Israel

• 1. Introduction

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  Israel sits at one of the strangest addresses on the planet. Its eastern side drops to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. Its western coast meets the Mediterranean, and its southern tip touches the Red Sea. On land it borders Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Jerusalem is the seat of government and the capital the state proclaims, while Tel Aviv is the largest urban area and the economic centre.

  Hebrew is the official language, and no other country can say that its official language was brought back from ancient use. The country ranks 25th in the world by nominal GDP. It also spends a larger share of its economy on research and development than any other state.

  A modern map tells very little of the real story. Where does the name come from, and who lived on this land across thousands of years? How did a state come to be declared, and what happened to the people already there? And why do its borders, its laws and its very legitimacy remain argued over by governments and courts around the world?

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• 2. Name and Ancient Roots

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  The oldest known object to use the word Israel for a people is the Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian artefact from the late 13th century BCE. The Hebrew Bible explains the name differently. It says the patriarch Jacob received it after he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. The Greek Septuagint spelled it Israel, and the name is glossed as "El (God) persists/rules."

  The choice of a name for the modern state was not automatic. Under the British Mandate, which ran from 1920 to 1948, the whole region was called Palestine. When the state was established, the options of Land of Israel (Eretz Israel), Ever, Zion and Judea were all considered and rejected. Ever was drawn from the ancestor Eber. David Ben-Gurion proposed Israel, and a vote of 6-3 approved it. In the first weeks, the government also chose Israeli as the word for a citizen.

  People were here long before any name. At Ubeidiya in northern Israel, archaic humans left traces about 1.5 million years ago. A fossil from Misliya Cave on Mount Carmel, some 200,000 years old, is the second-oldest evidence of anatomically modern humans outside Africa. Around 10,000 BCE, the Natufian culture adopted settled life before farming had even arrived.

  By about 2000 BCE, texts from Egypt and the wider ancient Near East were mentioning Canaan and the Canaanites. These people lived in politically independent city-states. From 1550 to 1200 BCE, large parts of Canaan were vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt. The Late Bronze Age collapse then threw the region into chaos and ended Egyptian control.

  Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites grew out of the Canaanites. They developed a distinct religion centred on Yahweh, first worshipping one god among many and later one god alone. They spoke an archaic form known as Biblical Hebrew. The Philistines settled the southern coastal plain at about the same time. Most modern scholars agree that the Exodus story did not happen as the Torah describes it, though some elements have historical roots.

  Historians and archaeologists agree that a northern Kingdom of Israel existed by 900 BCE and a Kingdom of Judah by 850 BCE. Whether a single united kingdom ever came first remains unclear. Israel was the richer of the two, with its capital at Samaria. Under the Omride dynasty it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the plain of Sharon and large parts of Transjordan.

  Around 720 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom. Judah, ruled by the line of David from Jerusalem, became a client state first of Assyria and then of Babylon. The region's population is estimated at around 400,000 in the Iron Age II. In 587/6 BCE, after a revolt, King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem and destroyed it along with Solomon's Temple. He dissolved the kingdom and sent much of the Judean elite into exile in Babylon.

  In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great captured Babylon and issued a proclamation allowing the exiles to return. The Second Temple was finished around 520 BCE. Alexander the Great took the region in 332 BCE, and after his death the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires fought over it. Decrees by Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish practices and set off the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE. By 142/141 BCE the Hasmoneans had won autonomy, and they soon built an independent Jewish kingdom.

  A civil war among the Hasmoneans ended when Rome besieged Jerusalem in 63 BCE. In 37 BCE, Herod the Great was installed as a vassal of Rome, and in 6 CE the area became the Roman province of Judaea. The First Jewish-Roman War, from 66 to 73 CE, destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-136 CE briefly let the Jews form an independent state before the Romans crushed it and depopulated the Judean countryside.

  Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina, and the province was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were expelled from the districts around the city. A small Jewish presence nevertheless continued without a break, and Galilee became its religious centre.

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• 3. Empires and Faiths

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  In the 4th century CE, Constantine embraced Christianity and Theodosius I made it the state religion. By the middle of the 5th century, Christians were the majority in the land. Laws discriminating against Jews were passed, and both the church and the authorities persecuted them. Many Jews had already left for flourishing diaspora communities. Samaritan revolts broke out late in the 5th century and ran until the late 6th, sharply shrinking the Samaritan population.

  After the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem, a short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius broke out in 614 CE. The Byzantine Empire regained control in 628. Between 634 and 641, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant. Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem and allowed them to worship there.

  Over the next six centuries, control passed among the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, and then to the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties. The population fell hard in these centuries. An estimated 1 million people in Roman and Byzantine times had shrunk to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period. The region slowly became more Arab and more Muslim. The end of the 11th century brought the Crusades, when Christian armies blessed by the pope set out to take Jerusalem and found crusader states. The Ayyubids pushed them back, and the Mamluk sultans of Egypt fully restored Muslim rule in 1291.

  In 1516, the Ottoman Empire took the region and governed it as part of Ottoman Syria. Violence against Jews followed in 1517, in the Safed attacks and the Hebron attacks. Even so, the Levant under the Ottomans was fairly cosmopolitan, with religious freedom for Christians, Muslims and Jews. In 1561, the sultan invited Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition to rebuild the city of Tiberias.

  The millet system sorted non-Muslims into autonomous communities by religion. Christians and Jews were treated as dhimmi, meaning "protected," in return for loyalty and payment of the jizya tax. They faced limits on where and how they lived, though these were not always enforced. Religious Jews kept the idea of a return to Zion alive as a symbol. They held that Divine Providence, not human action, would decide when it came.

  The Jewish community of those years is called the Old Yishuv. It stayed a minority, and its size rose and fell. In the 16th century, Jewish communities took root in the Four Holy Cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron and Safed. A Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias in 1660. In 1697, Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid led 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem. Later in the 18th century, the Perushim, Eastern European Jews who opposed Hasidism, settled in Palestine.

  Local power could also slip from Ottoman hands. In the late 18th century, the Arab sheikh Daher al-Umar built a de facto independent emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman efforts to subdue him failed. In 1799, the governor Jazzar Pasha repelled Napoleon's troops at Acre, and the French gave up their Syrian campaign. In 1834, Palestinian Arab peasants rose against conscription and taxes under Muhammad Ali, and the revolt was crushed. Ottoman rule returned in 1840 with British support, and the Tanzimat reforms then spread across the empire.

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• 4. Zionism and the Mandate

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  The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews and limited where they could live. In 1881, Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe had already begun the First Aliyah, the first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine. Political Zionism took shape in response. It was a movement seeking a Jewish state in Palestine, as an answer to what the European states called the Jewish question.

  Numbers show how small the Palestine stream was at first. Three million Jews left tsarist Russia between 1882 and 1914, and only 1% of them went to Palestine. Those who did go were driven more by self-determination and Jewish identity than by pogroms or poverty. The Second Aliyah of 1904-1914 began after the Kishinev pogrom. About 40,000 Jews settled, though nearly half eventually left.

  Socialist Zionist groups in that wave founded the kibbutz movement, built on a separate Jewish economy using only Jewish labour. Many who became Yishuv leaders believed the settler economy should not rely on Arab labour. That stance became a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 as the first planned Jewish town. Jewish militias appeared too, starting with Bar-Giora in 1907 and the larger Hashomer two years later.

  Chaim Weizmann worked to win British backing, and it came as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. Weizmann read it as meaning that talks on the country's future would be held between Britain and the Jews alone, leaving out the Arabs. In 1918, the Jewish Legion, mostly Zionist volunteers, helped Britain conquer Palestine. In 1920, the territory was split between Britain and France, and the British share, including modern Israel, became Mandatory Palestine.

  The 1920 Palestine riots followed Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration. They also led to the Haganah, a Jewish militia that grew out of Hashomer. The Irgun and Lehi later broke away from it. In 1922, the League of Nations gave Britain the Mandate, with terms that included the Balfour Declaration and similar provisions for the Arab Palestinians. The population was mostly Arab and Muslim. Jews made up about 11% and Arab Christians about 9.5%.

  The Third and Fourth Aliyahs, from 1919 to 1929, brought another 100,000 Jews. Then the rise of Nazism sent a quarter of a million more in the Fifth Aliyah. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936-39, which British forces and Zionist militias suppressed. About 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 wounded and 12,622 detained. An estimated ten per cent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled.

  In 1939, the White Paper restricted Jewish immigration. As other countries turned away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, a clandestine effort called Aliyah Bet worked to bring them in. During World War II, Axis aircraft repeatedly bombed Palestine. About 30,000 Jews from Palestine served in the British military, and around 700 of them died. Some 12,000 Palestinian Arabs also served. By war's end, about 31% of the population was Jewish.

  From 1944, Britain faced a Jewish insurgency over the immigration limits. The Haganah joined the Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle. The Royal Navy intercepted most ships carrying refugees and Holocaust survivors and placed them in detention camps at Atlit and on Cyprus. On the 22nd of July 1946, the Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters and killed 91 people. It was the deadliest attack on the British during the Mandate. The attack was a response to Operation Agatha, a series of British raids that included one on the Jewish Agency.

  British mediation failed. Jewish leaders would accept only a Jewish state and suggested partition, while the Arabs insisted a Jewish state anywhere in Palestine was unacceptable. In February 1947, Britain handed the question to the new United Nations. In July 1947 came the Sergeants affair, in which the Irgun took two British sergeants hostage to pressure Britain over three Irgun men facing execution. After the executions, the Irgun killed the sergeants and hanged their bodies from trees, and a booby trap there injured a British soldier. Outrage in the UK was widespread, and in September the British cabinet decided to leave Palestine.

  On the 29th of November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II). It gave the Jews 55-56% of Mandatory Palestine. At the time, Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6-7% of the land. Arabs were the majority and owned about 20%, with the rest held by Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. The Jewish Agency accepted the plan. The Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee rejected it, arguing it favoured European interests over those of the Palestinians.

  On the 1st of December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee called a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem. Civil war followed. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the Mandate would end on the 15th of May 1948. Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas and met mainly the Haganah, with the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah went on the offensive.

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• 5. Statehood and Newcomers

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  On the 14th of May 1948, the day before the Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel." He was head of the Jewish Agency. The next day, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq entered the former Mandatory Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan joined them. The invaders aimed to stop the Jewish state from being established. The Arab League said it was acting to restore order and prevent more bloodshed.

  After a year of fighting, a ceasefire set temporary borders called the Green Line. Jordan annexed the area that became the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military. In Arabic this is called the Nakba, meaning "catastrophe." The events also destroyed most of Palestine's Arab culture, identity and national aspirations. About 156,000 Arabs stayed and became Arab citizens of Israel. On the 11th of May 1949, Resolution 273 admitted Israel to the United Nations.

  In the early years, the Labour Zionist movement under Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dominated politics. Newcomers arrived under the One Million Plan, helped by the Immigration Department and by a private body, the Mossad LeAliyah Bet. That group ran clandestine operations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where Jewish lives were in danger, until it was disbanded in 1953. Some immigrants held Zionist beliefs or sought a better life. Others fled persecution or had been expelled from their homes.

  An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries doubled the Jewish population from 700,000 to 1,400,000 in the first three years. By 1958 the total population reached two million. Between 1948 and 1970, about 1,150,000 Jewish refugees relocated to Israel.

  Many lived first in temporary camps called ma'abarot. By 1952, over 200,000 people were living in these tent cities. Treatment was uneven. Housing set aside for Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries was often reassigned to European Jews. Those arriving from Arab lands generally stayed longer in transit camps. Food, clothes and furniture were rationed in what became known as the austerity period.

  The crisis pushed Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany. It set off mass protests by Jews angry that Israel might accept money as compensation for the Holocaust. Germany would eventually pay 25 billion euros in reparations to Israel and to individual Israeli Holocaust survivors.

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• 6. Wars and Treaties

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  During the 1950s, Palestinian fedayeen, mostly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, repeatedly attacked Israel, almost always targeting civilians. Israel answered with reprisal raids. In 1956, the UK and France wanted to regain control of the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalised. The Straits of Tiran and the canal were closed to Israeli shipping, and fedayeen attacks on the south were growing. Israel then joined a secret alliance with the UK and France. It overran the Sinai Peninsula in the Suez Crisis, then withdrew under UN pressure in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights.

  In the early 1960s, Israel captured the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to trial. He remains the only person executed in Israel after conviction in a civilian court. In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organisation was established, initially committed to "armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland." That same year, Arab countries began trying to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River. They were alarmed by Israeli plans to move its water to the coastal plain.

  In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border and expelled the UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai since 1957. It also blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea. In June, Israel struck Egypt first in Operation Focus, and Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked it. In the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Roughly 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Gaza and the West Bank. The Arab League answered with its "Three Nos" resolution, and the War of Attrition with Egypt ran from 1967 to 1970.

  At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Palestinian attackers massacred Israeli athletes. Israel answered with an assassination campaign against the organisers, a bombing and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon. On the 6th of October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that opened the Yom Kippur War. It ended on the 25th of October with Israel repelling both armies but suffering great losses. Public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign, even though an internal inquiry cleared the government. On the 27th of June 1976, Palestinian guerrillas hijacked Air France Flight 139, and Israeli commandos rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages.

  The 1977 elections brought Menachem Begin's Likud to power in place of the Labor Party. That year Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat travelled to Israel and spoke to the Knesset. It was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. The Camp David Accords of 1978 led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. Israel gave up the Sinai, returned in 1982, and agreed to negotiate autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Begin's government also encouraged Israelis to settle in the occupied West Bank, which increased friction there.

  On the 11th of March 1978, a PLO raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road massacre. Israel then invaded southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. On the 7th of June 1981, the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's only nuclear reactor, still under construction. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again and in six days destroyed the PLO's military forces there and defeated the Syrians. The Kahan Commission held defence minister Ariel Sharon to bear "personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and Sharon was forced to resign. Israel held a buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, fighting Hezbollah from there.

  The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising, broke out in 1987 and over six years killed more than 1,000 people. During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi missiles hit Israel, and Israel heeded American calls not to hit back. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister on a promise of compromise with Israel's neighbours. In 1993, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords. They gave the Palestinian National Authority the right to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO recognised Israel's right to exist. In 1994, Jordan became the second Arab country to make peace with Israel.

  Arab public support for the Accords faded as settlements and checkpoints continued. Israeli support waned after Palestinian suicide attacks. In November 1995, Yigal Amir, a far-right Jew opposed to the Accords, assassinated Rabin. At the 2000 Camp David Summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered a Palestinian state. It included all of Gaza, over 90% of the West Bank and a shared Jerusalem as capital. Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks.

  The Second Intifada began in late 2000 after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed. Sharon, elected prime minister in 2001, withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and led construction of the West Bank barrier, which ended the uprising. In July 2006, Hezbollah attacks and the abduction of two Israeli soldiers started the month-long Second Lebanon War. A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed in 2008, bringing the three-week Gaza War. Further fighting came in 2012-2014 and May 2021.

  The Abraham Accords of 2020 normalised ties with more Arab states. Then on the 7th of October 2023, militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, attacked Israel. About 1,300 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in border communities and at a music festival, and over 200 hostages were taken to Gaza. Israel invaded Gaza on the 27th of October. It was the deadliest conflict for Palestinians in the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A UN Special Committee, several governments and various experts and rights organisations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide. Israel and its allies, including the United States, reject that.

  The conflict spread beyond Gaza. In April 2024, Israel and Iran exchanged fire directly for the first time. In September 2024, Israel assassinated Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. A November 2024 ceasefire told Israel to leave Lebanon. It mostly did by February 2025, but kept five outposts on southern highlands. In June 2025, airstrikes on Iran escalated into a full-scale war. In February 2026, Israel and the United States struck Iran again, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

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• 7. Land and Climate

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  Israel is only about 100 km wide at its widest point, against 400 km from north to south. Its sovereign territory, drawn on the 1949 armistice lines and excluding land taken in 1967, is about 20770 square kilometres. Two per cent of it is water. The country is so narrow that its exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean is double its land area. Counting East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the area under Israeli law is 22072 square kilometres. Including the West Bank, the area under Israeli control reaches 27799.

  Within this small space lie the Negev desert, the fertile Jezreel Valley and the mountain ranges of the Galilee and Carmel, rising toward the Golan. Most of the population lives on the coastal plain. East of the central highlands runs the Jordan Rift Valley, a small part of the 6500 km Great Rift Valley. The Jordan River flows through it from Mount Hermon, across the Hulah Valley and the Sea of Galilee, and ends at the Dead Sea. The Arabah continues south to the Gulf of Eilat. In the Negev and Sinai are makhtesh, erosion cirques found nowhere else, the largest being Makhtesh Ramon at 38 km long.

  Israel has more plant species per square metre than any other country in the Mediterranean Basin. There are 2,867 known species, and at least 253 were introduced. Four terrestrial ecoregions and four phytogeographic regions meet here, between the temperate and tropical zones. The country has 380 nature reserves. Forests covered 8.5% of the area in 2016, up from 2% in 1948, thanks to a large planting programme by the Jewish National Fund.

  The Jordan Rift Valley comes from the Dead Sea Transform fault system, the boundary between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. The Golan Heights and all of Jordan sit on the Arabian Plate. The Galilee, West Bank, Coastal Plain and Negev lie on the African Plate. The most catastrophic known earthquakes struck in 31 BCE, 363, 749 and 1033, roughly every 400 years. Destructive quakes arrive about every 80 years. Strain built up since 1033 is enough for a quake of about 7.4, and 50,000 residential buildings are expected to collapse in a strong one.

  Coastal cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa have cool, rainy winters and long, hot summers. Beersheba and the northern Negev are semi-arid, and the southern Negev and the Arabah are desert. The highest temperature, 54 °C (129 °F), was recorded in 1942 at the Tirat Zvi kibbutz. Places at 750 m or higher, the elevation of Jerusalem, usually see at least one snowfall each year. Rain is rare from May to September.

  Scarce water led Israel to develop water-saving technology such as drip irrigation. Abundant sunshine makes it the leading nation in solar energy use per capita, and practically every house heats water with solar panels. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has warned that climate change "will have a decisive impact on all areas of life."

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• 8. Law, Land and Power

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  The Knesset has 120 members, chosen by proportional representation with a 3.25% electoral threshold, which in practice produces coalition governments. A member of parliament backed by a majority becomes prime minister, while the president is head of state with largely ceremonial duties. Elections are scheduled every four years, but unstable coalitions or a no-confidence vote can end a government sooner. The first Arab-led party was established in 1988, and as of 2022 Arab-led parties hold about 10% of seats. A party cannot run if its aims include the "negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people."

  There is no formal constitution. The Basic Laws serve as one, defining Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The Knesset began drafting an official constitution in 2003. On the 19th of July 2018, it passed a Basic Law describing Israel as the "Nation State of the Jewish People," with Hebrew as its official language. The same law gives Arabic an undefined "special status" and calls Jewish settlement a "national interest." The 1950 Law of Return gives Jews the right to immigrate and obtain citizenship. The Supreme Court has ruled that an Israeli nationality does not exist.

  The territories won in 1967 are the hardest question. The Golan Heights and East Jerusalem are fully incorporated under Israeli law, with inhabitants given permanent residency and the chance to apply for citizenship. The UN Security Council has declared both annexations "null and void." The West Bank, called the Judea and Samaria Area in Israel, holds almost 400,000 Israeli settlers who vote in Knesset elections. Israel has never annexed it or drawn a border. Palestinians there cannot become Israeli citizens, and the international community calls it the longest military occupation in modern history.

  Gaza is treated as "foreign territory" under Israeli law. In 2005, Israel removed its settlers and forces, but kept control of its airspace and waters. After Hamas took power in the 2007 Battle of Gaza, Israel and Egypt operated a land, air and sea blockade. Humanitarian organisations and UN bodies still consider Gaza occupied.

  In 2004, the International Court of Justice found that the West Bank barrier within occupied territory violates international law. Most negotiations rest on UN Security Council Resolution 242, which stresses "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." Resolution 2334 of 2016 called settlement activity a "flagrant violation" of international law. In a 2024 advisory opinion, the court said the occupation violated international law. It said Israel should end it as quickly as possible and pay reparations. Prime Minister Netanyahu has defended Israel's forces as protecting the innocent from terrorists.

  Accusations of apartheid have followed. A 2021 survey of Middle East scholars found 65% describing a "one-state reality akin to apartheid," up from 59%. B'tselem, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have affirmed the claim. In 2022, Michael Lynk, a law professor appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, said: "Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world." Israel and allies including the US and the UK criticised Amnesty's claim. At the 2024 hearings, 24 states and three international organisations said Israeli practices breach the ban on apartheid or racial discrimination. The court itself was silent on whether apartheid applied, and individual judges split.

  Abroad, Israel runs 107 diplomatic missions, and six of the 22 Arab League nations have normalised relations. It remains formally at war with Syria, a state of war dating back to 1948. The United States and the Soviet Union recognised Israel at roughly the same time. Since 1967, the United States has provided $68 billion in military assistance and $32 billion in grants. India established ties in 1992, Ethiopia is its main ally in Africa, and as of 2025 it is the only UN member to recognise Somaliland.

  The Israel Defence Forces conscript most Israelis at 18. Men serve two years and eight months, and women two years. The army holds about 176,500 active troops and 465,000 reservists. Defence spending peaked at 30.3% of GDP in 1975, and in 2021 it was 5.2%. Israel is widely believed to hold nuclear weapons but keeps a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Since the Gulf War in 1991, every home must include a reinforced room called Merkhav Mugan, sealed against chemical and biological substances.

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