What is Israel?
A: The State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia.
Where is it located?
A: It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the
northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north,
Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest.
It is also bordered by what?
A: The Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the
east and west, respectively.
Tel Aviv is it’s what?
A: It is the economic and technological center of the country.
Its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of
Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is what?
A: Unrecognized internationally.
The land held by present-day Israel witnessed some of
the earliest human occupations outside what?
A: Africa.
It was among the earliest known sites of what?
A: Agriculture.
It was inhabited by the Canaanites during what period?
A: The Bronze Age.
During the Iron Age, what kingdoms emerged?
A: Israel and Judah.
It later fell, respectively, to whom?
A: The Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 720 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE).
During that period, much of what was written?
The region was then ruled by whom?
A: The Achaemenid, Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires.
A successful Maccabean revolt led to the rise of an independent Hasmonean kingdom, but it was gradually incorporated into what?
A: The Roman Republic.
A series of large-scale unsuccessful Jewish revolts
against Roman rule led to what?
A: Wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and mass displacement.
In the Middle Ages, the region was part of what?
A: The Byzantine Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid
Caliphate and Fatimid Caliphate.
During the 19th century, the Zionist movement began
promoting the creation of what?
A: A Jewish homeland in Ottoman Syria.
Following World War I, Britain was granted control of
the region by what?
A: League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine.
After World War II, the newly formed United Nations
adopted what?
A: The Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, recommending the creation of
independent Arab and Jewish states, and an internationalized Jerusalem.
Following a civil war within Mandatory Palestine
between Yishuv and Palestinian Arab forces, Israel did what?
A: Declared independence at the termination of the British Mandate.
A day later, several surrounding Arab countries
intervened, leading to what?
A: The 1948 Arab Israeli War, which concluded with the 1949 Armistice
Agreements that saw Israel in control of most of the former mandate
territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by Jordan and Egypt
respectively.
Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, about half of the
pre-war Arab population, were what?
A: Expelled from or fled the territory Israel would come to control.
During and immediately after the war, around how many
Jews emigrated or fled from the Arab world to Israel?
Israel has since fought wars with several Arab
countries, and since the 1967 Six-Day War has occupied what?
A: The Golan Heights and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Israel has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the
Golan Heights, though these actions have been rejected as what?
A: Illegal by the international community.
It has established settlements within the occupied
territories, which are also considered what?
A: Illegal under international law.
Israel has signed peace treaties with what two
countries?
A: Egypt and Jordan.
