christian world Jews were subjected to nearly constant persecution. They fared better under Islam—the “Golden Age” in Muslim Spain was a high point in Jewish history. Elsewhere, in different times and places, there were periods of peace, prosperity, and cultural achievement. The land of Israel, in the meantime, was coveted and fought over by a succession of rulers, each with his own agenda.
After the destruction of the Jewish state, and with the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the country became predominantly Christian and a center of Christian pilgrimage. Queen Helena, the Emperor Constantine’s mother, visited the Holy Land in 326; churches were built in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Galilee, and monasteries founded throughout the country. A Persian invasion in 614 caused havoc, but the Byzantines retook the country in 629.
The first Muslim occupation began four years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, and lasted more than four centuries. In 637 Jerusalem was taken by Caliph Omar, who was unusually tolerant toward Christians and Jews alike. In 688 the Umayyad Caliph Abd el-Malik, based in Damascus, commissioned the magnificent Dome of the Rock on the site of the Temple on Mount Moriah, from where the Prophet Mohammed was carried on his famous night journey. The al-Aqsa mosque was built close to the Dome. In 750 Palestine passed to the Abbasid caliphate and was governed from their new capital, Baghdad. In 969 it fell to the Shi’ite Egyptian Fatimids (known to the Europeans as Saracens); the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was destroyed and Christians and Jews were harshly suppressed.
Christians had generally worshiped freely in Jerusalem under Muslim rule. In 1071, however, the nomadic Seljuk Turks, newly converted to Islam, defeated the Byzantine Emperor at Manzikert near Lake Van, and expelled the Fatimids from Palestine and Syria. In 1077 they closed Jerusalem to Christian pilgrims. The Byzantine Emperor and pilgrims appealed to Pope Urban II for help in 1095. In response he called for a Crusade, or holy war, to liberate the Holy Land from the heathen. Between 1096 and 1204 there were four major European Christian campaigns to the Middle East.
In July 1099, after a five-week siege, a great Crusader army led by Godfrey de Bouillon captured Jerusalem, massacring most of the city’s non-Christian inhabitants, and burning its synagogues with the Jews inside. Godfrey established the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. On his death in 1100 he was succeeded by his brother, Baldwin. From the mid twelfth century, however, the Christian territories were on the defensive, despite the formation of the great military-religious orders of the Knights of St. John and the Knights Templar.
In 1171 the Seljuks of Mosul destroyed Fatimid power in Egypt and installed their Kurdish general, Saladin, as ruler there. The impact was electrifying. Saladin swept through Galilee and defeated the Christian army under Guy de Lusignan at the Horns of Hattin near Lake Tiberias, before taking Jerusalem in 1187. In the region, only Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch remained in Christian hands. In response the Europeans mounted the Third Crusade. Under the leadership of Richard the Lion-Heart of England, the Crusaders managed to recapture a narrow strip of the coast, including Acre, but not Jerusalem. Richard returned to Europe after making a truce with Saladin. Later campaigns by European monarchs, including the future Edward I of England, came to nothing. Finally, the Mameluke Sultanate of Egypt reconquered Palestine and Syria, taking the last Christian outpost in 1302.
The Mameluke dynasty, descended from Turkish and Circassian slave soldiers, held power in Egypt from 1250 to 1517. Under their rule Palestine entered a period of decline. Ports were destroyed to prevent further crusades, and commerce dwindled. Ultimately the country, including Jerusalem, was virtually abandoned; the small local Jewish community was totally impoverished. In the final period of Mameluke rule the country was beset by power struggles and natural disasters.
In 1517 Palestine became part of the expanding Ottoman Empire, as part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus-Syria. The present walls of Jerusalem were built by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1542. After 1660 it became part of the vilayet of Saida (in Lebanon).
At the commencement of Ottoman rule, there were about 1,000 Jewish families living in the country, descendants of Jews who had always lived there as well as immigrants from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. In 1700 work started on the “Hurva” synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1831 Mohammed Ali, the Egyptian viceroy nominally subject to the Sultan of Turkey, occupied the country and opened it up to European influence. Although the Ottomans reasserted direct control in 1840, Western influence continued. In 1856 the Sultan issued the Edict of Toleration for all religions in the empire, and Jewish and Christian activity in the Holy Land increased.
The desire to return to the land of Israel (Hebrew, Eretz Yisrael) had been preserved in the liturgy and folk consciousness of the Jews since the time of the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce. Belief in the return of the Jews to Zion was an essential part of Jewish messianism. Thus, long before the invention of political Zionism, Jewish attachment to the Holy Land found expression in Aliyah (“ascension,” or immigration) to Eretz Yisrael. Supported by Jewish philanthropy, Jews came from countries as far flung as Morocco, Yemen, Bukhara, Romania, and Russia. In 1860 Jews established the first settlement outside Jerusalem’s city walls. Before Zionist colonization began there were already sizeable Jewish communities in Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Jericho, and Hebron. The Jewish population in the country as a whole grew by 104 percent between 1890 and 1914.
Zionism was the name adopted in 1890 by the Jewish national movement that sought to establish an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine. The word “Zion” referred at first to the hill in Jerusalem on which King David built the Temple. In time it became synonymous with the Temple, the city, and the Holy Land itself.
In eighteenth-century Europe, the Enlightenment had seemed to herald an age of tolerance and reason in which Jews could participate as equals in civic society. But emancipation brought new problems as assimilated Western Jews entered the middle classes and the professions. Secular European nationalism spawned both modern “scientific” racist and mystical-nationalist forms of anti-Semitism.
In underdeveloped Tsarist Russia in the 1880s officially inspired pogroms—the pillage, rape, and murder of Jews in their rural settlements—strengthened the feeling that salvation lay in an independent homeland and gave urgency to the ancient religious longing for a return to Zion. Initially without a coherent plan, the Zionist movement under Theodor Herzl developed a political program to obtain sovereign rights in Eretz Yisrael.
The effort to secure a Jewish homeland won a measure of support with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, declared the British government to be in favor of the establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people.
At the same time, in the course of the First World War, undertakings were given to Arab national leaders to encourage them to rise up against their Ottoman masters. After the war the Ottoman Empire was dismembered, and the newly founded League of Nations granted Great Britain a mandate to govern Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River.
An assimilated Austro-Hungarian Jewish intellectual, Herzl was the Paris correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, an influential liberal newspaper, during the notorious Dreyfus Affair. He reported on, and was shaken by, the outbreak of mass anti-Semitism in France over the court martial in 1894 of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer convicted of spying for Germany on the basis of forged evidence.
The Dreyfus trial convinced Herzl that in an age of nationalism the only solution to the Jewish predicament was political—the creation of a Jewish state. With energy and determination he dedicated himself to the cause, writing a pamphlet entitled Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in 1895. He canvassed the support of influential Jews and ideologically disparate Zionist groups, and convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. In all, between 1897 and 1902 he convened six Zionist Congresses, creating the infrastructure and the tools for a concerted political effort.
Herzl’s 1902 novel Altneuland (“Old-New Land”), setting out his vision of a cooperative Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, reflects many of the prevailing nineteenth-century ideas of progressive and socialist utopias. His opening words were, “If you will it, it is no dream.”
Herzl met with world leaders and government ministers in an effort to obtain stopgap sites to locate the Jewish State, and to elicit their encouragement and support. Alternative sites proposed were Palestine, Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, and El Arish. The British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s offer in 1903 of East Africa (Uganda) was unacceptable, particularly to the Russian Congress delegates.
Long recognized as the leader of modern Zionism, Herzl died in 1904. He was buried in Vienna, and after the establishment of the State his remains were brought to Israel and reburied on Mount Herzl in West Jerusalem.
The terms of the Palestine Mandate incorporated Article 6 of the Balfour Declaration, undertaking to facilitate and encourage Jewish immigration and settlement while ensuring that the rights and positions of other sections of the population were not prejudiced. It was also based upon the principle that the mandated territory be brought to independence as soon as possible. Thus, having made contradictory promises, Britain was embarking on a near-impossible mission. One of its first acts, in 1922, was to create the Emirate of Trans-Jordan on the east side of the Jordan River. Jews were permitted to settle only in western Palestine.
Between 1919 and 1939 successive waves of Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, contributing to the growth and development of the local Jewish community, or Yishuv. About 35,000, mainly from Russia, came between 1919 and 1923. They laid the foundations of an advanced social and economic infrastructure, returning to the land and establishing unique communal and cooperative forms of rural settlement—the kibbutz and the moshav.
The next influx of some 60,000, between 1924 and 1932, arriving in the main from Poland, was drawn to the cities and contributed to the expansion of urban life. They settled mainly in the new city of Tel Aviv, in Haifa, and in Jerusalem, where they set up small businesses, construction firms, and light industry. The last major wave of immigration took place in the 1930s, following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The newcomers, some 165,000, many of whom were professionals and intellectuals, constituted the first large-scale immigration from Western and Central Europe and had a considerable impact on the community’s commercial and cultural future.
Palestinian Arab opposition to Zionism expressed itself in riots and massacres in the 1920s—in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed, Haifa, Motza, and elsewhere—and a general Arab revolt in 1936–8, led by Haj Amin Al-Husseni (and financed by the Axis powers), in which Arab and Jewish paramilitary groups clashed for the first time. Britain responded to the situation with the Peel Commission in 1937, which recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states, with British control of Jerusalem and Haifa, which the Jews reluctantly accepted but the Arabs rejected.
War with Germany was now looming, and Britain, anxious to secure Arab support throughout the region, redefined its Palestine policy in the MacDonald White Paper of 1939. This effectively put an end to further Jewish immigration and prohibited the purchase of land by Jews—denying the Jews of Europe refuge in Palestine and abandoning them to their fate. Ships carrying Jewish refugees were turned back. Some sailed around the world in search of refuge in other countries, some were sunk. The White Paper caused a shocked Yishuv to reevaluate its relationship with Britain, and led to a more militant Zionist policy.
Three Jewish underground movements operated during the British Mandate period. The largest was the Haganah, founded in 1920 by the Zionist Labor movement to safeguard the security of the Jewish community. It responded to restrictions on Jewish immigration with mass demonstrations and sabotage. The Etzel, or Irgun, established by the opposition nationalist Revisionist movement in 1931 (and later led by Menachem Begin, who became Israeli prime minister in 1977), carried out covert military actions against both Arab and British targets. The smallest and most extreme group, the Lehi, or Stern Gang, started terrorist activities in 1940. The three movements were disbanded with the establishment of the State in 1948.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Yishuv concentrated on helping Britain in the fight against Germany. Over 26,000 men and women of the Jewish community in Palestine served in the British forces in the army, air force, and navy. In September 1944, the Jewish Brigade was formed as an independent military unit of the British army, with its own flag and emblem, comprising some 5,000 men. The Brigade saw action in Egypt, northern Italy, and northwest Europe. After the Allied victory in Europe, many Brigade members contributed to the clandestine effort to bring Holocaust survivors to Palestine.
It is not possible to separate the conflict in the Middle East from the Nazi Holocaust. Nothing in all the years of dispersal could have prepared the Jewish people, or the world, for the horror of their fate during the Second World War. In a systematic plan, on an industrial scale, the Nazi regime set out to liquidate the Jews of Europe, murdering six and a half million, including one and a half million children. As the German armies conquered one European country after another, Jews were rounded up and herded into ghettos. From the ghettos they were transported to concentration camps where they died of disease and starvation, were shot in mass executions, or put to death in gas chambers. The few who escaped the dragnet fled to other countries, joined the partisans, or were hidden by non-Jews at risk of their own lives. Only one-third of European Jewry, including those who had left Europe before the war, survived. Not until the end of the war did the world learn of the magnitude of the genocide. For most Jews, whatever their previous positions, the establishment of a Jewish homeland and sanctuary was now a humanitarian necessity, a moral imperative, and an expression of the Jewish determination to survive.
After the war, Britain increased the restrictions on the number of Jews permitted to enter and settle in Palestine. The Yishuv responded by engaging in “illegal immigration,” organizing a network of activists to rescue Holocaust survivors. Between 1945 and 1948, some 85,000 Jews were smuggled into the country by secret, often dangerous, routes, in spite of a British naval blockade and border patrols. Those who were caught were interned in detention camps on Cyprus or returned to Europe.
Jewish resistance to the Mandate increased, and the different Jewish underground groups contributed to an escalating cycle of violence culminating, in 1946, in a bomb attack on the British military headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which ninety-one people were killed. Amid mounting tension Britain handed the problem of Palestine over to the United Nations. Lobbying continued, and a special UN committee visited Palestine and made its recommendations.
On November 29, 1947, with US and Soviet support, despite bitter opposition by the Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two: a state for the Jews and a state for the Arabs. The Zionists accepted this; the Arabs rejected it. Riots broke out in Palestine and across the Arab world. In January 1948, while Britain was still nominally in control, an Arab “Army of Liberation,” organized by the Arab League, arrived in Palestine to join the local Palestinian militia. They invited the world’s media to observe specially staged maneuvers.
Britain declared its intention to withdraw in May, and refused to hand over authority to any body—Arab, Jewish, or United Nations. In the spring of 1948 the Arab forces blocked the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv road, cutting off Jerusalem from the rest of the Jewish population.
On the day the British finally withdrew, May 14, 1948, the State of Israel, with 650,000 Jewish inhabitants, was formally proclaimed, with Chaim Weizmann as its president and David Ben Gurion as prime minister. The Declaration of Independence read, “The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all the countries of their dispersion.”
The following day, Israel was attacked by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. This was a fight for survival. In the course of the conflict around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled to neighboring Arab countries, where, in the absence of a peace treaty, they remained refugees. By the ceasefire of January 7, 1949, the Israelis had driven the Arab armies back and added substantially to the territory allocated to them in the UN resolution. Afterward most of the area designated by the UN as an Arab state, including East Jerusalem and the Old City, was annexed by Jordan.
After 1948 Israel doubled its population in four years through immigration. The displaced Jews of Europe were joined by some 600,000 Jews fleeing persecution in Arab lands. The absorption of so many newcomers from totally different cultures into the fabric of a tiny host community, while it was still sorting out its basic infrastructure, is without precedent and a huge achievement.
The years since the establishment of the State have been turbulent and dramatic, with far-reaching consequences for the wider region. Paradoxically, the implacable hostility of its neighbors has helped bind Israeli society together and been a stimulus to growth and invention.
1956: The Sinai Campaign
In 1955 Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, cutting off the port of Eilat, and established a unified command with Jordan and Syria. In July 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal, and closed it to Israeli shipping. In October, Israeli forces, in a preemptive strike, took control of the Sinai Peninsula. Under intense US and UN pressure, Israel withdrew after receiving international assurances that her vital waterways would remain open.
1960: The Eichmann Trial
Adolf Eichmann, chief administrator of Hitler’s extermination program, was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli intelligence agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. Found guilty of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people, he was sentenced to death and hanged on May 30, 1962. This is the only sentence of capital punishment in the history of the State of Israel.
1967: The Six-Day War
Nasser massed troops in the Sinai Peninsula, expelled the UN observer force from the border with Israel, and closed the Red Sea Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. King Hussein of Jordan placed his army under Egyptian command and admitted Iraqi forces into the country. In Israel, General Moshe Dayan was appointed Minister of Defense. Yitzhak Rabin was the Chief of Staff.
On June 5, in a surprise predawn raid, Israeli planes destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground. Ground forces moved into Sinai and, in a repetition of the Sinai Campaign, sped toward the Suez Canal. After Jordanian and Syrian attacks, Israel captured East Jerusalem, the Jordanian West Bank, and the Syrian fortifications on the Golan Heights. In six days the war was over. The Gaza strip and the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, including the southern slopes of Mount Hermon, and the West Bank up to the Jordan River, including the Old City of Jerusalem, were in Israeli hands.
1972: Munich Olympic Games Massacre
At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, and then killed by their captors during a botched rescue attempt by the German security forces.
1973: The Yom Kippur War
Egypt and Syria launched coordinated attacks on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish year—a day of fasting, when the streets are clear of traffic and neither radio nor television are on the air. Arab gains at the outset were substantial. Two weeks later the situation was reversed, albeit with heavy losses. Israeli forces under General Ariel Sharon had crossed the Suez Canal and surrounded the Egyptian Third Army.
1976: Entebbe
An Air France plane on the way to Tel Aviv was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to Entebbe, Uganda. In a bold and dramatic mission, Israeli troops flew out to Africa and rescued the passengers who were being held hostage at Entebbe Airport.
1977: Menachem Begin Prime Minister
For the first time since the establishment of the state, the Likud Party, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, defeated the Labor Party in elections and formed a right-wing government.
1979: Peace With Egypt
In 1979, two years after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic address to the Knesset in Jerusalem, and a year after signing the Camp David Accords under the auspices of US President Jimmy Carter, Israel and Egypt signed a formal peace treaty in Washington. This was the first peace treaty with an Arab country.
1981: Bombing of the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor
In June 1981, Israeli planes bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, removing the immediate threat of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program.
In response to attacks on Israel’s northern towns and villages by the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon. Initially intending to advance no further than forty kilometers, they swept on to Beirut. The PLO fighters were shipped out ignominiously to Tunisia, but world opinion, and facts on the ground—including the infamous massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Lebanese Christian Phalangists—forced Israel to withdraw to a narrow strip north of its border.
1987: The First Intifada
In the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians demonstrated violently against the Israeli occupation. A campaign of commercial strikes, rallies, and stone-throwing disrupted life in Israel and the territories.
1991: The Gulf War
After the American-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq in January–February 1991, Saddam Hussein launched Scud ballistic missiles against Israel. Fortunately these did not have chemical warheads and missed almost all their targets.
1993: The Oslo Accords
Secret talks in Oslo between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams resulted in an agreement under which there would be mutual recognition and a cessation of violence. Its signing, on September 13, 1993, was preceded by an exchange of letters between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Rabin, in which the PLO renounced the use of terrorism, pledged to invalidate those articles in its Covenant that denied Israel’s right to exist, and committed itself to a peaceful resolution of the decades-long conflict. In response Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would, step by step, become self-governing, and Israel would halt settlement activities in the territories.
1994: Peace with Jordan
Following the Oslo Peace Accords with the PLO, Israel signed a formal peace treaty with Jordan.
1995: The Oslo Interim Agreement
This broadened Palestinian self-government through an elected self-governing authority, the Palestinian Legislative Council, and the continued redeployment of the Israel Defense Force in the West Bank. It also set out a procedure that would lead to a Final Status Agreement.
1995: The Assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
On November 4, 1995, Israel’s Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was shot and killed by a right-wing Jewish fanatic at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
1996: A series of suicide bombings on buses and elsewhere carried out by members of the Islamic fundamentalist terror group Hamas undermined the peace process and the government of Shimon Peres.
1996: The right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister.
1998: The Wye River Plantation talks resulted in agreement on Israeli redeployment and release of poltical prisoners, and renewed Palestinian commitment to the Oslo principles.
1999: The Labor leader, former general Ehud Barak, was elected prime minister in a landslide victory on a peace platform.
2000: In May, Israeli troops were withdrawn completely from southern Lebanon.
2000: Camp David Talks
In July, US President Clinton, Prime Minister Barak, and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat met at Camp David to hammer out a final settlement. The negotiations came tantalizingly close to an agreement, but ended in failure.
2000: The Second Intifada (the al-Aqsa Intifada)
Palestinian riots broke out after opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount on September 28, although his visit had been officially announced and approved in advance with Palestinian officials, including Arafat himself. This second, more lethal, Intifada was characterized by suicide bombings in buses, markets, shopping malls, and places of entertainment in Israel proper, and, in the territories, by car shoot-outs and knifings. Stringent anti-terrorism measures were instituted.
2001: Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister in a landslide victory over Labor, promising “peace and security.”
2002: In response to a large number of suicide bombings, Israel started operation “Defensive Wall” in the West Bank, arresting Palestinian leaders and blockading Yasser Arafat in his headquarters in Ramallah.
2003: The “Roadmap”
On May 25, 2003, Israel accepted the “Roadmap,” a peace plan devised by the US, the UN, the EU, and Russia. This sought a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, to be reached in three stages.
From the Israeli perspective, the Palestinians have failed to live up to their obligations under the first phase of the Roadmap (unconditional cessation of terrorism and an end to incitement). Among the measures taken by Israel against terrorism has been the construction of an anti-terrorist barrier—part wall, part fence—around the West Bank.
In June the new Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon called for an end to violence and pledged to abide by the Roadmap. The rejectionist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad vowed to continue the violence.
2003: On November 19 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1515 in support of the Roadmap for peace.
2004: On November 11 Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, died.
2005: In January Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority.
2005: Sharm El Sheikh Summit Conference
In February Prime Minister Sharon, President Abbas, President Mubarak of Egypt, and King Abdullah of Jordan met in Egypt to restore peace. The Intifada was declared over.
Within weeks a suicide bomb exploded in Tel Aviv. Israel froze a planned handover of Palestinian towns. Following another suicide bomb in Netanya, Israel responded with a massive anti-terror manhunt. Hamas launched rocket attacks from Gaza.
2005: Disengagement from Gaza
In August Sharon, former champion of the settler movement, unilaterally pulled Israeli forces out of the Gaza Strip, evacuating 8,000 settlers and dismantling twenty-one settlements plus another isolated four in the West Bank.
2006: Middle East Shakeup
Sharon caused an earthquake in Israeli politics when he left Likud to form a new centrist party, Kadima. In January 2006, he suffered a massive stroke from which he never recovered. He remained in a coma until his death in January 2014. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, took over the reins of government and led the party to victory in the 2006 general elections.
The Palestinian Authority elections of 2006, too, produced a shock result. To its own surprise, Hamas, the Islamist organization whose declared aim is the destruction of Israel, won a landslide majority, defeating the incumbent Fatah party. Many interpreted this victory as a vote for better governance rather than for continued conflict.
In June 2006, an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was kidnapped from within Israel by Hamas infiltrators. He was held in captivity in Gaza by Hamas until October 2011, when he was released and returned to Israel in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners.
2006: The Second Lebanon War
In July 2006, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia in southern Lebanon, fired rockets at Israeli border towns and then killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others in a cross-border raid. Israel responded with massive airstrikes followed by a ground invasion. Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets and engaged the IDF in guerrilla warfare. There were heavy losses on both sides in the month-long war, which ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire and an inconclusive result. Hezbollah is still a force in Lebanon and it was only in June 2008 that the bodies of the two soldiers whose abduction had sparked the war were returned to Israel as part of a prisoner exchange.
2008: Operation Cast Lead
In response to escalating rocket fire by Gaza militants into southern Israel, Operation Cast Lead was launched on December 27, 2008. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza followed for the next three weeks, until Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire.
2009: Elections
In the 2009 elections, although Kadima won the most seats in parliament, it was unable to form a government. The Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu formed a majority right-wing coalition government and became prime minister.
2011: Social Protests
In May 2011, a Facebook post complaining about the high price of cottage cheese led to the formation of a huge grassroots movement to protest the high cost of living in Israel. In July, tents were erected in Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv as the protests gained momentum. “Tent cities” appeared all over Israel as thousands of people joined the protests through the summer of 2011. Despite promises from the government, at the time of writing there do not appear to be any tangible long-term positive results of the social protests.
2012: Operation Pillar of Defense
An eight-day series of airstrikes began in November 2012 in response to repeated rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. Iron Dome, an air defense system, was used to repel hundreds of short-range missiles. For the first time, long-range rockets were aimed at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from Gaza.
2013: Elections
Early elections saw the rise of two new politicians: Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party, which seeks to represent the secular middle class, and Naftali Bennett of the right-wing religious Zionist Bayit Yehudi (“Jewish Home”) party. Both men joined Binyamin Netanyahu in a center-right coalition without, for the first time, the ultra-Orthodox parties. The ultra-Orthodox rejoined the government after subsequent elections.
2014: Operation Protective Edge
In June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by a local Hamas cell. In response, Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas supporters and activists in the West Bank, including former prisoners who had been freed under the deal that led to the release of Gilad Shalit. In a further inflammatory incident, a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem was kidnapped and murdered by Jewish fanatics in revenge for the kidnapping of the three Israelis.
Hamas fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza into Israel in early July, and Israel responded with air strikes. Efforts were made to calm the situation, and it was only when Hamas intensified its rocket fire, targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, that Israel reluctantly launched a ground invasion. The aim was to end the rocket fire and to destroy the huge network of tunnels built by Hamas, many of which crossed into Israel, putting southern kibbutzim and communities at risk of terror attacks.
During seven weeks of fierce fighting, an estimated 4,500 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel, and more than 5,000 military targets were hit by the IDF. More than half of the rocket launchers and all of the known cross-border attack tunnels were destroyed by Israel. More than 2,000 Gazans were killed, many of them civilians, as the rockets and tunnels were for the most part located in heavily populated areas and in hospitals, schools, and mosques. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed. The Israeli civilian casualty figure would have been much higher had it not been for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, which shot down rockets on course for built-up or populated areas.
After several broken truces, on 26 August a ceasefire brokered by Egypt came into effect, leaving long-term issues still to be discussed.
If first-time visitors expect to find Israelis, as a whole, much like their Jewish acquaintances, friends, or business associates back home, they are in for a surprise. The Israeli nation is made up of ethnically and culturally diverse types, reflecting the populations of their countries of origin. Thus, Israelis whose parents came from the Yemen look like Yemenites, slight with dark complexions, and those from Iraq look like Iraqis. Many Russian immigrants resemble the very Cossacks who carried out pogroms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Between 1948 and 1977 waves of Jews (about 745,000 in all) arrived in Israel from Muslim countries where their situation was becoming untenable. After the North African immigration in the 1950s came Poles, Dutch, “Anglo-Saxons” from the USA and the British Commonwealth, French, South Americans, Mexicans, Greeks, Turks, and other nationalities—a mosaic of cultures, values, and customs. Their Israeli-born children are called “Sabras,” after the fruit of the desert cactus plant—thorny on the outside and sweet on the inside. They carry on the traditions of their parents, or, in the case of intermarriage, might combine the two.
In the 1990s, Israel successfully absorbed more than a million immigrants from Russia and the former member states of the Soviet Union. This massive influx made a large impact on the country, substantially increasing not only the population, but also the available pool of skills and talent in technology, science, art, music, dance, and physical education. A negative impact was the growth of organized crime.
In 1984 around 7,000 Ethiopian Jews had been brought to Israel in “Operation Moses.” In 1991 they were joined by another 14,500, rescued in “Operation Solomon” in thirty hours, just before the fall of Addis Ababa to the rebel Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. Differences in culture, background, tradition, and expectations made it more difficult for these new immigrants to integrate as a community, but there have been many individual success stories, particularly in fashion and the military.
Israel is also home to a widely diverse non-Jewish population. Of its 8.68 million people, approximately 75 percent are Jewish, 21 percent are Arab, and the remainder are Druze, Circassians, and others.
Israeli Arabs, whose forebears did not flee the conflict in 1948, are citizens, voters, and office holders. They are well represented in parliament, either through their own parties or as members of the mainstream political parties, are members of trade unions, and many are enrolled in Israel’s universities. Israeli Arabs live harmoniously alongside their Jewish fellow citizens in Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, and Ramle. They run their own towns and villages through elected town councils, and practice in all the free professions.
On the negative side, they are trapped in the middle of the Middle East conflict, which not only creates divided loyalties, but affects the attitudes of many Jewish Israelis toward them, arousing mutual feelings of suspicion and distrust. Israeli Arabs are not required to serve in the Israeli army.
There are Israeli Arab success stories in every sphere: political, cultural, the media, entertainment, and sports, to name a few. Some examples are the soccer players Abbas Suan and Walid Badir, who were in the Israeli national team. There is an Arab–Jewish Youth Orchestra that performs to every sector in Israeli society and internationally. Amal Murkus is an Israeli Arab singer who lives in Israel and promotes Palestinian music and culture, performing in Israel and abroad. Achinoam Nini, a popular Jewish Israeli singer and peace activist, and Mira Awad, a well-known Arab Israeli singer and actress, performed together when they represented Israel in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.
Less constrained by notions of nationality, the Bedouin are traditionally a nomadic people who mainly live in the southern Negev. Their tents, camels, goats, and sheep can be seen from the main roads. They have a reputation for generous hospitality, and a meal in a Bedouin tent is a memorable experience for the guest. They are renowned for their tracking prowess, and many serve in the IDF as volunteer trackers guarding Israel’s borders. Government efforts to settle the Bedouin in purpose-built towns, as opposed to unrecognized villages, have been subject to criticism and only partially successful.
This closely knit community is an Ismaili sect that originated in eleventh-century Cairo around the cult of the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim. They have succeeded in keeping their religion a total secret, known only to their priests and initiates.
Those Israeli Druze who live in villages scattered throughout the Galilee have been successfully integrated into Israeli society. They serve in the IDF, where many attain high rank, and are for the most part free from the dilemmas faced by Israeli Arabs. On the other hand, the Druze living in the villages on the Golan Heights do not know whether or not the Golan will be returned to Syria, and thus have a problem deciding where their allegiance lies. The Golan Druze are not drafted into the IDF.
Muslims but not Arabs—they originated in Circassia (Cherkessia in Russian), a region in the Caucasus near the Black Sea—they are concentrated in villages in the Lower Galilee. They look Eastern European, and in addition to Hebrew speak their own language, Circassian, and Arabic. They are regarded as Israeli in all respects.
Israeli Multiculturalism
Israel’s ethnic diversity is evident in its popular culture. In 1999, Rana Raslan became the first Arab “Miss Israel,” and in 2013 Yityish Aynaw became the first Ethiopian-born Israeli to win the title. In 2014, Israel’s first series of the TV music competition the “X Factor” was won by Rose Fostanes, a Filipina caregiver.
An almost too-perfect example of multiculturalism occurred in the 2013 final of the TV show “Master Chef.” The three finalists were German-born Tom Franz, who had converted from Catholicism to Judaism, Salma Fiomy-Farij, a hijab-wearing Arab Israeli, and Jacki Azulay, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman. The final, won by Franz, broke Israeli television viewing records.
Israel is a democratic republic based on universal suffrage. Its key institutions are the presidency, a unicameral parliament (the Knesset), the government, the judiciary, and the State Comptroller.
Although his duties are largely ceremonial, the president is the Head of State and his office symbolizes the unity of the nation above and beyond party politics. A parliamentary majority elects the president for one term of seven years.
The main function of parliament is to legislate. General elections, based on a system of proportional representation, determine its composition, and its 120 members operate through plenary sessions, twelve standing committees, and three special committees. Parliament is elected for a tenure of four years but may be dissolved earlier by itself or by the prime minister.
The government is the executive arm of the state with responsibility for administering internal and external affairs, including security, and, although accountable to parliament, is equipped with wide-ranging powers.
The government is formed after an election when the president presents the party leader most likely to succeed with a mandate to submit a list of cabinet ministers for the approval of parliament. The list must be presented together with proposals of policy within twenty days. Once approved, the ministers become responsible to their leader, the prime minister, and to parliament. Most, but not all, cabinet members receive a portfolio, such as defense or foreign affairs.
Judges are appointed by the president on the recommendation of a special nominations committee consisting of Supreme Court judges, members of the bar, and public figures; they are appointed for life with mandatory retirement at the age of seventy. Civil and criminal cases are heard in magistrates’ and district courts, while juvenile, traffic, military, labor, and municipal matters are dealt with in their own special courts. There is no trial by jury in Israel. In matters of personal status such as marriage, divorce, and adoption, jurisdiction is vested in the courts of the religious institutions of Israel’s various communities.
The Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal, which can overturn the rulings of lesser tribunals. It hears petitions against any government body, in which case it is the court of first and last instance. It can also make recommendations to parliament regarding the desirability of legislative modifications, and has the authority to respond to petitions, to determine whether the implementation or interpretation of a law conforms with the intention of Israel’s basic law. Israel has no written constitution; however, most of the chapters of what would comprise a constitution exist in the form of Basic Laws, including “Human dignity and liberty (1992).”
The State Comptroller, elected by parliament for a seven-year term, carries out an internal audit and reports on the legality, regularity, effectiveness, and moral integrity of the public administration, and is authorized to inspect the financial affairs of the parties in parliament. He has no power to implement his findings, and although his reports are widely publicized in the media, not enough is done to ensure that his findings are acted on.
Parliamentary elections are general, national, direct, equal, and secret, with the entire country being one electoral constituency. Voters cast one ballot for the political party they wish to represent them in parliament. The large number of parties competing for election reflects a wide range of philosophies and beliefs concerning religious, social, security, and economic issues.
Prior to the election, each party presents its platform and list of candidates, and parliamentary seats are assigned in proportion to the number of votes the party receives as a percentage of the national vote. Since the establishment of the state, ten to fifteen parties have been elected to every parliament, and no single party has ever obtained a majority. The result has been one coalition after another, with inherent instability, backstabbing, and the wielding of undue influence by marginal parties, especially the religious parties.
The two main political parties, traditionally one left and one right, for a while both moved to the center. The smaller parties may be characterized as national religious, ultra-Orthodox, liberal left-wing, nationalist right-wing, and Arab parties. Minorities are represented in all Israeli parties.
Every citizen is eligible to vote from the age of eighteen and to be elected to parliament from the age of twenty-one.
Israelis take a great interest in politics, both in internal and security affairs and in foreign relations. There is traditionally a high electoral turnout, 77 to 87 percent of eligible voters, though in the 2006 elections that brought the new centrist party, Kadima, to power, turnout was just 63 percent. In 2009 and 2013 it was 65 percent, and in 2015 it was 72 percent.
According to one of the Basic Laws (laws dealing with constitutional issues) the Knesset, through the Central Elections Committee, may prevent a party from participating in elections if its objectives or actions, expressly or by implication, include denial of the legitimacy of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; denial of the democratic character of the State; or incitement to racism.
Election Day is a public holiday so that everyone can vote. Soldiers on active duty vote in polling stations in their units. Special arrangements are made for prison inmates to vote, as well as for those confined to hospital. Israeli law does not provide for absentee ballots, and voting takes place only on Israeli soil. The sole exceptions are Israeli citizens serving on Israeli ships and in Israeli embassies and consulates abroad.
The government is installed when the Knesset has expressed confidence in it by a majority of 61 Knesset members, and the ministers thereupon assume office.
Israel has an inordinately large number of hi-tech companies and start-ups; it has more companies on NASDAQ than any country outside the United States, apart from China, and it attracts more venture capital per person than anywhere else. One of the reasons for this success is that Israel is a small country with few natural resources, so the Israelis have had to be innovative from the outset. Then there is the army, which provides many Israelis with the opportunity to acquire technological knowledge and managerial skills. Combined with the creativity, self-discipline, and teamwork that soldiers learn, the IDF has proved to be the perfect business incubator.
Imports are primarily crude oil, grains, raw materials, rough diamonds, and military equipment. Leading exports are high-technology products, cut diamonds, industrial and agricultural products, chemicals, fashion, and security services. Israel’s military and software industries include high-tech products for aviation, communication, medical electronics, and fiber optics.
Israel suffers from a negative import/export balance but has a positive balance of payments due to large unilateral transfers and outside loans. Roughly half of its outside debt is to the USA, its major source of economic and military aid. As of July 2017, the real growth rate was 2.7 percent. The labor force, that is, those aged fifteen and over, was 3.98 million, of whom 4.4 percent were unemployed.
The Israel Defense Force’s mission statement is to defend the existence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of the State; to protect its citizens; and to combat all forces of terrorism that threaten daily life.
The IDF is a citizens’ army and the draft is a significant factor in Israeli life. All Israeli men and women are required to serve in the army. Currently, men are required to serve for two years and eight months, and women for two years. Until 2015 men had been required to serve for three years and reports suggest that this may be reinstated. After completion of military service, a man is obliged to carry out military reserve duty for a number of weeks every year, depending on the needs of the unit to which he belongs, until the age of forty-five.
In 2011, 33 percent of the IDF’s soldiers were women and 3 percent were in combat roles. Women are often instructors, and young male conscripts learn weaponry, marksmanship, and other skills from them. Women who were combat soldiers, officers, or who had certain jobs in the army, also have reserve duty.
Religious women may obtain an exemption from army service and most then volunteer to do an alternative national service (sherut leumi) for one or two years, working in hospitals, special education, disadvantaged communities, and so on.
Young Israelis from different backgrounds, origins, economic circumstances, and levels of education do their basic training and complete their military service together, and year after year meet up again for reserve duty (miluim), irrespective of what they do in daily life. Strong bonds are forged. The IDF is a unique social mechanism that helps to integrate new immigrants and transform them into Israelis. The units people serve in and their achievements are testimonials that accompany them throughout their lives, like prestigious public schools or major universities in other countries.
The IDF sees itself as an army with a civilized ethos, based on its military heritage and the traditions of the State of Israel—its democratic principles, laws and institutions, the traditions of the Jewish people throughout their history, and moral values that affirm the value and dignity of human life.
Servicemen and women are trained to set a personal example in carrying out their duties, to be conscious at all times of the value of human life, and to use their weapons sparingly so as not to harm noncombatants. They are required to act with professionalism and discipline, to refrain from giving or carrying out illegal orders, and to demonstrate comradeship and a conscious sense of mission in defending the country.
The IDF is able to send search and rescue teams and establish field hospitals quickly and is ready to assist victims of natural disasters and terror attacks abroad. It has participated in many rescue and support missions in countries such as the Philippines, Haiti, and Japan; in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and in the countries affected by the 2004 tsunami.
Israel’s three main cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, differ substantially from each other. It is said that Tel Aviv dances, Jerusalem reflects, and Haifa stands in beauty. They are discussed below. Other main towns include the Red Sea resort of Eilat; Beersheba, capital of the Negev; Ashkelon, an industrial, residential, and resort town with a good beach, holiday clubs, and marina; Ashdod, Israel’s second-largest port, given a boost by its high percentage of Russian immigrants; and Netanya, a residential, commercial, and resort town with splendid beaches and a promenade. Other towns are described in Chapter 7.
High up in the Judean hills, Jerusalem, the capital, is steeped in three thousand years of history. With a burgeoning population of more than 860,000, it is the seat of government, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the judiciary. A short distance away from these is the Old City, whose holy sites, for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, are sacred religious landmarks.
Tel Aviv, in English “the Hill of Spring,” has a population of 438,000 (though with its satellite towns and suburbs, 1.2 million). Variously called “the first Hebrew city in the modern state of Israel,” “the White City,” “the city that never sleeps,” and the “biggest little city in the world,” Tel Aviv–Jaffa hugs nearly 9 miles (14 km) of Mediterranean coastline.
“The first Hebrew city” was founded in 1909 when a group of Jewish residents of the ancient port city of Jaffa moved out of their overcrowded and hostile surroundings and established their own community north of Jaffa’s borders.
The Seashell Lottery
Legend has it that a “seashell lottery” was held on the beach to arrange a fair distribution of land among the sixty families who bought it. The names of the families were written on sixty white shells and the numbers of the plots on sixty gray shells, and the pairs of gray and white determined the distribution.
The city expanded greatly, neighborhood by neighborhood, between 1934 and 1939 with the huge influx of European immigrants escaping from Hitler, most of whom were educated and cultured. They imparted an enduring character and personality to Tel Aviv, creating a sophisticated “Mittel Europa” on the sand dunes under the blue skies of the eastern Mediterranean.
Nearly a quarter of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There is little division between the financial, commercial, and residential districts, so few areas shut down after office hours. Sister cities include Ramat Gan, a famous diamond center; Bat Yam, known for its beaches; Rehovot, for the world-renowned Weizmann Institute of Science; Herzliya, for its beaches, marina, and high technology; and Bnei Brak, for prayer and religion.
The northern coastal city of Haifa has been populated since biblical times, and is associated with the prophet Elijah. It gained a new lease of life with the building of the Haifa–Damascus railway in 1905. Jewish immigration at the end of the First World War and the harbor built by the British during the years 1929–34 gave the city a major boost. Today it is Israel’s most important port, and boasts some of the country’s most attractive beaches. The striking backdrop of the Carmel mountain range rising up from the bay makes it a strong contender for Israel’s most picturesque city.
With two world-class universities, Haifa is home to some 35,000 students and is a key contributor to Israel’s technological prowess. The Technion, Israel’s renowned institute of science, technology, and applied research, is ranked in the top fifty in the world and has recently achieved three Nobel prizes. It has pioneered technology-based enterprises that have earned the country its reputation as the world’s “Start-up Nation,” with the highest concentration of high-tech companies outside Silicon Valley. The Matam development park houses R&D centers of leading international firms such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and has consolidated Haifa’s standing as a crown jewel among Israel’s high-tech offerings.
Haifa is a truly diverse city, and its inhabitants are proud of its status as a model of coexistence. A microcosm of the country, it is a mosaic of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities who live, work, and thrive together. Haifa is also the administrative center of the Baha’i faith and home to the famous hanging gardens that house the shrine of its forerunner and first teacher, the Báb.
The political theorist and philosopher A. D. Gordon (1856–1922) believed that physical work would create a link between the settlers and their new land, and would prevent them from exploiting it like old-fashioned colonialists. With this in mind, in 1910 a group of twelve Russian idealists established Degania, the first communal settlement, or kibbutz (plural kibbutzim), at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee. Fired by a vision of a new Socialist era, they believed that what they were doing would be imitated throughout the world. Others followed, and a wave of settlements of the same kind spread all over the Yishuv.
In fact, the communal structure of the kibbutz owed more to the pressing need to solve problems than to socialist ideology. The inhospitable terrain of rocky hills, marshes, and mosquito-breeding swamps had to be cleared. In order to achieve this, and to deal with disease and protect themselves from unfriendly neighbors, they pooled their resources and relied upon each other, in the process creating a closed community where security needs, labor, and its rewards were equally shared. An elected committee decided on strategy and priorities, allocated tasks, and organized the provision of basic needs.
“Kibbutzniks” have made a contribution to the state out of all proportion to their numbers, reaching influential positions in politics and high ranks in the army, where many are prominent in elite volunteer units.
Today there are around 300 kibbutzim in Israel with a population of around 140,000 people. A survey conducted by Haifa University in 2010, when the kibbutz movement marked its centenary, found that only a quarter of kibbutzim still function as equalized cooperatives. Despite this, the mutual support and shared aims that originally formed the backbone of the kibbutz movement are still evident, and in recent years, about 2,500 people joined kibbutzim, some 60 percent of whom were returning members. Some kibbutzim are religious; some have well-run and attractive guesthouses, particularly those in scenic locations.
Many kibbutzim have established factories, often as joint ventures with outside companies, and this has had an eroding effect on kibbutz life, gradually replacing absolute equality with the infrastructure necessary to compete profitably, including salary differentials, and the employment of outside labor and people with special skills. Some of these factories have been very successful. About twenty-five kibbutz industries have so far gone public.
Another factor contributing to the erosion of their original values is that many kibbutzim permit and even encourage members to work outside the kibbutz framework. Some of these people earn high salaries, and after contributing a basic sum to the kibbutz are allowed to keep the balance. Many receive company cars and other corporate perks. Some kibbutz members also have outside sources of income derived from gifts or inheritances. There is even a plan for members to own their homes.
Many kibbutzim accept volunteers, mostly young European backpackers, who spend weeks or months living and working on the kibbutz.
Apart from the kibbutz, there have been many other forms of settlement in the country, both agricultural and urban. The moshav (plural moshavim)is a looser arrangement than the kibbutz. It is a farmers’ cooperative in which families farm their own land, live in their own houses, and lead independent lives, but conduct marketing and the acquisition of agricultural equipment collectively. Some members rent out their land while they work in the cities. Others have used their land to establish agriculture-related industries.
