Israel in Context

Wars, revolts, tyranny, and divine revelations – this country has experienced it all. With the earliest artifacts dating back to the Lower Paleolithic Period, Israeli civilization is ancient.

Accounts of local history start when Abraham moved to the Canaanite hills around 2000 B.C. After exile and an assortment of bloody wars, a kingdom unifying the Israelites was first established under King Saul around 1025 BC, heralding a period of prosperity.

Saul was succeeded by David and then Solomon, who, in 950 BC built the First Temple in Jerusalem. The temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians and the Israelites were exiled, but within a century they reclaimed Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple.

The second temple survived nearly 600 years of battles against various enemies until the Romans conquered Israel in 63 BC and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD. The Romans quashed the last Jewish rebellion, led by BarKochba, in 132 AD, marking the end of the Israelite kingdom.

After a period of relative stagnancy, Byzantine Emperor Constantine claimed Jerusalem for Christianity in 326 AD launching a building program, including the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The Byzantines were overthrown by Caliph Omar in 638, who declared Jerusalem a holy city of Islam and built the Dome of the Rock.

The Crusades, swearing to restore Jerusalem to the Church conquered the region in 1099, but their reign did not last long.

The Mamluks recaptured the land in the 12^th century and a long period of peace followed, briefly disrupted by the Ottoman conquest in 1516. The Ottomans began to lose their hold when the British set their diplomatic sights on Palestine, opening a consulate in 1838. In response to waves of Jewish immigration, beginning in 1882, Palestinian Arabs resistance led to violent friction between the two populations.

The British Mandate of Palestine began in 1917, with the Balfour Declaration, vowing the establishment of a Jewish “national home” and partitioning the territory between Jews and Arabs.

After policing incessant clashed between the two sides the themselves becoming the target of violent attacks, the British decided to end the Mandate in 1947, whereby the UN voted the split the country between Jews and Palestinians.

Israel was officially declared an independent state on May 14, 1948. By the next day, the newborn nation was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. The invades were defeated and a ceasefire was declared.

The pattern of ward and terrorism, interspersed with boarder shifts and ceasefires, has spilled over into the next decades, most notably in the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel seized the West Bank (including Jerusalem’s old city) Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, which further intensified the Arab Israeli conflict.

The conclusion of the war further affirmed the goal of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), formed by Yasser Arafat in 1964, aiming to reclaim the land.

In 1979, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt and returned the conquered Sanai Peninsula.

The first Intifada, a Palestinian uprising, began in 1987, employing guerrilla warfare and terror attacks. In an attempt to set the cornerstone of a lasting solution for both peoples, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed between and PLO and Israeli in 1993, but later stalled.