Israel Akopkochyan

Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel also is bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.

The land held by present-day Israel witnessed some of the earliest human occupations outside Africa and was among the earliest known sites of agriculture. It was inhabited by the Canaanites during the Bronze Age.Jonathan M Golde
''Ancient Canaan and Israel: An Introduction,''
OUP, 2009 pp. 3–4. During the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged, and later fell, respectively, to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 720 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE). During that period, much of the Hebrew Bible was written. The region was then ruled by the Achaemenid, Macedonian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid empires. A successful Maccabean revolt led to the rise of an independent Hasmonean kingdom, but it was gradually incorporated into the Roman Republic. A series of large-scale Jewish revolts against Roman rule were unsuccessful, leading to wide-scale destruction, a high toll of life, and mass displacement. In the Middle Ages, the region was part of the Byzantine Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, and Fatimid Caliphate. With the First Crusade, Crusader states were established. The Ayyubids pushed back the crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk Sultanate, which ceded the territory to the Ottoman Empire at the outset of the early modern period.

During the 19th century, the Zionist movement began promoting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Syria. Following World War I, Britain was granted control of the region by the League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. After World War II, the newly formed United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, and an internationalized Jerusalem. Partition was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders and the Arab states. Following a civil war within Mandatory Palestine between Yishuv and Palestinian Arab forces, Israel declared independence at the termination of the British Mandate. A day later, several surrounding Arab countries intervened, leading to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements