User:Tariqabjotu/Israel history
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[edit] History
[edit] Historical roots
- See also: History of ancient Israel and Judah, Jewish history, and History of the Jews in the Land of Israel
Jewish tradition holds that the Land of Israel has been a Holy Land and promised land for four thousand years, since the time of the biblical patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). Consequently, the land of Israel encompasses Judaism's most important sites, including the site of the First and Second Temples of Jerusalem. Around the 11th century BCE, the first of a series of Jewish kingdoms and states established rule over the region; these Jewish kingdoms and states would intermittently maintain rule for the following one thousand years.[1][2]
Under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and (briefly) Sassanian rule, Jewish presence in the region dwindled due to multiple expulsions. In particular, the failure of Bar Kokhba's revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE resulted in a large-scale expulsion of Jews. Nevertheless, the Jewish presence in Palestine remained constant, although the main Jewish population shifted from the Judea region to the Galilee.[3] The Talmud, one of Judaism's most important religious texts, was composed in the region following the second-century expulsion.[4] The land of Israel was captured from the Byzantine Empire around 636 CE during the initial Muslim conquests. Control of the region transferred between the Umayyads, Abbasids, Crusaders, Khwarezmians, and Mongols over the next six centuries, before falling in the hands of the Mamluk Sultinate, in 1260. In 1517, the land of Israel become apart of the Ottoman Empire, which would rule the region until the 20th century.[5]
[edit] Zionism and the British Mandate
Jews living in the diaspora had sought to emigrate to Israel for many centuries. Yehuda Halevi, a 12th-century philosopher and poet, was one of the first people to promote the emigration of Jews to the land of Israel.[6] In the centuries that followed, the land of Israel would see small waves of immigration from Europe. Nahmanides (1194–c. 1270) and Yosef Karo (1488–1575) migrated to the region on their own, but Yechiel of Paris (c. 1200s), Judah he-Hasid (c. 1650–1700), and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730–1778) each emigrated to the land of Israel with hundreds of followers. Over five hundred of the Vilna Gaon's disciples (the Perushim) and their families moved to Israel in the early 19th century, settling in Tiberias, Safed, and then in Jerusalem.[7]
In 1862, Jewish philosopher Moses Hess published Rome and Jerusalem, in which he advocated the establishment of a socialist Jewish state on the land of Israel and a process called "redemption of the soil". Two decades later, in 1881, the first large wave of modern immigration to Israel, or aliyah (Hebrew: עלייה), began as Jews fled growing persecution in Eastern Europe. However, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), an Austro-Hungarian Jew, is usually credited with founding the Zionist movement. In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he called for the establishment of a Jewish state. The following year he helped convene the first World Zionist Congress. The establishment of Zionism led to the Second Aliyah (1904–1914) with the influx of around forty thousand Jews. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration that "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Three years later, in 1920, Palestine became a League of Nations mandate — the British Mandate of Palestine.
After World War I, until 1929, waves of Jewish immigration resumed with the Third and Fourth Aliyahs; together they brought over 100,000 Jews to the region. The rise of Nazism throughout the 1930s led to the Fifth Aliyah, in which a quarter million Jews emigrated to Palestine. In 1939, the British introduced, perhaps in response to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the MacDonald White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration and land purchases over the course of the World War II. Nevertheless, with The Holocaust occurring in Europe, many Jews fled to Israel illegally in a wave of immigration known as Aliyah Bet. By the end of World War II, Jews accounted for 33% of the population of Palestine, up from 11% in 1922.[8]
Meanwhile, many Arabs, opposed to the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, and the idea of a Jewish national home instigated riots and pogroms against Jews in the region. As a result of the 1921 Arab attacks, the Haganah was formed to protect Jewish settlements. The Haganah was mostly defensive in nature, which among other things caused several members to split off and form the Irgun (initially known as Hagana Bet) in 1931. The Irgun took a much more offensive approach, which included deadly attacks against the British. A further split occurred when Avraham Stern left the Irgun to form Lehi, which was even more extreme in its methods. These groups had an enormous impact on events preceding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, including Aliyah Bet, the formation of the Israel Defense Forces, and the withdrawal of the British. They also assisted to a great degree in forming the foundation of the political parties that exist in Israel today.
[edit] Independence
- See also: Arab-Israeli conflict, Jewish exodus from Arab lands, and Palestinian exodus
In 1947, with increasing levels of Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine and a feeling of war fatigue following World War II, the British government decided to withdraw from the Mandate of Palestine.[9] The newly-created United Nations approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan, allocating just over half the land for a Jewish state and most of the rest for an Arab country. Jerusalem was to be designated as an international city administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.
On November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion, later the first Prime Minister of Israel, tentatively accepted the UN Partition Plan. The Arab League, meanwhile, rejected it. The Arab Higher Committee immediately ordered a violent three-day strike on Jewish civilians, buildings, shops, and neighborhoods. This and an insurgency organized by underground Jewish militias soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews and the beginnings of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.[10] Regardless, the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiry of the British Mandate of Palestine.
Following the State of Israel's establishment, the armies of five Arab countries declared war on Israel and began the second phase of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Jordanian forces captured East Jerusalem, but Haganah and Irgun forces were able to halt additional Jordanian and Egyptian advances. After months of war, during which the Israel Defense Forces were officially formed, a ceasefire was declared in 1949 and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Jordan with what became known as the West Bank and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on May 11, 1949.
Large numbers of the Arabs fled or were expelled from the newly-created Jewish state during the Palestinian exodus, which is referred to by many Palestinian groups and individuals as the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة ), meaning "disaster" or "cataclysm". Estimates of the final Palestinian refugee count range from 400,000 to 900,000, with the official United Nations count at 711,000.[11] In addition, the entire Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip fled to Israel. Within a year of the 1948 war, immigration of Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population.
[edit] The first five decades
- See also: Positions on Jerusalem
During the first half of the 1950s, the Lavon Affair, a failed attempt to bomb targets in Egypt, caused political disgrace in Israel. Later, in 1956, after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Israel formed a secret alliance with the United Kingdom and France and declared war on Egypt. After what became known as the Suez Crisis, Israel and its two collaborators faced international condemnation.
A decade later, in 1967, tensions once again arose between Israel and its neighbors. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt had expelled UN Peacekeeping Forces from the region, closed the Straits of Tiran, and amassed tanks and aircraft on Israel's borders. Israel deemed these actions a casus belli for pre-emptively attacking Egypt on June 5, 1967. In the ensuing Six-Day War, Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights. The Green Line of 1949 became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories. East Jerusalem was later annexed into Israel's capital in the 1980 Jerusalem Law, although the law's validity has been contested.
Between 1968 and 1972, a period known as the War of Attrition, numerous scuffles erupted along the border between Israel and Syria and Egypt. During the early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched a wave of attacks against Israeli targets around the world, including a massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Israel responded with Operation Wrath of God, in which Mossad agents assassinated most of those responsible for the Munich massacre. Finally, on October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israele. Despite early successes against an unprepared Israeli army, Egypt and Syria were eventually repelled by the Israeli forces. A number of years of relative calm ensued, which fostered the environment in which Israel and Egypt could make peace.
The 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history, an event that became known in Israel as the "revolution". During the elections, the Alignment, which together with its predecessor Mapai had been the ruling party since 1948, was beaten by Menachem Begin's Likud. Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat later that year made a trip to Israel and spoke before the Knesset in what was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. Military reserves officers formed the Peace Now movement to encourage this effort. In the two years that followed, Sadat and then Prime Minister Menachem Begin would sign the Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. As laid out in the treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and lent autonomy to Palestinians across the Green Line.
In 1982, Israel launched an attack against Lebanon claiming to defend Israel's northernmost settlements from terrorism. Israeli forces were able to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization from the country, but Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin resigned his post to Yitzhak Shamir in 1983, disappointed with the state of the war. Less than a year after Begin's resignation, Shimon Peres took over as Prime Minister. Though Israel would withdraw from most of Lebanon in 1986, it maintained a buffer zone until 2000. The e broke out in 1987 with waves of violence occurring in the occupied territories. Over the following six years, over a thousand people, mostly Palestinians, would be killed in the ensuing violence. Israelis and Palestinians were further polarized throughout the Gulf War in the early 1990s, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and many Palestinians heralded Iraqi missile attacks against Israel.[12][13][14][15][16]
In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister following an election in which his party vowed to bring peace and security to Israelis. The following year, Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, on behalf of Israel and the PLO, respectively, signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian Authority the right to self-govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Not long after, in 1994, the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel. Nevertheless, public support for the Accords began to wane as Israel was struck by a wave of attacks from its opponents. After the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, support began to increase as widespread dismay created a backlash against Oslo opponents. However, more attacks against Israel in subsequent months led to the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, often seen as a hard-line opponent of the Oslo Accords, as the new Prime Minister. Despite his stance against the Accords, Netanyahu withdrew from Hebron and signed the Wye River Memorandum, giving greater control to the Palestinian National Authority.
[edit] The twenty-first century
Ehud Barak, elected Prime Minister in 1999, began the new millenium by withdrawing forces from Lebanon and conducting negotiations with U.S. President Bill Clinton at the July 2000 Camp David Summit. During the summit, Barak offered a plan to form a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected the deal. After the collapse of the talks, Palestinians began a second uprising, known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, just after opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Amid dismay over the failure of the Summit and the start of the Intifada, Ariel Sharon became the new prime minister in a 2001 special election. During his tenure, Sharon initiated a plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and also spearheaded the construction of the controversial Israeli West Bank barrier.
In January 2006, after Ariel Sharon suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke, the powers of the office were passed to Ehud Olmert. That summer was underscored by conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, which respectively led to to Operation Summer Rains and a five-week war in Lebanon and northern Israel. The latter conflict resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 people, including over one thousand civilians, and ended only after a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations.
