History in brief

The birth of the state of Israel was the fulfilment of the Zionist movement, conceived in the 19th century to create a homeland for Jews. Ancient Jews had scattered around the world following their conquest and occupation by the Romans and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. In the 1880s Jews seeking escape from persecution in Europe began migrating en masse to Palestine, then an Arabic-speaking part of the Ottoman empire; by 1914 Palestine's Jewish population had more than doubled. In 1917, as British forces were despatching the Ottomans in the first world war, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, stating support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine without “prejudice” to the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. After the war, Palestine was placed under a British mandate and, as Zionist immigration increased, violence flared between its Jewish and Arab communities.

After the Holocaust, pressure grew for the international recognition of a Jewish state, and the UN proposed the partition of the Palestine mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Arab states rejected partition and invaded Palestine as soon as the British withdrew. On May 14th 1948, the state of Israel was declared, with David Ben-Gurion as its first prime minister. The Arab invasion was unsuccessful and more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled during the fighting. In 1949 Israel signed armistice agreements with its neighbours. However the Arab governments and the Palestinian refugees refused to recognise Israel's existence as a legitimate country. The region remained unstable. To prop up the beleaguered republic, the Jewish diaspora poured money into Israel, and in the late 1960s the United States became its principal financial and political supporter. Within a few years, the young country had developed an efficient agrarian and technological society, and further strengthened its military superiority over the surrounding Arab countries.

Israel demonstrated its new might in 1956 when it invaded the Egyptian Sinai (with British and French collusion), after Egypt's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. American intervention forced Israel's withdrawal. War returned in 1967, when Egypt, Syria and Jordan massed forces to challenge Israel. In a pre-emptive strike, Israel smashed its enemies' forces in just six days and captured the West Bank, the Gaza strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula. As the Israeli government moved to build Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, took the lead role in fighting the Israeli occupation.

In October 1973, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. The Israelis were not defeated but Arab honour was restored, paving the way for peace negotiations under American auspices. In 1979 Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel, and in 1994 Jordan did the same. But only in the early 1990s, after years of intifada (popular uprising), did Israel and the Palestinians begin to speak of a peace process. Despite the establishment of a Palestinian Authority and the hand-over of parts of the West Bank and the Gaza strip to its control, Palestinian terrorism, Israel's harsh occupation policies, the accelerated construction of Jewish settlements, the plight of the refugees and the disputed status of Jerusalem all continued to block progress. A second, bloodier intifada began in 2000, and peace remains elusive.

(For recent developments in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, see our backgrounder.)