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The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as
conflicts
and come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.
In the following centuries, the
Byzantine Christian rule over the Land of Israel was superseded in the Muslim conquest of the Levant by the Rashidun Caliphate, to later be ruled by the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, before being conquered by the Seljuks in the 1070s. From the 11th century to the 13th century, the Land of Israel became the centre for intermittent religious wars between European Christian and Muslim armies as part of the Crusades, until Saladin’sAyyubids finally expelled Christian rule late in the 12th century. In the 13th century, the Land of Israel became subject to Mongol conquest, though this was routed by the Mamluk Sultanate in the Mamluk—Ilkhanid War, under whose rule it remained until the 16th century. The Mamluks were eventually defeated by the Ottoman Empire, and the region became an Ottoman province
until the early 20th century.
The late 19th century saw the rise of a Jewish nationalist movement in Europe known as
Balfour declaration. Palestinian Arabs opposed this design, asserting their rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish immigration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions
grew in the succeeding decades of British administration.
Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago.[17] Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.[18]
Canaan
Main articles:
Tel Dan
The
Middle Bronze Age (2100–1550 BCE).[19] There were probably independent or semi-independent city-states. Cities were often surrounded by massive earthworks, resulting in the archaeological mounds, or 'tells' common in the region today. In the late Middle Bronze Age, the Nile Delta in Egypt was settled by Canaanites who maintained close connections with Canaan. During that period, the Hyksos, dynasties of Canaanite/Asiatic origin, ruled much of Lower Egypt before being overthrown in the 16th century BCE.[20]
During the
Gaza.[21] In 1457 BCE, Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by Kadesh's king at the Battle of Megiddo
.
In the Late Bronze Age there was a period of civilizational collapse in the Middle East,[22] Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control ended.[23][24] There is evidence that urban centers such as Hazor, Beit She'an, Megiddo, Ekron, Isdud and Ascalon were damaged or destroyed.[25] Two groups appear at this time, and are associated with the transition to the Iron Age (they used iron weapons/tools which were better than earlier bronze): the Sea Peoples, particularly the Philistines, who migrated from the Aegean world and settled on the southern coast, and the Israelites, whose settlements dotted the highlands.[20]
Some 2nd millennium inscriptions about the semi-nomadic
Habiru people are believed to be connected to the Hebrews,[26] who were generally synonymous with the Biblical Israelites.[27] Many scholars regard this connection to be plausible since the two ethnonyms have similar etymologies,[28] although others argue that Habiru refers to a social class found in every Near Eastern society, including Hebrew societies.[29]
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel (as ysrỉꜣr) occurs in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, erected for Pharaoh Merneptah (son of Ramesses II) c. 1209 BCE, which states "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not."[30]
The Merneptah Stele. According to mainstream archeology, it represents the first instance of the name "Israel" in the historical record.
Archeological evidence indicates that during the early Iron Age I, hundreds of small villages were established on the highlands of Canaan on both sides of the Jordan River, primarily in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. These villages had populations of up to 400, were largely self-sufficient[31][32] and lived from herding, grain cultivation, and growing vines and olives with some economic interchange.[33] The pottery was plain and undecorated.[20] Writing was known and available for recording, even in small sites.[34]William G. Dever sees this "Israel" in the central highlands as a cultural and probably political entity, more an ethnic group rather than an organized state.[35]
Modern scholars believe that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples and their cultures through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on a national god Yahweh.[36][37][38] According to McNutt, "It is probably safe to assume that sometime during Iron Age I a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'", differentiating itself from the Canaanites through such markers as the prohibition of intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.[39]
Philistine cooking tools and the prevalence of pork in their diets, and locally made Mycenaean pottery—which later evolved into bichrome Philistine pottery—all support their foreign origin. Their cities were large and elaborate, which—together with the findings—point out to a complex, hierarchical society.[20][40]
A stele of Seti I found in Beth-She'an, dating to ca. 1289 BCE, revealed that a Raham tribe lived in Israel. They were named after the biblical Abraham.[41]Israel Finkelstein believes that the oldest Abraham traditions originated in the Iron Age, which focus on the themes of land and offspring and possibly, his altars in Hebron. Abraham's Mesopotamian heritage is not discussed.[42]
In the 10th century BCE, the Israelite kingdoms of Judah and Israel emerged. The Hebrew Bible states that these were preceded by a single kingdom ruled by Saul, David and Solomon, who is said to have built the First Temple. Archaeologists have debated whether the united monarchy ever existed,[Notes 1][43][44] with those in favor of such a polity existing further divided between maximalists who support the Biblical accounts,[45] and minimalists who argue that any such polity was likely smaller than suggested.[46][47]
Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan.[53]Samaria, the capital, was home to one of the largest Iron Age structures in the Levant.[54][55] The Kingdom of Israel's capital moved between Shechem, Penuel and Tirzah before Omri settled it in Samaria, and the royal succession was often settled by a military coup d'état. The Kingdom of Judah was smaller but more stable; the Davidic dynasty ruled the kingdom for the four centuries of its existence, with the capital always in Jerusalem, controlling the Judaean Mountains, most of the Shephelah and the Beersheba valley in the northern Negev.[56]
In 854 BCE, according to Assyrian records (the
Ben Hadad II of Aram-Damascus managed to repulse the incursions of the Assyrians, with a victory at the Battle of Qarqar. This is not reported in the Bible which describes conflict between Ahab and Ben Hadad.[58] Another important discovery of the period is the Mesha Stele, a Moabite stele found in Dhiban when Emir Sattam Al-Fayez led Henry Tristram to it as they toured the lands of the vassals of the Bani Sakher.[59] The stele is now in the Louvre. In the stele, Mesha, king of Moab, tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to the Kingdom of Israel, but at length, Chemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. It refers to Omri, king of Israel,[60] to the god Yahweh,[61][60] and may contain another early reference to the House of David.[61]Jehu, son of Omri, is referenced by the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III
Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria invaded Israel in around 732 BCE.[62] The Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians following a long siege of the capital Samaria around 720 BCE.[63] The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he captured Samaria and deported 27,290 inhabitants to Mesopotamia.[64] It is likely that Shalmaneser captured the city since both the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible viewed the fall of Israel as the signature event of his reign.[65] The Assyrian deportations became the basis for the Jewish idea of the Ten Lost Tribes. Foreign groups were settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the fallen kingdom.[66] The Samaritans claim to be descended from Israelites of ancient Samaria who were not expelled by the Assyrians.
free speech and may have played a significant social and political role in Israel and Judah.[71][72] They urged rulers and the general populace to adhere to god-conscious ethical ideals, seeing the Assyrian invasions as a divine punishment of the collective resulting from ethical failures.[73]
Under King Josiah (ruler from 641–619 BCE), the Book of Deuteronomy was either rediscovered or written. The Book of Joshua and the accounts of the kingship of David and Solomon in the Book of Kings are believed to have the same author. The books are known as Deuteronomist and considered to be a key step in the emergence of monotheism in Judah. They emerged at a time that Assyria was weakened by the emergence of Babylon and may be a committing to text of pre-writing verbal traditions.[74]
In 587 or 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and razed the city.[75][81][82] The Kingdom of Judah was abolished, and many of its citizens were exiled to Babylon. The former territory of Judah became a Babylonian province called Yehud with its center in Mizpah, north of the destroyed Jerusalem.[81]
Babylonian diaspora after 587/86 BCE
Tablets that describe King Jehoiachin's rations were found in the ruins of Babylon. He was eventually released by the Babylonians. According to both the Bible and the Talmud, the Davidic dynasty continued as head of Babylonian Jewry, called the "Rosh Galut" (exilarch or head of exile). Arab and Jewish sources show that the Rosh Galut continued to exist for another 1,500 years in what is now Iraq, ending in the eleventh century.[83]
Obverse of Yehud silver coinSilver coin (gerah) minted in the Persian province of Yehud, dated c. 375-332 BCE. Obv: Bearded head wearing crown, possibly representing the Persian Great King. Rev: Falcon facing, head right, with wings spread; Paleo-HebrewYHD to right.
In 538 BCE,
Yehud
until 332 BCE.
The final text of the
Aramaic script (also known as the Ashuri alphabet), which they brought back from Babylon; this is the current Hebrew script. The Hebrew calendar closely resembles the Babylonian calendar and probably dates from this period.[87]
The Bible describes tension between the returnees, the elite of the First Temple period,
High Priests[90] and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.[91]
A Judean military garrison was placed by the Persians on
175 papyrus documents recording activity in this community were discovered, including the "Passover Papyrus", a letter instructing the garrison on how to correctly conduct the Passover feast.[92]
In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Persian Empire. After his death in 322 BCE, his generals divided the empire and Judea became a frontier region between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt.[93] Following a century of Ptolemaic rule, Judea was conquered by the Seleucid Empire in 200 BCE at the battle of Panium. Hellenistic rulers generally respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions.[94][95] Judea was ruled by the hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel as a Hellenistic vassal.[96] Nevertheless, the region underwent a process of Hellenization, which heightened tensions between Greeks, Hellenized Jews, and observant Jews. These tensions escalated into clashes involving a power struggle for the position of high priest and the character of the holy city of Jerusalem.[97]
When
Greek gods in Modi'in. His son Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles, and in 164 BCE, he captured Jerusalem and restored temple worship, an event commemorated by the Jewish festival of Hannukah.[98][99]
Rabbinical Judaism. After Jannaeus' widow, queen Salome Alexandra, died in 67 BCE, her sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II engaged in a civil war over succession. The conflicting parties requested Pompey's assistance on their behalf, which paved the way for a Roman takeover of the kingdom.[106]
Herod's Temple), making it one of the largest religious structures in the world. At this time, Jews formed as much as 10% of the population of the entire Roman Empire, with large communities in North Africa and Arabia.[108]
Augustus made Judea a Roman province in 6 CE, deposing the last Jewish king, Herod Archelaus, and appointing a Roman governor. There was a small revolt against Roman taxation led by Judas of Galilee and over the next decades tensions grew between the Greco-Roman and Judean population centered on attempts to place effigies of emperor Caligula in synagogues and in the Jewish temple.[109][110][non-primary source needed] In 64 CE, the Temple High Priest Joshua ben Gamla introduced a religious requirement for Jewish boys to learn to read from the age of six. Over the next few hundred years this requirement became steadily more ingrained in Jewish tradition.[111] The latter part of the Second Temple period was marked by social unrest and religious turmoil, and messianic expectations filled the atmosphere.[112]
In 66 CE, the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) broke out due to the repressive rule of Roman governors, growing hostility between the wealthy nobles and the impoverished masses, clashes between Jews and pagans in mixed cities, and tensions between the Roman and Jewish religions.[113] The revolting Jews named their state "Israel".[114] Despite early Jewish victories, the provisional government quickly collapsed, and Jews were split up into several warrying factions with conflicting agendas. Eventually, the Roman army under the command of future emperors Vespasian and his son Titus besieged and destroyed the major Jewish strongholds one by one, including the cities of Yodfat, Gamla and the fortress of Masada. After a brutal five-month siege in 70 CE, Jerusalem and the Second Temple were completely destroyed.[115]
The revolt's failure had profound demographic, theological, political, and economic consequences. Many Jews died fighting and under siege during the revolt, and a sizable portion of the population was either expelled from the country or displaced.
Yochanan ben Zakai, obtained Roman permission to establish a school at Yavne. Their teachings became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism, which eventually became the mainstream form of Judaism.[118][119][120][121]
From 115 to 117, tensions and attacks on Jews around the Roman Empire led to a massive Jewish uprising against Rome, known as the Kitos War. Jews in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia fought against Rome. This conflict was accompanied by large-scale massacres of both sides. Cyprus was so severely depopulated that new settlers were imported and Jews banned from living there.[122]
In 132 CE, the
Simeon bar Yochai, is regarded as the author of the Zohar, the foundational text for Kabbalistic thought. However, modern scholars believe it was written in Medieval Spain.[125] Christians refused to participate in the revolt and from this point the Jews regarded Christianity as a separate religion.[126]
The Bar Kokhba revolt was eventually crushed by emperor Hadrian himself, with serious losses. Today, it is viewed by modern scholars as having decisive historic importance.[8] According to Cassius Dio, writing in the century following the revolt, "50 of the Jews most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out, thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate." While scholars debate whether these numbers are accurate,[127] archaeological surveys and excavations appear to confirm the claim of Cassius Dio that the district of Judaea was largely depopulated. Most scholars agree that, in contrast to the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, Judea was devastated after the Bar Kokhba revolt, with many Jews killed, exiled, or sold into slavery.[8][9][10][11]
Around the time of the revolt, the province of Judaea (Iudaea) was renamed Syria Palaestina. The commonly-held view is that it was implemented as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt or to "disassociate the Jewish people from their historical homeland" and hold Hadrian accountable.[128][129][130][131][132] However, no evidence exists for this narrative, and it has been disputed by scholars in recent years.[133][134][135][136] No other revolt led to a province being renamed.[137]
As a result of the disastrous effects of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled.[138] Over the next centuries, more Jews left to communities in the Diaspora, especially the large, speedily growing Jewish communities in Babylonia and Arabia.[139] Others remained in the Land of Israel, where the spiritual and demographic center shifted from the depopulated Judea to Galilee.[140][141][142] Jewish presence also continued in the southern Hebron Hills, in Ein Gedi, and on the coastal plain.[11][140] The Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, huge compendiums of Rabbinical discussions, were compiled during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem.[143]
Following the revolt, Judea's countryside was penetrated by pagan populations,[144] including migrants from the nearby provinces of Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia,[145][146] whereas Aelia Capitolina, its immediate vicinity, and administrative centers were now inhabited by Roman veterans and settlers from the western parts of the empire.[147]
The Romans permitted a hereditary Rabbinical Patriarch from the
Heraclius returning the True Cross to Jerusalem, 15th-century painting by Miguel Ximénez
The Roman Empire split in 390 CE and the region became part of the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire. Under Byzantine rule, much of the region and its non-Jewish population were won over by Christianity, which eventually became the dominant religion in the region. The presence of holy sites drew Christian pilgrims, some of whom chose to settle, contributing to the rise of a Christian majority. Christian authorities encouraged this pilgrimage movement and appropriated lands, constructing magnificent churches at locations linked to biblical narratives.[158] Additionally, monks established monasteries near pagan settlements, encouraging the conversion of local pagans.[144]
During the Byzantine period, the Jewish presence in the region declined, and it is believed that Jews lost their majority status in Palestine in the fourth century.[159] While Judaism remained the sole non-Christian religion tolerated, restrictions on Jews gradually increased, prohibiting the construction of new places of worship, holding public office, or owning Christian slaves.[160] In 425, after the death of the last Nasi, Gamliel VI, the Nasi office and the Sanhedrin were officially abolished, and the standing of yeshivot weakened. The leadership void was gradually filled by the Jewish center in Babylonia, which would assume a leading role in the Jewish world for generations after the Byzantine period.[158]
During the 5th and 6th centuries CE, the region witnessed a series of Samaritan revolts against Byzantine rule. Their suppression resulted in the decline of Samaritan presence and influence, and further consolidated Christian domination.[161] Though it is acknowledged that some Jews and Samaritans converted to Christianity during the Byzantine period, the reliable historical records are limited, and they pertain to individual conversions rather than entire communities.[140][162]
In 611,
captured Jerusalem in 614.[163] The "True Cross" was captured by the Persians. The Jewish Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen may also have provided support. Nehemiah ben Hushiel was made governor of Jerusalem. Christian historians of the period claimed the Jews massacred Christians in the city, but there is no archeological evidence of destruction, leading modern historians to question their accounts.[164][165][166] In 628, Kavad II (son of Kosrow) returned Palestine and the True Cross to the Byzantines and signed a peace treaty with them. Following the Byzantine re-entry, Heraclius massacred the Jewish population of Galilee and Jerusalem, while renewing the ban on Jews entering the latter.[167]
Ramlah was built as the Muslim capital of Jund Filastin,[168] while Tiberias
served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn. The Byzantine ban on Jews living in Jerusalem came to an end.
In 661, Muawiyah was crowned Caliph in Jerusalem, becoming the first of the (Damascus-based)
Al-Aqsa Mosque, was also erected on the Temple Mount in 705. Both buildings were rebuilt in the 10th century following a series of earthquakes.[169]
In 750, Arab discrimination against non-Arab Muslims led to the
Umar II introduced a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear identifying clothing. Jews were required to wear yellow stars round their neck and on their hats, Christians had to wear Blue. Clothing regulations arose during repressive periods of Arab rule and were more designed to humiliate then persecute non-Muslims. A poll tax was imposed on all non-Muslims by Islamic rulers and failure to pay could result in imprisonment or worse.[170]
In 982, Caliph
Church of Holy Sepulchre (believed to be Jesus burial site), was destroyed by Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, who relented ten years later and paid for it to be rebuilt. In 1020 al-Hakim claimed divine status and the newly formed Druze religion gave him the status of a messiah.[169]
Demographic changes
Although the Arab conquest was relatively peaceful and did not cause widespread destruction, it did alter the country's demographics significantly.
Islamization, that resulted from the flight of non-Muslim populations, immigration of Muslims, and local conversion. The majority of the remaining populace belonged to the lowest classes. While the Arab conquerors themselves left the area after the conquest and moved on to other places, the settlement of Arab tribes in the area both before and after the conquest also contributed to the Islamization.[172][173][171] As a result, the Muslim population steadily grew and the area became gradually dominated by Muslims on a political and social level.[140][174]
During the early Islamic period, many Christians and Samaritans, belonging to the Byzantine upper class, migrated from the coastal cities to northern Syria and Cyprus, which were still under Byzantine control, while others fled to the central highlands and the Transjordan. As a result, the coastal towns, formerly important economic centers connected with the rest of the Byzantine world, were emptied of most of their residents. Some of these cities—namely Ashkelon, Acre, Arsuf, and Gaza—now fortified border towns, were resettled by Muslim populations, who developed them into significant Muslim centers. The region of Samaria also underwent a process of Islamization as a result of waves of conversion among the Samaritan population and the influx of Muslims into the area.[171][173] The predominantly Jacobite Monophysitic Christian population had been hostile to Byzantium orthodoxy, and at times for that reason welcomed Muslim rule. There is no strong evidence for forced conversion, or for possibility that the jizya tax significantly affected such changes.[175]
The demographic situation in Palestine was further altered by urban decline under the Abbasids, and it is thought that the 749 earthquake hastened this process by causing an increase in the number of Jews, Christians, and Samaritans who emigrated to diaspora communities while also leaving behind others who remained in the devastated cities and poor villages until they converted to Islam.[140] Historical records and archeological evidence suggest that many Samaritans converted under Abbasid and Tulunid rule, after suffering through severe difficulties such droughts, earthquakes, religious persecution, heavy taxes and anarchy.[173] The same region also saw the settlement of Arabs. Over the period, the Samaritan population drastically decreased, with the rural Samaritan population converting to Islam, and small urban communities remaining in Nablus and Caesarea, as well as in Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Sarepta.[176] Nevertheless, the Muslim population remained a minority in a predominantly Christian area, and it is likely that this status persisted until the Crusader period.[140]
In 1095, Pope Urban II called upon Christians to wage a holy war and recapture Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Responding to this call, Christians launched the First Crusade in the same year, a military campaign aimed at retaking the Holy Land, ultimately resulting in the successful siege and conquest of Jerusalem in 1099.[177] In the same year, the Crusaders conquered Beit She'an and Tiberias, and in the following decade, they captured coastal cities with the support of Italian city-state fleets, establishing these coastal ports as crucial strongholds for Crusader rule in the region.[178]
Following the First Crusade, several Crusader states were established in the Levant, with the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Regnum Hierosolymitanum) assuming a preeminent position and enjoying special status among them. The population consisted predominantly of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Samaritans, while the Crusaders remained a minority and relied on the local population who worked the soil. The region saw the construction of numerous robust castles and fortresses, yet efforts to establish permanent European villages proved unsuccessful.[178]
Around 1180,
Almohad (Muslim) persecution in Córdoba, Spain, where all non-Muslim religions had been banned.[179]
The Christian world's response to the loss of Jerusalem came in the
Khwarezmian Tatars who decimated the city's Christian population, drove out the Jews and razed the city.[182]
The Khwarezmians were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247.
The Mamluks, continuing the policy of the Ayyubids, made the strategic decision to destroy the coastal area and to bring desolation to many of its cities, from Tyre in the north to Gaza in the south. Ports were destroyed and various materials were dumped to make them inoperable. The goal was to prevent attacks from the sea, given the fear of the return of the Crusaders. This had a long-term effect on those areas, which remained sparsely populated for centuries. The activity in that time concentrated more inland.[185]
With the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain and 1497 persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal, many Jews moved eastward, with some deciding to settle in the Mamluk Palestine. As a consequence, the local Jewish community underwent significant rejuvenation. The influx of Sephardic Jews began under Mamluk rule in the 15th century, and continued throughout the 16th century and especially after the Ottoman conquest. As city-dwellers, the majority of Sephardic Jews preferred to settle in urban areas, mainly in Safed but also in Jerusalem, while the Musta'arbi community comprised the majority of the villagers' Jews.[186]
With the more favorable conditions that followed the Ottoman conquest, the immigration of Jews fleeing Catholic Europe, which had already begun under Mamluk rule, continued, and soon an influx of exiled Sephardic Jews came to dominate the Jewish community in the area.[186]
In 1558, Selim II (1566–1574), successor to Suleiman, whose wife Nurbanu Sultan was Jewish,[187] gave control of Tiberias to Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, one of the richest women in Europe and an escapee from the Inquisition. She encouraged Jewish refugees to settle in the area and established a Hebrew printing press. Safed became a centre for study of the Kabbalah. Doña Nasi's nephew, Joseph Nasi, was made governor of Tiberias and he encouraged Jewish settlement from Italy.[188]
In 1660, a Druze power struggle led to the destruction of Safed and Tiberias.[189][190] In the late 18th century a local Arab sheikhZahir al-Umar created a de facto independent Emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the Sheikh failed, but after Zahir's death the Ottomans restored their rule in the area.[191]
Jewish workers in Kerem Avraham neighbourhood of Jerusalem (c. 1850s)
In 1838, there was another Druze revolt. In 1839 Moses Montefiore met with Muhammed Pasha in Egypt and signed an agreement to establish 100–200 Jewish villages in the Damascus Eyalet of Ottoman Syria,[194] but in 1840 the Egyptians withdrew before the deal was implemented, returning the area to Ottoman governorship. In 1844, Jews constituted the largest population group in Jerusalem. By 1896 Jews constituted an absolute majority in Jerusalem,[195] but the overall population in Palestine was 88% Muslim and 9% Christian.[196]
Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine, known as the
persecution and legal restrictions. Half the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire, where they were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement. Severe pogroms in the early 1880s and legal repression led to 2 million Jews emigrating from the Russian Empire. 1.5 million went to the United States. Popular destinations were also Germany, France, England, Holland, Argentina and Palestine.[198][199]
Russian Jews established the
Hovevei Zion ("Lovers of Zion") movements with the aim of settling in Palestine. In 1878, Russian Jewish emigrants established the village of Petah Tikva ("The Beginning of Hope"), followed by Rishon LeZion ("First to Zion") in 1882. The existing Ashkenazi-Jewish communities were concentrated in the Four Holy Cities, extremely poor and relied on donations (halukka) from groups abroad, while the new settlements were small farming communities, but still relied on funding by the French Baron, Edmond James de Rothschild, who sought to establish profitable enterprises. Many early migrants could not find work and left, but despite the problems, more settlements arose and the community grew. After the Ottoman conquest of Yemen in 1881, a large number of Yemenite Jews also emigrated to Palestine, often driven by Messianism.[200]
In 1896
Jewish Question") was to establish a Jewish state. In 1897, the World Zionist Organization was founded and the First Zionist Congress proclaimed its aim "to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law."[201] The Congress chose Hatikvah
("The Hope") as its anthem.
Between 1904 and 1914, around 40,000 Jews settled in the area now known as Israel (the
In 1915-1916 Talaat Pasha of the Young Turks forced around a million Armenian Christians from their homes in Eastern Turkey, marching them south through Syria, in what is now known as the Armenian genocide. The number of dead is thought to be around 700,000. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. A community of survivors settled in Jerusalem, one of whom developed the now iconic Armenian pottery.[204]
During World War I, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy.[205] In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an antisemitic perception of "Jewish power" in the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement which was based in Thessaloniki, the most Jewish city in Europe (40% of the 160,000 population were Jewish).[206] The British also hoped to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf.
There was already sympathy for the aims of
British conquest ended in 1918, which drove the Turks out of Southern Syria.[209] A year prior, in 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, sent a public letter to the British Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration. It stated that the British Government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country.[210] New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement
between British and French bureaucrats.
A
Gallipoli Campaign. The Nili Zionist spy network provided the British with details of Ottoman plans and troop concentrations.[211]
The British Mandate (in effect, British rule) of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and came into effect in 1923. The territory of Transjordan was also covered by the Mandate but under separate rules that excluded it from the Balfour Declaration. Britain signed a treaty with the United States (which did not join the League of Nations) in which the United States endorsed the terms of the Mandate,[212] which was approved unanimously by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
The Balfour declaration was published on the 2nd of November 1917 and the
pogroms led to the death of at least 100,000 Jews (mainly in what is now Ukraine), and the displacement as refugees of a further 600,000. This led to further migration to Palestine.[213][214] Between 1919 and 1923, some 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine in what is known as the Third Aliyah.[197] Many of the Jewish immigrants of this period were Socialist Zionists and supported the Bolsheviks.[215] The migrants became known as pioneers (halutzim), experienced or trained in agriculture who established self-sustaining communes called kibbutzim.[216] Malarial marshes in the Jezreel Valley and Hefer Plain were drained and converted to agricultural use.[217] Land was bought by the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist charity that collected money abroad for that purpose.[218]
After the French victory over the Arab Kingdom of Syria ended hopes of Arab independence, there were clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and in Jaffa the following year, leading to the establishment of the Haganah underground Jewish militia.[219]
A
Jewish Agency was created which issued the entry permits granted by the British and distributed funds donated by Jews abroad.[220] Between 1924 and 1929, over 80,000 Jews arrived in the Fourth Aliyah,[197] fleeing antisemitism and heavy tax burdens imposed on trade in Poland and Hungary, inspired by Zionism[221] and motivated by the closure of United States borders by the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.[221]
Technion (technological university) in Haifa. British authorities introduced the Palestine pound (worth 1000 "mils") in 1927, replacing the Egyptian pound as the unit of currency in the Mandate.[222]
From 1928, the democratically elected Va'ad Leumi (Jewish National Council or JNC) became the main administrative institution of the Palestine Jewish community (Yishuv) and included non-Zionist Jews. As the Yishuv grew, the JNC adopted more government-type functions, such as education, health care, and security. With British permission, the Va'ad Leumi raised its own taxes[223] and ran independent services for the Jewish population.[224]
In 1929 tensions grew over the Kotel (
Mufti of Jerusalem said it was Muslim property and deliberately had cattle driven through the alley.[citation needed] He alleged that the Jews were seeking control of the Temple Mount. This provided the spark for the August 1929 Palestine riots. The main victims were the (non-Zionist) ancient Jewish community at Hebron, who were massacred. The riots led to right-wing Zionists establishing their own militia in 1931, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (National Military Organization, known in Hebrew by its acronym "Etzel"), which was committed to a more aggressive policy towards the Arab population.[225]
During the interwar period, the perception grew that there was an irreconciliable tension between the two Mandatory functions, of providing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the goal of preparing the country for self-determination.[226] The British rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give the Arab population, who formed the majority of the population, control over Palestinian territory.[227]
Between 1929 and 1938, 250,000 Jews arrived in Palestine (
Ha'avara Agreement (transfer agreement), under which 50,000 German Jews would be transferred to Palestine. The Jews' possessions were confiscated and in return the Nazis allowed the Ha'avara organization to purchase 14 million pounds worth of German goods for export to Palestine and use it to compensate the immigrants. Although many Jews wanted to leave Nazi Germany, the Nazis prevented Jews from taking any money and restricted them to two suitcases so few could pay the British entry tax and many were afraid to leave.[citation needed] The agreement was controversial and the Labour Zionist leader who negotiated the agreement, Haim Arlosoroff, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1933. The assassination was used by the British to create tension between the Zionist left and the Zionist right.[citation needed] Arlosoroff had been the boyfriend of Magda Ritschel some years before she married Joseph Goebbels.[229] There has been speculation that he was assassinated by the Nazis to hide the connection but there is no evidence for it.[230]
Between 1933 and 1936, 174,000 arrived despite the large sums the British demanded for immigration permits: Jews had to prove they had 1,000 pounds for families with capital (equivalent to £85,824 in 2023), 500 pounds if they had a profession and 250 pounds if they were skilled labourers.
Jewish immigration and Nazi propaganda contributed to the large-scale 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, a largely nationalist uprising directed at ending British rule. The head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, responded to the Arab Revolt with a policy of "Havlagah"—self-restraint and a refusal to be provoked by Arab attacks in order to prevent polarization. The Etzel group broke off from the Haganah in opposition to this policy.[232]
The British responded to the revolt with the Peel Commission (1936–37), a public inquiry that recommended that an exclusively Jewish territory be created in the Galilee and western coast (including the population transfer of 225,000 Arabs); the rest becoming an exclusively Arab area. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[233][234][235] The plan was rejected outright by the Palestinian Arab leadership and they renewed the revolt, which caused the British to appease the Arabs, and to abandon the plan as unworkable.[236][237]
Testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said "There are in Europe 6,000,000 people ... for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter."[238] In 1938, the US called an international conference to address the question of the vast numbers of Jews trying to escape Europe. Britain made its attendance contingent on Palestine being kept out of the discussion.[239] No Jewish representatives were invited. The Nazis proposed their own solution: that the Jews of Europe be shipped to Madagascar (the Madagascar Plan). The agreement proved fruitless, and the Jews were stuck in Europe.[240][241]
With millions of Jews trying to leave Europe and every country in the world closed to Jewish migration, the British decided to close Palestine. The
Mossad Le'aliyah Bet and the Irgun. With no outside help and no countries ready to admit them, very few Jews managed to escape Europe between 1939 and 1945. Those caught by the British were mostly imprisoned in Mauritius.[242][243]
Second World War, the Jewish Agency worked to establish a Jewish army that would fight alongside the British forces. Churchill supported the plan but British Military and government opposition led to its rejection. The British demanded that the number of Jewish recruits match the number of Arab recruits.[244]
In June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, Italian planes
North Africa. The British refusal to provide arms to the Jews, even when Rommel's forces were advancing through Egypt in June 1942 (intent on occupying Palestine), and the 1939 White Paper led to the emergence of a Zionist leadership in Palestine that believed conflict with Britain was inevitable.[246] Despite this, the Jewish Agency called on Palestine's Jewish youth to volunteer for the British Army (both men and women). 30,000 Palestinian Jews and 12,000 Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British armed forces during the war.[247][248] In June 1944 the British agreed to create a Jewish Brigade
that would fight in Italy.
Approximately 1.5 million Jews around the world served in every branch of the allied armies, mainly in the Soviet and US armies. 200,000 Jews died serving in the Soviet army alone.[249]
A small group (about 200 activists), dedicated to resisting the British administration in Palestine, broke away from the Etzel (which advocated support for Britain during the war) and formed the "Lehi" (
USSR released the Revisionist Zionist leader Menachem Begin from the Gulag and he went to Palestine, taking command of the Etzel organization with a policy of increased conflict against the British.[251] At about the same time Yitzhak Shamir escaped from the camp in Eritrea where the British were holding Lehi activists without trial, taking command of the Lehi (Stern Gang).[252]
Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the war. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were used as slaves.[253] The 1941 pro-Axis coup in Iraq was accompanied by massacres of Jews. The Jewish Agency put together plans for a last stand in the event of Rommel invading Palestine (the Nazis planned to exterminate Palestine's Jews).[254]
Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis,
displaced persons (refugees); an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established to examine the Palestine issue, surveyed their ambitions and found that over 95% wanted to migrate to Palestine.[255][256][257]
In the Zionist movement the moderate Pro-British (and British citizen) Weizmann, whose son died flying in the RAF, was undermined by Britain's anti-Zionist policies.[258] Leadership of the movement passed to the Jewish Agency in Palestine, now led by the anti-British Socialist-Zionist party (Mapai) led by David Ben-Gurion.[259]
VE Day, the Labour Party won the general election in Britain. Although Labour Party conferences had for years called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Labour government now decided to maintain the 1939 White Paper policies.[260]
Buchenwald survivors arrive in Haifa to be arrested by the British, 15 July 1945
Illegal migration (
ghetto fighters, smuggled Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe to Mediterranean ports, where small boats tried to breach the British blockade of Palestine. Meanwhile, Jews from Arab countries began moving into Palestine overland. Despite British efforts to curb immigration, during the 14 years of the Aliyah Bet, over 110,000 Jews entered Palestine. By the end of World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine had increased to 33% of the total population.[261]
In an effort to win independence, Zionists now waged a
guerrilla war against the British. The main underground Jewish militia, the Haganah, formed an alliance called the Jewish Resistance Movement with the Etzel and Stern Gang to fight the British. In June 1946, following instances of Jewish sabotage, such as in the Night of the Bridges, the British launched Operation Agatha
, arresting 2,700 Jews, including the leadership of the Jewish Agency, whose headquarters were raided. Those arrested were held without trial.
On 4 July 1946
a massive pogrom in Poland led to a wave of Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe for Palestine. Three weeks later, Irgun bombed the British Military Headquarters of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people. In the days following the bombing, Tel Aviv was placed under curfew and over 120,000 Jews, nearly 20% of the Jewish population of Palestine, were questioned by the police. In the US, Congress criticized British handling of the situation and considered delaying loans that were vital to British post-war recovery.[262]
The alliance between Haganah and Etzel was dissolved after the King David bombings.
Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland.
Berihah ("Flight"). Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, totalling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors.[266][267][268][265] The British imprisoned the Jews trying to enter Palestine in the Atlit detainee camp and Cyprus internment camps. Those held were mainly Holocaust survivors, including large numbers of children and orphans. In response to Cypriot fears that the Jews would never leave (since they lacked a state or documentation) and because the 75,000 quota established by the 1939 White Paper had never been filled, the British allowed the refugees to enter Palestine at a rate of 750 per month.[269][263][264][270][271][265]
By 1947 the Labour Government in Britain was ready to refer the Palestine problem to the newly created United Nations.[272][273]
On 2 April 1947, the United Kingdom requested that the question of Palestine be handled by the
General Assembly.[274] The General Assembly created a committee, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to report on "the question of Palestine".[275] In July 1947 the UNSCOP visited Palestine and met with Jewish and Zionist delegations. The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the meetings. During the visit the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin ordered that passengers from an Aliyah Bet ship, SS Exodus1947, to be sent back to Europe. The Holocaust surviving migrants on the ship were forcibly removed by British troops at Hamburg, Germany.[276][277][278]
The principal non-Zionist Orthodox Jewish (or
kosher food in government institutions and allowed Orthodox Jews to maintain a separate education system.[279]
The majority report of UNSCOP proposed
Resolution 181 (II), the General Assembly adopted the majority report of UNSCOP, but with slight modifications.[282] The Plan also called for the British to allow "substantial" Jewish migration by 1 February 1948.[283]
Neither Britain nor the UN Security Council took any action to implement the recommendation made by the resolution and Britain continued detaining Jews attempting to enter Palestine. Concerned that partition would severely damage Anglo-Arab relations, Britain denied UN representatives access to Palestine during the period between the adoption of Resolution 181 (II) and the termination of the British Mandate.[284] The British withdrawal was finally completed in May 1948. However, Britain continued to hold (formerly illegal) Jewish immigrants of "fighting age" and their families on Cyprus until March 1949.[285]
The General Assembly's vote caused joy in the Jewish community and anger in the Arab community. Violence broke out between the sides, escalating into civil war. From January 1948, operations became increasingly militarized, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria.[286]Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, he organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.[287] The Yishuv tried to supply the city using convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but largely failed. By March, almost all Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.[288]
Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres eastwards.[289] This situation caused the US to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan for partition. The British, on the other hand, decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan.[290] The Jordanian army was commanded by the British.
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Immediately following the declaration of the new state, both superpower leaders, US President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, recognized the new state.[293]
The Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. The Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, starting the first Arab–Israeli War. After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state, the tide turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies back beyond the borders of the proposed Arab state.[294]
On 29 May 1948, the British initiated
violated the resolution, supplying the Jewish state with critical military hardware to match the (mainly British) heavy equipment and planes already owned by the invading Arab states. On 11 June, a month-long UN truce was put into effect.[295][294]
Following independence, the
Altalena". When they refused to hand the arms to the government, Ben-Gurion ordered that the ship be sunk. Several Etzel members were killed in the fighting.[296][297][298]
Large numbers of Jewish immigrants, many of them World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, now began arriving in the new state of Israel, and many joined the IDF.[299]
After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state and its occupation by the Arab armies, from July the tide gradually turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies out and conquered some of the territory that had been included in the proposed Arab state. At the end of November, tenuous local ceasefires were arranged between the Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese. On 1 December King Abdullah announced the union of Transjordan with Arab Palestine west of the Jordan; only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation.[294][300]
Following the ceasefire declaration, Britain released over 2,000 Jewish detainees it was still holding in Cyprus and recognized the state of Israel. On 11 May 1949, Israel was
had fled or were expelled by the Israelis between 1947 and 1949.[307]
Within three years (1948 to 1951), immigration doubled the Jewish population of Israel and left an indelible imprint on Israeli society.
displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.[313]
In 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return, which granted to all Jews and those of Jewish ancestry (Jewish grandparent), and their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship. That year, 50,000 Yemenite Jews (99%) were secretly flown to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. In 1951 Iraqi Jews were granted temporary permission to leave the country and 120,000 (over 90%) opted to move to Israel as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Jews also fled from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. By the late sixties, about 500,000 Jews had left Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries (99%) relocated to Israel (680,000), France and the Americas.[314][315] The land and property left behind by the Jews (much of it in Arab city centres) is still a matter of some dispute. Today there are about 9,000 Jews living in Arab states, of whom 75% live in Morocco and 15% in Tunisia. Vast assets, approximately $150 billion worth of goods and property (before inflation) were left behind in these countries.[316][317]
negotiations with Germany
in 1952
Between 1948 and 1958, the population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million. During this period, food, clothes and furniture had to be rationed in what became known as the
reparations agreement with West Germany. During the Knesset debate some 5,000 demonstrators gathered and riot police had to cordon the building.[319]
Israel received several billion marks and in return agreed to open diplomatic relations with Germany.
In 1949, education was made free and compulsory for all citizens until the age of 14. The state now funded the party-affiliated Zionist education system and a new body created by the Haredi
Agudat Israel party. A separate body was created to provide education for the remaining Palestinian-Arab population. The major political parties now competed for immigrants to join their education systems. The government banned the existing educational bodies from the transit camps and tried to mandate a unitary secular socialist education[320] under the control of "camp managers" who also had to provide work, food and housing for the immigrants. There were attempts to force orthodox Yemenite children to adopt a secular life style by teachers, including many instances of Yemenite children having their side-curls cut by teachers. The Yemenite Children Affair led to the first Israeli public inquiry (the Fromkin Inquiry),[321] the collapse of the coalition, and an election
in 1951.
In its early years Israel sought to maintain a non-aligned position between the super-powers. However, in 1952, an antisemitic public trial was staged in Moscow in which a group of Jewish doctors were accused of trying to poison Stalin (the Doctors' plot), followed by a similar trial in Czechoslovakia (Slánský trial). This, and the failure of Israel to be included in the Bandung Conference of 1955 (of non-aligned states), effectively ended Israel's pursuit of non-alignment.[322][323][324][325]
On 19 May 1950, in contravention of international law, Egypt announced that the
Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Israel's solution to diplomatic isolation was to establish good relations with newly independent states in Africa[326] and with France, which was engaged in the Algerian War
.
In the
(Egyptian) occupied Gaza. Fedayeen attacks led to a growing cycle of violence as Israel launched reprisal attacks against Gaza.[327] In 1954 the Uzi submachine gun first entered use by the Israel Defense Forces. In 1955 the Egyptian government began recruiting former Nazi rocket scientists for a missile program.[328][329]
Sharett's government was brought down by the Lavon Affair, a crude plan to disrupt US–Egyptian relations, involving Israeli agents planting bombs at American sites in Egypt.[330] The plan failed when eleven agents were arrested. Defense Minister Lavon was blamed despite his denial of responsibility. The Lavon affair led to Sharett's resignation and Ben-Gurion returned to the post of prime minister.
nuclear plant for the Israelis and that by 1968 this was able to produce nuclear weapons
. Britain and France arranged for Israel to give them a pretext for seizing the Suez Canal. Israel was to attack Egypt, and Britain and France would then call on both sides to withdraw. When, as expected, the Egyptians refused, Anglo-French forces would invade to take control of the Canal.
Israeli paratroopers dig in near the Mitla Pass, 31 October 1956
Israeli forces, commanded by General
Operation Kadesh against Egypt on 29 October 1956. On 30 October Britain and France made their pre-arranged call for both sides to stop fighting and withdraw from the Canal area, and for them to be allowed to take up positions at key points on the Canal. Egypt refused and the allies commenced air strikes on 31 October aimed at neutralizing the Egyptian air force. By 5 November the Israelis had overrun the Sinai
. The Anglo-French invasion began that day. There was uproar in the UN, with the United States and USSR for once in agreement in denouncing the actions of Israel, Britain and France. A demand for a ceasefire was reluctantly accepted on 7 November.
At Egypt's request, the UN sent an Emergency Force (UNEF), consisting of 6,000 peacekeeping troops from 10 nations to supervise the ceasefire. This was the first ever UN peacekeeping operation. From 15 November the UN troops marked out a zone across the Sinai to separate the Israeli and Egyptian forces. Upon receiving US guarantees of Israeli access to the Suez Canal, freedom of access out of the Gulf of Aqaba and Egyptian action to stop Palestinian raids from Gaza, the Israelis withdrew to the Negev.[332] In practice the Suez Canal remained closed to Israeli shipping. The conflict marked the end of West-European dominance in the Middle East. Nasser emerged as the victor in the conflict, having won the political battle.
In 1956, two modern-orthodox (and religious-zionist) parties, Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi, joined to form the National Religious Party. The party was a component of every Israeli coalition until 1992, usually running the Ministry of Education. Mapai was once again victorious in the 1959 elections, increasing its number of seats to 47, Labour had 7. Ben-Gurion remained Prime Minister.
Rudolph Kastner, a minor political functionary, was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and sued his accuser. Kastner lost the trial and was assassinated two years later. In 1958 the Supreme Court exonerated him. In May 1960 Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief administrators of the Nazi Holocaust, was located in Argentina by the Mossad, later kidnapping him and bringing him to Israel. In 1961 he was put on trial, and after several months found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1962 and is the only person ever sentenced to death by an Israeli court. Testimonies by Holocaust survivors at the trial and the extensive publicity that surrounded it has led the trial to be considered a turning point in public awareness of the Holocaust.[333]
In 1961 a
Liberals came next with 17 seats each. In 1962 the Mossad began assassinating German rocket scientists working in Egypt in Operation Damocles after one of them reported the missile program was designed to carry chemical warheads. This action was condemned by Ben-Gurion and led to the Mossad director, Isser Harel, resignation.[334] In 1963 Ben-Gurion quit again over the Lavon affair. His attempts to make his party Mapai support him over the issue failed. Levi Eshkol
became leader of Mapai and the new prime minister.
Ben-Gurion quit Mapai to form the new party Rafi, he was joined by Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan. Begin's Herut party joined with the Liberals to form Gahal. Mapai and Labour united for the 1965 elections, winning 45 seats and maintaining Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion's Rafi party received 10 seats, Gahal got 26 seats becoming the second largest party.
Until 1966, Israel's principal arms supplier was
Arab-Israelis were eased and efforts made to integrate them into Israeli life.[340]
On the morning before Dayan was sworn in, 5 June 1967, the Israeli air force launched Operation Focus, a series of pre-emptive attacks in which it pre-emptively attacked the Egyptian air force, kicking off the Six-Day War, and then, later the same day, struck the air forces of Jordan and Syria. By 11 June the Arab forces were routed and all parties had accepted the cease-fire called for by UN Security Council Resolutions 235 and 236. Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the formerly Jordanian-controlled West Bank of the Jordan River. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel.[347]
in better areas. The system remained in place until after 2000.
In March 1968, Israeli forces attacked the Palestinian militia,
PLO (of which it formed part) became famous across the Arab world. In early 1969, fighting broke out between Egypt and Israel along the Suez Canal. In retaliation for repeated Egyptian shelling of Israeli positions along the Suez Canal, Israeli planes made deep strikes into Egypt in the 1969–1970 "War of Attrition
In early 1969, Levi Eshkol died in office of a heart attack and
first female prime minister of Israel and the first woman to have headed a Middle Eastern state in modern times.[349]
Gahal retained its 26 seats, and was the second largest party.
In
King Hussein of Jordan drove the Palestine Liberation Organization out of his country. On 18 September 1970, Syrian tanks invaded Jordan, intending to aid the PLO. At the request of the US, Israel moved troops to the border and threatened Syria, causing the Syrians to withdraw. The centre of PLO activity then shifted to Lebanon, where the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the Palestinians autonomy within the south of the country. The area controlled by the PLO became known by the international press and locals as "Fatahland" and contributed to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. The event also led to Hafez al-Assad taking power in Syria. Egyptian President Nasser died of a heart attack immediately after and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat
, who had taken refuge in Israel, was deported to the United States.
At the 1972
raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon (led by future Prime Minister, Ehud Barak) and an assassination campaign
against the organizers of the massacre.
In 1972 the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviet advisers from Egypt. This and frequent invasion exercises by Egypt and Syria led to Israeli complacency about the threat from these countries. In addition the desire not to be held responsible for initiating conflict and an election campaign highlighting security, led to an Israeli failure to mobilize, despite receiving warnings of an impending attack.[352]
with the Egyptian government and on 31 May with the Syrian government.
The war was the catalyst for the 1973 oil crisis, a Saudi-led oil embargo in conjunction with OPEC against countries trading with Israel. Severe shortages led to massive increases in the price of oil, and as a result, many countries broke off relations with Israel or downgraded relations, and Israel was banned from participation in the Asian Games and other Asian sporting events.
Prior to the December 1973 elections, Gahal and a number of right-wing parties united to form the Likud (led by Begin). In the December 1973 elections, Labour won 51 seats, leaving Golda Meir as Prime Minister. The Likud won 39 seats.
In May 1974,
Palestinians attacked a school in Ma'alot, holding 102 children hostage. Twenty-two children were killed. In November 1974 the PLO was granted observer status at the UN and Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly. Later that year, the Agranat Commission, appointed to assess responsibility for Israel's lack of preparedness for the war, exonerated the government of responsibility, and held the Chief of Staff and head of military intelligence responsible. Despite the report, public anger at the Government led to Golda Meir
Resolution 46/86.[354] In March 1976, there was a massive strike by Israeli-Arabs in protest at a government plan to expropriate land in the Galilee.[355]
In a surprise result, the Likud led by Menachem Begin won 43 seats in the 1977 elections. This was the first time in Israeli history that the government was not led by the left. In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and spoke at the Knesset at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sadat recognized Israel's right to exist and established the basis for direct negotiations between Egypt and Israel. Following Sadat's visit, 350 Yom Kippur War veterans organized the Peace Now movement to encourage Israeli governments to make peace with the Arabs.
In March 1978, eleven armed Lebanese Palestinians reached Israel in boats and carried out the
In September 1978, US President Jimmy Carter invited President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin to meet with him at Camp David, and on 11 September they agreed on a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt, and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. It set out broad principles to guide negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. It also established guidelines for a West Bank–Gaza transitional regime of full autonomy for the Palestinians residing in these territories, and for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The treaty was signed 26 March 1979 by Begin and Sadat, with President Carter signing as witness. Under the treaty, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in April 1982. The Arab League reacted to the peace treaty by suspending Egypt from the organization and moving its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic fundamentalist members of the Egyptian army who opposed peace with Israel. Following the agreement Israel and Egypt became the two largest recipients of US military and financial aid[361] (Iraq and Afghanistan have now overtaken them).
In the decades following the 1948 war, Israel's border with
civil war in Lebanon
.
In June 1982, the attempted assassination of
South Lebanon welcomed the Israelis, as PLO forces had maltreated them, but Lebanese resentment of Israeli occupation grew over time and the Shia became gradually radicalized under Iranian guidance.[364]
Constant casualties among Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians led to growing opposition to the war in Israel.
In August 1982, the PLO withdrew its forces from Lebanon (moving to
Israeli public inquiry found that Israel's defence minister, Sharon, was indirectly but personally responsible for the massacres.[365] It also recommended that he never again be allowed to hold the post (it did not forbid him from being Prime Minister). In 1983, the May 17 Agreement was signed between Israel and Lebanon, paving the way for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory through a few stages. Israel continued to operate against the PLO until its eventual departure in 1985, and kept a small force stationed in Southern Lebanon in support of the South Lebanon Army
, a new party aimed at the non-Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox vote.
In June 1985, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon, leaving a residual Israeli force and an Israeli-supported
index linking of salaries, had reached 480% per annum and was the highest in the world. Peres introduced emergency control of prices and cut government expenditure successfully bringing inflation under control. The currency (known as the old Israeli shekel) was replaced and renamed the Israeli new shekel
at a rate of 1,000 old shkalim = 1 new shekel.
Growing Israeli settlement and continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to the First Intifada in 1987, which lasted until the Oslo accords of 1993, despite Israeli attempts to suppress it. Human rights abuses by Israeli troops led a group of Israelis to form B'Tselem, an organization devoted to improving awareness and compliance with human rights requirements in Israel.
The Alignment and Likud remained neck and neck in the
"the dirty trick"
, failed and Shamir became prime minister at the head of a right-wing coalition.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War between Iraq and a large allied force, led by the United States. Iraq attacked Israel with 39 Scud missiles. Israel did not retaliate at request of the US, fearing that if Israel responded against Iraq, other Arab nations might desert the allied coalition.
The coalition's victory in the Gulf War opened new possibilities for regional peace, and in October 1991 the US president, George H. W. Bush, and Soviet Union Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, jointly convened a historic meeting in Madrid of Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Palestinian leaders. Shamir opposed the idea but agreed in return for loan guarantees to help with absorption of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. His participation in the conference led to the collapse of his (right-wing) coalition.
Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, won a significant victory (44 seats) promising to pursue peace while promoting Rabin as a "tough general" and pledging not to deal with the PLO in any way. The left Zionist party Meretz
won 12 seats, and the Arab and communist parties a further 5, meaning that parties supporting a peace treaty had a full (albeit small) majority in the Knesset.
Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat during the Oslo Accords signing ceremony at the White House on 13 September 1993
On 25 July 1993, Israel carried out a week-long military operation in Lebanon to attack
Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on 28 September 1995 in Washington. The agreement was witnessed by President Bill Clinton on behalf of the United States and by Russia, Egypt, Norway and the European Union, and incorporates and supersedes the previous agreements, marking the conclusion of the first stage of negotiations between Israel and the PLO.[369][370] The agreement allowed allowed the PLO leadership to relocate to the occupied territories and granted autonomy to the Palestinians with talks to follow regarding final status. In return the Palestinians promised to abstain from use of terror and changed the Palestinian National Covenant, which had called for the expulsion of all Jews who migrated after 1917 and the elimination of Israel.[371]
Hebron Protocol with the Palestinian Authority, resulting in the redeployment of Israeli forces in Hebron
and the turnover of civilian authority in much of the area to the Palestinian Authority.
In the
election of July 1999, Ehud Barak of the Labour Party became Prime Minister. His party was the largest in the Knesset with 26 seats. In September 1999 the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the use of torture in interrogation of Palestinian prisoners was illegal.[374] On 21 March 2000, Pope John Paul II
arrived in Israel for an historic visit.
On 25 May 2000, Israel unilaterally
Sheba'a Farms" (however this area was governed by Syria until 1967 when Israel took control).[376] The Sheba'a Farms provided Hezbollah with a pretext to maintain warfare with Israel.[377] The Lebanese government, in contravention of the UN Security Council resolution, did not assert sovereignty in the area, which came under Hezbollah control. In the Fall of 2000, talks were held at Camp David to reach a final agreement on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Ehud Barak offered to meet most of the Palestinian teams requests for territory and political concessions, including Arab parts of east Jerusalem; however, Arafat abandoned the talks without making a counterproposal.[378]
Following its withdrawal from South Lebanon, Israel became a member of the Western European and Others Group at the United Nations.[379] Prior to this Israel was the only nation at the UN which was not a member of any group (the Arab states would not allow it to join the Asia group), which meant it could not be a member of the Security Council or appoint anyone to the International Court and other key UN roles.[379][380] Since December 2013 it has been a permanent member of the group.[381]
On 28 September 2000, Israeli opposition leader
al-Aqsa Intifada. David Samuels and Khaled Abu Toameh have stated that the uprising was planned much earlier.[382][383]
In 2001, with the Peace Process increasingly in disarray, Ehud Barak called a special election for Prime Minister. Barak hoped a victory would give him renewed authority in negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead opposition leader Ariel Sharon was elected PM. After this election, the system of directly electing the Premier was abandoned.
The Gaza–Israel barrier route built (red), under construction (pink) and proposed (white), as of June 2011[update]
The failure of the peace process, increased Palestinian terror and occasional
List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada), Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in March 2002, and Sharon began the construction of a barrier around the West Bank. Around the same time, the Israeli town of Sderot and other Israeli communities near Gaza became subject to constant shelling
and mortar bomb attacks from Gaza.
Thousands of Jews from Latin America began
Black Hebrews were granted permanent residency in Israel. The group had begun migrating to Israel 25 years earlier from the United States, but had not been recognized as Jews by the state and hence not granted citizenship under Israel's Law of Return
. They had settled in Israel without official status. From 2004 onwards, they received citizen's rights.
In 2005, all Jewish settlers were evacuated from
Disengagement from the Gaza Strip
was completed on 12 September 2005. Military disengagement from the northern West Bank was completed ten days later.
In 2005 Sharon left the Likud and formed a new party called Kadima, which accepted that the peace process would lead to creation of a Palestinian state. He was joined by many leading figures from both Likud and Labour.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, the first and only genuinely free Palestinian elections. Hamas' leaders rejected all agreements signed with Israel, refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, refused to abandon terror, and occasionally claimed the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy. The withdrawal and Hamas victory left the status of Gaza unclear, as Israel asserted it was no longer an occupying power but continued to control air and sea access to Gaza although it did not exercise sovereignty on the ground. Egypt insisted that it was still occupied and refused to open border crossings with Gaza, although it was free to do so.[385]
Olmert came under investigation for corruption and this led him to announce on 30 July 2008, that he would be stepping down as Prime Minister following election of a new leader of the
In the 2009 legislative election Likud won 27 seats and Kadima 28; however, the right-wing camp won a majority of seats, and President Shimon Peres called on Netanyahu to form the government. Russian immigrant-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu came third with 15 seats, and Labour was reduced to fourth place with 13 seats. In 2009, Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva announced the discovery of huge natural gas reserves off the coast of Israel.[393]
On 31 May 2010, an
direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without success. As a defensive countermeasure to the rocket threat against Israel's civilian population, at the end of March 2011 Israel began to operate the advanced mobile air defence system "Iron Dome"[394]
in the southern region of Israel and along the border with the Gaza Strip.
Protest in Tel Aviv on 6 August 2011
On 14 July 2011, the
socio-economic and religious backgrounds in Israel protested against the continuing rise in the cost of living
(particularly housing) and the deterioration of public services in the country (such as health and education). It was the largest social protest in the history of Israel, and peaked on 3 September 2011, when about 400,000 people demonstrated across the country.
In October 2011,
targeted killing carried out by Israeli forces in Gaza.[397][398]
In May 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached an agreement with the Head of Opposition Shaul Mofaz for Kadima to join the government, thus cancelling the early election supposed to be held in September.[399] However, in July, the Kadima party left Netanyahu's government due to a dispute concerning military conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel.[400]
In response to over a hundred rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began
Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza on 14 November 2012, with the targeted killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of Hamas military wing, and airstrikes against twenty underground sites housing long-range missile launchers capable of striking Tel Aviv. In January 2013, construction of the barrier on the Israeli–Egyptian border was completed in its main section.[401]
Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister again after the
peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom had been in jail since before the 1993 Oslo Accords,[403] including militants who had killed Israeli civilians.[403][404] In April 2014, Israel suspended peace talks after Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government.[405]
Following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas, Israel started
lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians took place in 2015 and 2016, particularly stabbings.[410]
In late 2020, Israel normalised relations with four Arab League countries: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September (known as the
Operation Guardian of the Walls, trading blows with Hamas for eleven days.[420]
The
2019–2022 political crisis featured political instability in Israel leading to five elections to the Knesset over a 4 year time period. The April 2019 and September 2019 elections saw no party able to form a coalition leading to the March 2020 election.[421] This election again looked to result in deadlock, but due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, Netanyahu, and Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz, were able to establish a unity government with a planned rotating prime ministership where Netanyahu would serve first and later be replaced by Gantz.[422] The coalition failed by December due to a dispute over the budget and new elections were called for March 2021.[423]
attacked Israel with over 300 drones and missiles on 13 April. However, the Iranian attack was intercepted either outside Israeli airspace or over the country itself.[432] It was followed by a retaliatory missile strike by Israel on Isfahan, Iran.[433]
^The debate is described in Amihai Mazar, "Archaeology and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of the United Monarchy" (see bibliography), p.29 fn.2: "For conservative approaches defining the United Monarchy as a state “from Dan to Beer Sheba” including “conquered kingdoms” (Ammon, Moab, Edom) and “spheres of influence” in Geshur and Hamath cf. e.g. Ahlström (1993), 455–542; Meyers (1998); Lemaire (1999); Masters (2001); Stager (2003); Rainey (2006), 159–168; Kitchen (1997); Millard (1997; 2008). For a total denial of the historicity of the United Monarchy cf. e.g. Davies (1992), 67–68; others suggested a ‘chiefdom’ comprising a small region around Jerusalem, cf. Knauf (1997), 81–85; Niemann (1997), 252–299 and Finkelstein (1999). For a ‘middle of the road’ approach suggesting a United Monarchy of larger territorial scope though smaller than the biblical description cf.e.g. Miller (1997); Halpern (2001), 229–262; Liverani (2005), 92–101. The latter recently suggested a state comprising the territories of Judah and Ephraim during the time of David, that was subsequently enlarged to include areas of northern Samaria and influence areas in the Galilee and Transjordan. Na’aman (1992; 1996) once accepted the basic biography of David as authentic and later rejected the United Monarchy as a state, cf. id. (2007), 401–402".
."The people of the Kingdom of Israel and the ethnic and religious group known as the Jewish people that descended from them have been subjected to a number of forced migrations in their history"
^"Jew | History, Beliefs, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 20 August 2022. In the broader sense of the term, a Jew is any person belonging to the worldwide group that constitutes, through descent or conversion, a continuation of the ancient Jewish people, who were themselves descendants of the Hebrews of the Old Testament.
. From the beginning of the Second Temple period until the Muslim conquest—the land was part of imperial space. This was true from the early Persian period, as well as the time of Ptolemy and the Seleucids. The only exception was the Hasmonean Kingdom, with its sovereign Jewish rule—first over Judah and later, in Alexander Jannaeus's prime, extending to the coast, the north, and the eastern banks of the Jordan.
. These texts, combined with the relics of those who hid in caves along the western side of the Dead Sea, tells us a great deal. What is clear from the evidence of both skeletal remains and artefacts is that the Roman assault on the Jewish population of the Dead Sea was so severe and comprehensive that no one came to retrieve precious legal documents, or bury the dead. Up until this date the Bar Kokhba documents indicate that towns, villages and ports where Jews lived were busy with industry and activity. Afterwards there is an eerie silence, and the archaeological record testifies to little Jewish presence until the Byzantine era, in En Gedi. This picture coheres with what we have already determined in Part I of this study, that the crucial date for what can only be described as genocide, and the devastation of Jews and Judaism within central Judea, was 135 CE and not, as usually assumed, 70 CE, despite the siege of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction
^ abM. Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, Jerusalem 1984 pp. 12–14
^ abMor, M. The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 CE. Brill, 2016. P471/
. Land confiscation in Judaea was part of the suppression of the revolt policy of the Romans and punishment for the rebels. But the very claim that the sikarikon laws were annulled for settlement purposes seems to indicate that Jews continued to reside in Judaea even after the Second Revolt. There is no doubt that this area suffered the severest damage from the suppression of the revolt. Settlements in Judaea, such as Herodion and Bethar, had already been destroyed during the course of the revolt, and Jews were expelled from the districts of Gophna, Herodion, and Aqraba. However, it should not be claimed that the region of Judaea was completely destroyed. Jews continued to live in areas such as Lod (Lydda), south of the Hebron Mountain, and the coastal regions. In other areas of the Land of Israel that did not have any direct connection with the Second Revolt, no settlement changes can be identified as resulting from it.
^1177 B.C. : The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric CLine, Princeton University Press
^Dever, William G. Beyond the Texts, Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2017, pp. 89–93
^S. Richard, "Archaeological sources for the history of Palestine: The Early Bronze Age: The rise and collapse of urbanism", The Biblical Archaeologist (1987)
^William David. Reyburn, Euan McG. Fry. A Handbook on Genesis. New York: United Bible Societies. 1997.
^See above the discussion of the Akkadian and Aramaic expressions eber nari and avar nahara respectively, corresponding to Hebrew ever nahar, being widely used in the ancient Near-East.
^Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002) "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" (Eerdman's)
^Rendsberg, Gary (2008). "Israel without the Bible". In Frederick E. Greenspahn. The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press, pp. 3–5
^The stele reads: «The Apiru of Mount Yarumta, together with the Tayaru, attack the Raham tribe». J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , p. 255. Princeton, 1955.
^Garfinkel, Yossi; Ganor, Sa'ar; Hasel, Michael (19 April 2012). "Journal 124: Khirbat Qeiyafa preliminary report". Hadashot Arkheologiyot: Excavations and Surveys in Israel. Israel Antiquities Authority. Archived from the original on 23 June 2012. Retrieved 12 June 2018.
^Finkelstein, Israel, (2020). "Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem", in Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart (eds.), Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives, SBL Press, Atlanta, GA, p. 48, footnote 57: "...They became territorial kingdoms later, Israel in the first half of the ninth century BCE and Judah in its second half..."
^Finkelstein & Silberman 2002, pp. 146–7:Put simply, while Judah was still economically marginal and backward, Israel was booming. ... In the next chapter we will see how the northern kingdom suddenly appeared on the ancient Near Eastern stage as a major regional power
. The Meša inscription (ca. 850 BCE) clearly states that YHWH was the supreme god of Israel and of the Transjordanian territory occupied by Israel under the Omrides.
. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (586 B.C.E.) is the most traumatic event described in biblical historiography, and in its shadow the history of the people of Israel was reshaped. The harsh impression of the destruction left its mark on the prophetic literature also, and particular force is retained in the laments over the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in its midst. [...] most of Judah's inhabitants remained there after the destruction of Jerusalem. They concentrated chiefly in the Benjamin region and the northern Judean hill country. This area was hardly affected by the destruction, and became the centre of the Babylonian province with its capital at Mizpah. [...] The archaeological data reinforce the biblical account, and they indicate that Jerusalem and its close environs suffered a severe blow. Most of the small settlements near the city were destroyed, the city wall was demolished, and the buildings within were put to the torch. Excavation and survey data show that the western border of the kingdom also sustained a grave onslaught, seemingly at the time when the Babylonians went to besiege Jerusalem.
. Intensive excavations throughout Jerusalem have shown that the city was indeed systematically destroyed by the Babylonians. The conflagration seems to have been general. When activity on the ridge of the City of David resumed in the Persian period, the-new suburbs on the western hill that had flourished since at least the time of Hezekiah were not reoccupied.
. The expansion of Hasmonean Judea took place gradually. Under Jonathan, Judea annexed southern Samaria and began to expand in the direction of the coast plain... The main ethnic changes were the work of John Hyrcanus... it was in his days and those of his son Aristobulus that the annexation of Idumea, Samaria and Galilee and the consolidation of Jewish settlement in Trans-Jordan was completed. Alexander Jannai, continuing the work of his predecessors, expanded Judean rule to the entire coastal plain, from the Carmel to the Egyptian border... and to additional areas in Trans-Jordan, including some of the Greek cities there.
, retrieved 20 March 2023, These changes accompanied and were partially caused by the great extension of the Judaeans' contacts with the peoples around them. Many historians have chronicled the Hasmonaeans' territorial acquisitions. In sum, it took them twenty-five years to win control of the tiny territory of Judaea and get rid of the Seleucid colony of royalist Jews (with, presumably, gentile officials and garrison) in Jerusalem. [...] However, in the last years before its fall, the Hasmonaeans were already strong enough to acquire, partly by negotiation, partly by conquest, a little territory north and south of Judaea and a corridor on the west to the coast at Jaffa/Joppa. This was briefly taken from them by Antiochus Sidetes, but soon regained, and in the half century from Sidetes' death in 129 to Alexander Jannaeus' death in 76 they overran most of Palestine and much of western and northern Transjordan. First John Hyrcanus took over the hills of southern and central Palestine (Idumaea and the territories of Shechem, Samaria and Scythopolis) in 128–104; then his son, Aristobulus I, took Galilee in 104–103, and Aristobulus' brother and successor, Jannaeus, in about eighteen years of warfare (103–96, 86–76) conquered and reconquered the coastal plain, the northern Negev, and western edge of Transjordan.
^Philip R. Davies in The Canon Debate, p. 50: "With many other scholars, I conclude that the fixing of a canonical list was almost certainly the achievement of the Hasmonean dynasty."
^Paul Johnson, History of the Jews, p. 106, Harper 1988
^The Chosen Few: How education shaped Jewish History, Botticini and Eckstein, Princeton 2012, page 71 and chapters 4 and 5
^Condra, E. (2018). Salvation for the righteous revealed: Jesus amid covenantal and messianic expectations in Second Temple Judaism. Brill.
^שטרן, מנחם (1984). ההיסטוריה של ארץ ישראל: התקופה הרומית-ביזנטית - שלטון רומי מהכיבוש ועד מלחמת בן כוסבה (63 לפני הספירה -135 לספירה) (in Hebrew). בית הוצאה כתר - ירושלים; יד יצחק בן צבי. p. 297.
^Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, Penguin 2008, pp. 18–19
OCLC 863044259. The year 70 ce marked transformations in demography, politics, Jewish civic status, Palestinian and more general Jewish economic and social structures, Jewish religious life beyond the sacrificial cult, and even Roman politics and the topography of the city of Rome itself. [...] The Revolt's failure had, to begin with, a demographic impact on the Jews of Palestine; many died in battle and as a result of siege conditions, not only in Jerusalem. [...] As indicated above, the figures for captives are conceivably more reliable. If 97,000 is roughly correct as a total for the war, it would mean that a huge percentage of the population was removed from the country, or at the very least displaced from their homes. Nevertheless, only sixty years later, there was a large enough population in the Judaean countryside to stage a massively disruptive second rebellion; this one appears to have ended, in 135, with devastation and depopulation of the district.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
. Until the modern period, the destruction of the Temple was the most cataclysmic moment in the history of the Jewish people. Without the Temple, the Sadducees no longer had any claim to authority, and they faded away. The sage Yochanan ben Zakkai, with permission from Rome, set up the outpost of Yavneh to continue develop of Pharisaic, or rabbinic, Judaism.
, page 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Iudaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."
^Jacobson 2001, pp. 44–45:"Hadrian officially renamed Judea Syria Palaestina after his Roman armies suppressed the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt) in 135 C.E.; this is commonly viewed as a move intended to sever the connection of the Jews to their historical homeland. However, that Jewish writers such as Philo, in particular, and Josephus, who flourished while Judea was still formally in existence, used the name Palestine for the Land of Israel in their Greek works, suggests that this interpretation of history is mistaken. Hadrian's choice of Syria Palaestina may be more correctly seen as a rationalization of the name of the new province, in accordance with its area being far larger than geographical Judea. Indeed, Syria Palaestina had an ancient pedigree that was intimately linked with the area of greater Israel."
^Feldman 1990, p. 19: "While it is true that there is no evidence as to precisely who changed the name of Judaea to Palestine and precisely when this was done, circumstantial evidence would seem to point to Hadrian himself, since he is, it would seem, responsible for a number of decrees that sought to crush the national and religious spirit of the Jews, whether these decrees were responsible for the uprising or were the result of it. In the first place, he refounded Jerusalem as a Graeco-Roman city under the name of Aelia Capitolina. He also erected on the site of the Temple another temple to Zeus."
^Foster 2017, pp. 95–110, "Southern Syria": "... the paucity of direct evidence around who made the change, when and under what circumstances... it’s equally likely the name change had little to do with Jew hatred and more to do with Hadrian’s romance with ancient Greece. It’s also possible Judaea gradually fell from use out of derelict rather than spite. ... But Palestine did not emerge forth from Judaea, it had coexisted with it long before it was putatively changed to it. ... So, Palestine included Judaea a long time before Hadrian said it included Judaea. We have a plausible motive for the change without knowing anything else about Hadrian: he called the place what it was called. ... The decision to change the name to Palestine may have been a banal bureaucratic choice. ... If the administrative reorganization was indeed banal, then we might have expected both names to have persisted after the change, which is exactly what happened."
^Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, Penguin 2008 p. 494
^Oppenheimer, A'haron and Oppenheimer, Nili. Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society. Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 2.
^מרדכי וורמברנד ובצלאל ס רותת "עם ישראל – תולדות 4000 שנה – מימי האבות ועד חוזה השלום", ע"מ 95. (Translation: Mordechai Vermebrand and Betzalel S. Ruth – "The People of Israel – the history of 4000 years – from the days of the Forefathers to the Peace Treaty", 1981, p. 95)
^Lehmann, Clayton Miles (18 January 2007). "Palestine". Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
. The phenomenon was most prominent in Judea, and can be explained by the demographic changes that this region underwent after the second Jewish revolt of 132-135 C.E. The expulsion of Jews from the area of Jerusalem following the suppression of the revolt, in combination with the penetration of pagan populations into the same region, created the conditions for the diffusion of Christians into that area during the fifth and sixth centuries. [...] This regional population, originally pagan and during the Byzantine period gradually adopting Christianity, was one of the main reasons that the monks chose to settle there. They erected their monasteries near local villages that during this period reached their climax in size and wealth, thus providing fertile ground for the planting of new ideas.
^קליין, א' (2011). היבטים בתרבות החומרית של יהודה הכפרית בתקופה הרומית המאוחרת(135–324 לסה"נ). עבודת דוקטור, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן. עמ' 314–315. (Hebrew)
^שדמן, ע' (2016). בין נחל רבה לנחל שילה: תפרוסת היישוב הכפרי בתקופות ההלניסטית, הרומית והביזנטית לאור חפירות וסקרים. עבודת דוקטור, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן. עמ' 271–275. (Hebrew)
^Klein, E, 2010, “The Origins of the Rural Settlers in Judean Mountains and Foothills during the Late Roman Period”, In: E. Baruch., A. Levy-Reifer and A. Faust (eds.), New Studies on Jerusalem, vol. 16, Ramat-Gan, pp. 321–350 (Hebrew).
^The Chosen Few: How education shaped Jewish History, Botticini and Eckstein, Princeton 2012, page 116
^M. Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, Jerusalem 1984 sections II to V
. Jews probably remained in the majority in Palestine until some time after the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. [...] In Babylonia, there had been for many centuries a Jewish community which would have been further strengthened by those fleeing the aftermath of the Roman revolts.
^Archaeology Versus Written Sources: the Case of the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614 by Yuri Stoyanov in ACTA MUSEI VARNAENSIS VIII-1, pp. 351–358
^The Persian Conquest of Jerusalem (614 c.e.)—An Archaeological Assessment by Gideon Avni in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research No. 357 (February 2010), pp. 35–48
. He had promised the Jews ... amnesty ..., but was unable to hold to this. At the insistence of the leaders of the Christians, who had not forgotten the period of Jewish rule from 614 to 617, he once more expelled the Jews from Jerusalem and had to allow large numbers of them to be executed.
. From the data given above it can be concluded that the Muslim population of Central Samaria, during the early Muslim period, was not an autochthonous population which had converted to Christianity. They arrived there either by way of migration or as a result of a process of sedentarization of the nomads who had filled the vacuum created by the departing Samaritans at the end of the Byzantine period [...] To sum up: in the only rural region in Palestine in which, according to all the written and archeological sources, the process of Islamization was completed already in the twelfth century, there occurred events consistent with the model propounded by Levtzion and Vryonis: the region was abandoned by its original sedentary population and the subsequent vacuum was apparently filled by nomads who, at a later stage, gradually became sedentarized
. in the Sixth Crusade, Frederick II ...concluded a treaty with the Saracens in 1229 that placed Jerusalem under Christian control but allowed Muslim and Christian alike freedom of access to the religious shrines of the city. ... Within fifteen years of Frederick's departure from the Holy Land, the Khwarisimian Turks, successors to the Seljuks, rampaged through Syria and Palestine, capturing Jerusalem in 1244. (Jerusalem would not be ruled again by Christians until the British occupied it in December 1917, during World War I).
^Jerusalem: Illustrated History Atlas Martin Gilbert, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1978, p. 25.
^Reorienting the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim Word, by Martin Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania 2014, page 101: "Subterranean Hebron: Religious Access Rights"
^International Dictionary of Historic Places: Middle East and Africa by Trudy Ring, Robert M. Salkin, Sharon La Boda, pp. 336–339
^Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, Between Cairo and Damascus: Rural Life and Urban Economics in the Holy Land During the Ayyuid, Maluk and Ottoman Periods in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land edited Thomas Evan Levy, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1998
^Joel Rappel, History of Eretz Israel from Prehistory up to 1882 (1980), vol. 2, p. 531. "In 1662 Sabbathai Sevi arrived to Jerusalem. It was the time when the Jewish settlements of Galilee were destroyed by the Druze: Tiberias was completely desolate and only a few of former Safed residents had returned...."
^Edward Said, A Profile of the Palestinian People, (1983) 1990 Palestinian Human Rights Campaign, p.5: 'throughout the British Mandate, Palestine was denied any measure of self-government'.
from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
^Benny Morris, One state, two states: resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict, 2009, p. 66.[full citation needed]
^Morris 2004: p. 48; p. 11 "while the Zionist movement, after much agonizing, accepted the principle of partition and the proposals as a basis for negotiation"; p. 49 "In the end, after bitter debate, the Congress equivocally approved –by a vote of 299 to 160 – the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiation."
^For more information see Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, The making of British Policy, 1936–1945 by Michael Cohen, New York 1979 Chapter 3
^Morris 2004: p. 11, "The AHC renewed the revolt. Whitehall ... took vigorous steps to appease the Palestinians."
from the original on 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021. On 25 November 1936, testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said that there are in Europe 6,000,000 Jews ... "for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter."
. The outside world, while shocked by Nazi atrocities, did little to help the victims. A conference of thiry-one countries, which met at Evian in early July did no more than confirm the validity of Weizmann's diagnosis, before the Peel Commission, of the condition of the European Jews in the late thirties: ... the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places into which they cannot enter." Palestine was excluded from the Evian agenda at the insistence of the British Government.
^Palestine (Report). United Nations. 20 April 1949. Background Paper No. 47 (ST/DPI/SER.A/47). Archived from the original on 3 January 2011. Retrieved 31 July 2007.
^Tom Segev, 1949. The First Israelis, Owl Books, 1986, p.96.
^"Displaced Persons". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 7 December 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2012.
^"Egypt Missile Chronology"(PDF). Nuclear Threat Initiative. 9 March 2009. Archived(PDF) from the original on 27 September 2012. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
^"The Eichmann Trial and American Jewry: A Reassessment", Françoise S. Ouzan in Jewish Political Studies Review 19:1–2 (Spring 2007), see also Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (published 1963)
^"Isser Harel". The Daily Telegraph. 19 February 2003. Archived from the original on 29 February 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2015. On 26 May he declared, "The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel
^Greenway, H. D. S.; Elizur, Yuval; Service, Washington Post Foreign (8 April 1977). "Rabin Quits Over Illegal Bank Account". Washington Post. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
^Kaufman, Asher (Autumn 2002). "Who owns the Shebaa Farms? Chronicle of a territorial dispute". Middle East Journal (Middle East Institute) 56 (4): 576–596.
^"Syria politics: Fêted". Economist Intelligence Unit. 15 July 2008. Archived from the original on 16 July 2019. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
^Black, Ian; Tran, Mark (15 June 2007). "Hamas takes control of Gaza". Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 31 August 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2010.
^"Data and Trends in Terrorism"(PDF). Annual Summary. Israel Security Agency. 25 December 2010. Archived(PDF) from the original on 12 October 2017. Retrieved 5 December 2012.
from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
Feldman, Louis H. (1990). "Some Observations on the Name of Palestine". Hebrew Union College Annual. 61. Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion: 1–23.
Frei, Peter (2001). "Persian Imperial Authorization: A Summary". In Watts, James (ed.). Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press. p. 6.
Gelber, Yoʾav (2006). Palestine 1948: war, escape and the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem. Brighton Portland Toronto: Sussex Academic Press.
Stager, Lawrence. "Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel". In Coogan (1998).
Yamada, Keiko; Yamada, Shiego (2017). "Shalmaneser V and His Era, Revisited". In Baruchi-Unna, Amitai; Forti, Tova; Aḥituv, Shmuel; Ephʿal, Israel; Tigay, Jeffrey H. (eds.). "Now It Happened in Those Days": Studies in Biblical, Assyrian, and Other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Mordechai Cogan on His 75th Birthday. Vol. 2. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
Schultz, Joseph & Klausner, Carla From Destruction to Rebirth: The Holocaust and the State of Israel, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978
Shapira Anita. ‘'Israel: A History'’ (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 2012) 502 pages;
Sharon, Assaf, "The Long Paralysis of the Israeli Left" (review of Dan Ephron, Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, Norton, 290 pp.; and Itamar Rabinovich, Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman, Yale University Press, 272 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 17 (7 November 2019), pp. 32–34.
Shatz, Adam, "We Are Conquerors" (review of
Jewish homeland in Palestine, and how contemptuous he was not only of the Arabs but of Jewish life outside Zion
. [Liberal Jews] may look at the state that Ben-Gurion built, and ask if the cost has been worth it." (p. 42 of Shatz's review.)
Shlaim, Avi, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2001)
Laqueur, Walter, and Dan Schueftan, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (8th ed. Penguin, 2016). online 2001 edition
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