Israel

Israel,[a] officially the State of Israel,[b] is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon and Syria to the north, the West Bank and Jordan to the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.[21] The country also has a small coastline on the Red Sea at its southernmost point, and part of the Dead Sea lies along its eastern border. Israel's proclaimed capital is in Jerusalem,[22] while Tel Aviv is the country's largest urban area and economic center.

Israel is located in a region known to Jews as the Land of Israel, synonymous with the Palestine region and the Holy Land. In antiquity, it was home to the Canaanite civilization followed by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Situated at a continental crossroad, the region experienced demographic changes under the rule of various empires from the Romans to the Ottomans.[23] European antisemitism in the late 19th century galvanized Zionism, which sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine and gained British support. After World War I, Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust and British colonial policy led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs,[24][25] which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after the United Nations (UN) proposed partitioning the land between them. Currently, Israel is the only country in the world where Jews constitute more than 2% of the total national population, and in which they are the largest demographic.

After the failure of the UN's 1947 partition plan and the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948. The armies of neighboring Arab states invaded the area of the former Mandate the next day, beginning the First Arab–Israeli War. Subsequent armistice agreements established Israeli control over 77 percent of the former Mandate territory.[26][27][28] The majority of Palestinian Arabs were either expelled or fled in what is known as the Nakba, with those remaining becoming the new state's main minority.[29][30][31] Over the following decades, Israel's population increased greatly as the country received an influx of Jews who emigrated, fled or were expelled from the Muslim world.[32][33] Following the 1967 Six-Day War Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights. Israel established and continues to expand settlements across the illegally occupied territories, contrary to international law, and has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in moves largely unrecognized internationally. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt—returning the Sinai in 1982—and Jordan. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords which established mutual recognition and limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. In the 2020s, it normalized relations with more Arab countries. However, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict after the interim Oslo Accords have not succeeded, and the country has engaged in several wars and clashes with Palestinian militant groups. Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism—along with accusations that it has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people—from human rights organizations and United Nations officials.

The country's Basic Laws establish a unicameral parliament elected by proportional representation, the Knesset, which determines the makeup of the government headed by the prime minister and elects the figurehead president.[34] Israel is the only country to have a revived official language, Hebrew. Its culture comprises Jewish and Jewish diaspora elements alongside Arab influences. Israel has one of the largest economies in the Middle East, the third highest nominal GDP per capita in Asia,[35] and one of the highest standards of living in Asia.[36] One of the most technologically advanced and developed countries in the world, it spends proportionally more on research and development than any other and is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons.[37][38][39]