history of Israel

…leaders of the State of Israel had presumed that the normalization of the Jewish condition—that is, the achievement of statehood and with it a flag and an army—would seriously diminish antisemitism; however, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 onward, the existence of the Israeli state seemed to have the…

…creation of the State of Israel (1948) in a formerly Arab region aroused new currents of hostility within the Arab world. Arab hostility to the State of Israel was primarily political (or anti-Zionist) and religious rather than racial. Whatever the motivation, however, the result was the adoption of many anti-Jewish…

…3–4, 1976), rescue by an Israeli commando squad of 103 hostages from a French jet airliner hijacked en route from Israel to France. After stopping at Athens, the airliner was hijacked on June 27 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Red Army Faction…

…stabilizing influence: the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Throughout his years as U.S. secretary of state, George Shultz had tried to promote the peace process in the Middle East by brokering direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Such talks would require the PLO to renounce terrorism…

Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestinian militants, especially Hamas, that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a land, sea, and air assault on Israel from the territory. The next day, Israel declared war for the first time since the Yom Kippur War (1973). Although Israel’s war…

>Israel and Hezbollah, a Shiʿi Muslim militant group in Lebanon, that began in the aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah, and consisted of two major confrontations. The first major confrontation, in September–November 2024, included the removal of…

…end, and the State of Israel was proclaimed.

…an LNM-PLO victory would provoke Israeli intervention against the Palestinians and lead Syria into a confrontation with Israel, thereby complicating Syria’s own interests. As a result, in June 1976 it launched a large-scale intervention to redress the emerging imbalance of power in favor of the Christians. Syria’s intervention sparked a…

…found a ready ally in Israel, whose hostility toward Egypt had been exacerbated by Nasser’s blockage of the Straits of Tīrān (at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba) and the numerous raids by Egyptian-supported commandos into Israel during 1955–56.

…from the Middle East, efface Israel, and restore Islamic grandeur. Egypt began sponsoring acts of violence against Israel from the Gaza Strip and cut off shipping through the Strait of Tīrān. The British were understandably hostile to Nasser, as were the French, who were battling Islamic nationalists in Morocco, Algeria,…

On June 13, 2025, Israel conducted a major operation against Iran. The anticipated attack, which targeted nuclear facilities, military sites, and regime infrastructure, followed nearly two years of war between Israel and Iran-backed militant groups that also saw two direct confrontations between Israel and Iran in 2024. As fighting…

…Lebanon War, a war between Israel and Hezbollah that began on July 12, 2006, and ended on August 14. Its proximate cause was a cross-border attack by Hezbollah fighters that culminated with the kidnapping of a pair of Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others.

United States and Israel on February 28, 2026, and has upended the dynamics of the Middle East. The opening salvo took out the heart of the Iranian regime, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and triggered a torrent of hundreds of retaliatory missiles and thousands of drones from Iran across…

between Egypt and Israel. The conflict, launched by Egypt, was meant to wear down Israel by means of a long engagement and so provide Egypt with the opportunity to dislodge Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized from Egypt in the Six-Day (June) War of…

…Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, Stalin and Truman (whether out of sympathy or domestic politics) immediately advanced recognition.

…renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel by the U.S.S.R., China, and India. In June 1992, the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, defeated the Likud in elections, bringing to power a more flexible Israeli cabinet. Bush then extended $10,000,000,000 in American loan guarantees to Israel, and Jerusalem in turn announced…

>Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries, the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. Brokered by U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter (this author) between Israeli Prime…

…Sudan, the British presence, and Israel. An agreement signed in February 1953 established a transitional period of self-government for the Sudan, which became an independent republic in January 1956. Prolonged negotiations led to the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement, under which British troops were to be evacuated gradually from the canal zone.…

between Egypt and Israel. Further torturous negotiations followed before the peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1979.

…the strip was taken by Israel. The strip reverted to Egyptian control in 1957 following strong international pressures on Israel.

Israel made such a declaration when it annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, as did Russia following its annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea in 2014. The subsequent recognition of annexation by other states may be explicit or implied. Annexation based on the…

…1967, when it came under Israeli military occupation, and in December 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan it held. In 2019 the United States became the only country to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the area. The area’s name is from the biblical city of refuge Golan in…

…as a militia after the Israeli invasion of that country in 1982. Since the 2000s it has been one of the foremost political forces in Lebanon, a multiconfessional country whose political system is largely divided along sectarian lines. Its close ties with Iran has made it one of the most…

…Raisi grew increasingly confrontational towards Israel. Amid his rising rhetoric against Israel—and a historic visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss the war—Iran’s allies across the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi forces in Yemen, stepped up attacks on Israel. When Israeli forces killed senior officers of the IRGC’s Quds…

… after the 1948–49 war with Israel—and political unrest precluded his joining the pro-Western mutual defense treaty between the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, known as the Central Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact (1955), which he had helped initiate. In an effort to build domestic support, in 1956 he…

…proclaimed the independent state of Israel and immediately following the British withdrawal from Palestine, Transjordan joined its Arab neighbors in the first Arab-Israeli war. The Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha (John [later Sir John] Bagot Glubb), and Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi troops entered Palestine. Abdullah’s primary purpose, which…

… and Pakistan in 1948, between Israel and its neighbours in 1949, between Israel, Great Britain, France, and Egypt in 1956, and between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in 1970. None of these states was at the time declared an aggressor. On the other hand, Japan was found to be an aggressor…

…there of the State of Israel in 1948. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various Palestinian groups that previously had operated as clandestine resistance movements. It came into prominence only after the Six-Day War of June 1967, however, and engaged in a protracted guerrilla war against…

Israel lifted long-standing restrictions on flying the flag in 1993 after negotiations with the PLO; the flag was subsequently used by the Palestinian National Authority.

>Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the PA also has de jure governing authority over the entirety of the Gaza Strip, but it has not exercised de facto control there since 2007, when Hamas took control of the region by force. Although the PA…

Peace talks between Israel and the PA were renewed in November 2007, and direct negotiations continued into 2008. At the peak of these negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—whose premiership was coming to an end amid a corruption scandal—offered Abbas more than 93 percent of the territory the…

…made a historic visit to Israel (November 19–20, 1977), during which he traveled to Jerusalem to place his plan for a peace settlement before the Israeli Knesset (parliament). This initiated a series of diplomatic efforts that Sadat continued despite strong opposition from most of the Arab world and the Soviet…

-led peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. In the aftermath of the war, however, the kingdom also sought to cultivate closer relations with other regional powers, particularly with Iran.

…controversy when, in December 2025, Israel became the first country to recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent country and established diplomatic relations with it. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel’s agreement with Somaliland was “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” which are a series of agreements…

…erupted in December 2025 when Israel and Somaliland announced that they were establishing full diplomatic relations, making Israel the first country to recognize Somaliland as an independent country since the republic was self-proclaimed in 1991. The development angered Somalia’s government, which characterized it as an attack on its sovereignty, and…

…proclamation of the State of Israel. It has been argued that the orderly and dignified ending of the British Empire, beginning in the 1940s and stretching into the 1960s, was Britain’s greatest international achievement. However, like the notion of national unity during World War II, this interpretation can also be…

…UN also has declared that Israel’s purported annexation of the Golan Heights (conquered from Syria in 1967) is invalid and has ruled similarly with regard to Israel’s extension of its jurisdiction to formerly Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem.

between Lebanon and Israel. In March 1978, early on in the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), Israel sent troops into southern Lebanon as far as the Litani River, about 20 miles (30 km) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, to respond to cross-border raids by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),…

…basis for the establishment of Israel, and which was rejected by the Arab community—was succeeded almost immediately by violence (see 1948 Arab-Israeli War).

During the 1967 war Israel occupied the West Bank and established a military administration throughout the area, except in East Jerusalem, which Israel incorporated into itself, extending Israeli citizenship, law, and civil administration to the area. In the remaining areas of the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)…

…creation of the State of Israel (1948) the Haganah controlled not only most of the settled areas allocated to Israel by the partition but also such Arab cities as ʿAkko (Acre) and Yafo (Jaffa). By order of the provisional government of Israel (May 31, 1948) the Haganah as a private…

…creation of the state of Israel (1948), the group, which had always been condemned by moderate leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, was suppressed, some of its units being incorporated in the Israeli defense forces. Unlike the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a precursor of the Ḥerut (“Freedom”) Party, the Stern…