🇮🇱 Israel

National Flag

Geography & Borders

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Introduction & Background

Israel (/ˈɪzri.əl, -reɪ-/; Template:Lang-he, Yīsrāʾēl, Template:IPA-he; Template:Lang-ar, ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (Template:Lang-he, Template:IPA-he; Template:Lang-ar), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel also is bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.19fn 5

The land held by present-day Israel witnessed some of the earliest human occupations outside Africa and was among the earliest known sites of agriculture.20 It was inhabited by the Canaanites during the Bronze Age.2120 During the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged,2223 and later fell, respectively, to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 720 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE).2425 During that period, much of the Hebrew Bible was written. The region was then ruled by the Achaemenid, Macedonian, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid empires. A successful Maccabean revolt led to the rise of an independent Hasmonean kingdom, but it was gradually incorporated into the Roman Republic.2627 A series of large-scale Jewish revolts against Roman rule were unsuccessful, leading to wide-scale destruction, a high toll of life, and mass displacement. In the Middle Ages, the region was part of the Byzantine Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, and Fatimid Caliphate. With the First Crusade, Crusader states were established. The Ayyubids pushed back the crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk Sultanate, which ceded the territory to the Ottoman Empire at the outset of the early modern period.