I. Introduction
Name of the State
The State of Israel. Israel (Hebrew: ?) is a country located in the Levant region of Western Asia, southeast of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria and Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest.
Independence Day
May 14 (1948). Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. Although Israel uses the Gregorian calendar in its daily life, the Jewish calendar is used for all national holidays. Therefore, Independence Day does not necessarily fall on May 14 of the Gregorian calendar each year.
National Day
May 14 (1948)
Flag
The flag of Israel is rectangular in shape, with a ratio of length to width of about 3:2. The field is white, with a wide blue band at the top and bottom. The blue and white colors come from the colors of the shawls used by Jews for prayer. In the center of the white flag is a blue six-pointed star, which is the Star of King David, the ancient King of Israel, symbolizing the power of the state.
National Coat of Arms
The coat of arms of Israel is a rectangular coat of arms. On the blue shield is a seven-branched candlestick, which is recorded as being used to light the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. The sides of the candlestick are decorated with olive branches, symbolizing the Jewish desire for peace. Underneath the candlestick, the words "The State of Israel" are written in Hebrew.
National anthem
Song of Hope
Population
Until 2006, the Israeli Census Bureau listed three metropolitan areas: Tel Aviv (3,040,400), Haifa (996,000), and Beersheba (531,600). The capital, Jerusalem, has a population of 719,900. Hebrew is the national language, along with Arabic as the official language, and English is widely spoken. Judaism is the state religion, with about 85% of the population practicing Judaism and 13% practicing Islam. Israel is the only predominantly Jewish country in the world.
Capital
The state was founded in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv), moved to Jerusalem (Jerusalem) in 1950, not universally recognized. On July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed a bill declaring Jerusalem to be Israel's "eternal and undivided capital," but its seat of government remains in Tel Aviv. The status and ownership of Jerusalem has been a matter of dispute between the Arab States and Israel, with the Arab States demanding that "Israel withdraw from all Arab territories occupied by it since 1967, including Arab Jerusalem (meaning East Jerusalem)". The vast majority of countries with diplomatic relations with Israel still maintain embassies in Tel Aviv.
Presidents
President Shimon Peres, elected in June 2007; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who acted as Prime Minister in January 2006 after Sharon was hospitalized following a serious illness, and who was appointed interim Prime Minister in April and sworn in in May; and Labor Party Chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was appointed interim Prime Minister in April and sworn in in May. Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor Party and defense minister, who took office in June 2007; and Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of the Likud Group.
Geography
The State of Israel covers an area of 1.49 million square kilometers, according to the 1947 United Nations resolution on the partition of Palestine. It is located in the western part of Asia, where the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe come together. There are narrow plains along the coast and mountains and plateaus in the east. It has a Mediterranean-type climate.
Israel is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria and Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. To the west, Israel has a coastline connected to the Mediterranean Sea, and to the south it has the Gulf of Eilat (also known as the Gulf of Aqaba).
Israel can be divided into four distinct regions: the coastal plain, the central hills, the Jordan Rift Valley, and the Negev Desert. The coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea stretches from the Lebanese border in the north to Gaza in the south, an area of fertile and moist soil that is important for agriculture and fruit cultivation. To the east of the coastal plain is the central plateau area, which is bordered to the north by the hills of the Galilee Mountains, and further south by the Samaria Mountains, a region of small, fertile valleys, and to the south by the barren Judea hills. To the east of the Central Highlands is the Jordan Rift Valley, part of the 6,500-kilometer-long East African Rift Valley. Within Israel, the Rift Valley is formed by the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, and the Dead Sea. The Negev Desert consists of about 12,000 square kilometers of desert, occupying half of Israel's land area, and is geographically an extension of the Sinai Peninsula.
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conquered the West Bank of the Kingdom of Jordan, the Golan Heights in Syria, and the Gaza Strip in Egypt (which was occupied by Egypt at the time) and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel withdrew all its troops and colonies from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip on September 12, 2005, although the issue of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remains unresolved. The eastern part of Jerusalem has been under Israeli judicial and administrative jurisdiction since 1967, and the Golan Heights have been under Israeli jurisdiction since 1981, although they are not officially part of Israel.
The sovereignty of the State of Israel, excluding all territories conquered by Israel in 1967, totals 20,777 square kilometers (1% of the water area). And if you add the areas under Israel's civil law jurisdiction, including eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, it's 22,145 square kilometers, less than 1% of the water area. And the territory under full Israeli control, including the West Bank areas under military control and Palestinian government autonomy, is 28,023 square kilometers.
Important holidays
Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown)
Jewish New Year (approx. September)
Yom Kippur (approx. October)
Festivals of Tabernacles (approx. October)
Passover (approx. April)
Holocaust Memorial Day (approx. May)
Independence Day (approximately May)
Air
Air transportation is an important means of communication between Israel and the outside world. Since 1948, the country has had air routes, and Israel's national airline flies to four continents, with regular flights to New York and Europe. There are modern airports in Jerusalem and Eilat, and an international airport in Lida. 540,000 passengers arrived in Israel by chartered flights in 1989, and in the late 80's and early 90's, the number of passengers by air in Israel increased more than 100 times compared to the early 50's.
The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and China led to the development of the tourism business, and in July 1992 an agreement was reached between Israel Airlines and the China International Travel Service (CITS) to cooperate in the development of the tourism market. In order to develop tourism, from September 3, Israel Airlines began direct flights from Tel Aviv to Beijing. The direct route from Tel Aviv to Beijing not only facilitates the travel of Israeli and European tourists to China, but also opens up the best routes for Southeast Asian tourists to visit the country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
Israel's Asiana Airlines operates the following regular routes:
1. Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rlsh Pina and Eilat;
2. Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Rlsh Pina, Eilat and Masada;
3, Eilat;
4. Eilat to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa;
5. Masada to Tel Aviv.
Highway Network
The State of Israel is small in size, and Tel Aviv on the west coast can be reached in just over an hour by car from Jerusalem in the east. This dictates that transportation in Israel is predominantly by road. It builds on the network of quality roads that existed during the British Mandate for Palestine. Roads in Israel now form a complete network system from the cities to the countryside. The roads are generally two-lane, with a four-lane highway along the coast linking Tel Aviv and Haifa and leading to Jerusalem and Beer Sheva. According to statistics, the total length of roads throughout Israel in the early 1990s was more than 13,000 kilometers, an exponential increase compared to the early 1950s.
On the Sabbath, all transportation services in Jerusalem are closed and all restaurants are closed. On this day, tourists are advised not to hitchhike to Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. Otherwise, those Jews will be furious and throw stones at the people on the bus.
Politics
Israel is a parliamentary state, and the Knesset is the supreme authority, with legislative power, responsible for enacting and amending the country's laws, voting on political issues, approving cabinet appointments and overseeing the work of the government, as well as electing the president and speaker of the Knesset. Candidates for the Knesset run on a party basis. Israel does not have a constitution, only basic laws such as the Knesset, Presidential and Cabinet laws. The President is the symbolic head of state and his functions are essentially ceremonial. The Knesset has the power to remove the President from office. The cabinet is responsible to the Knesset.
Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and its citizens have a wide variety of political rights and civil liberties.
Third, the economy
For more than 50 years, the land is barren, the shortage of resources in Israel, adhere to the road of science and technology to strengthen the country, attaching importance to education and training of talents, so that the economy can be faster development, the 1999 per capita GDP of as high as 16,000 U.S. dollars. The development of Israel's high-tech industry has attracted the world's attention, especially in electronics, communications, computer software, medical equipment, biotechnology engineering, agriculture and aviation, etc., with advanced technology and advantages. Israel is located on the edge of the desert area, and water resources are scarce. The severe water shortage has enabled Israel to develop unique drip irrigation and water-saving techniques in agriculture, fully utilizing existing water resources and turning a large area of desert into an oasis. Less than 5% of the total population of farmers not only feed the nation, but also a large number of exports of high-quality fruits, vegetables, flowers and cotton.
Israel is considered to have the highest level of economic development, freedom of commerce, freedom of the press, and overall human development in the Middle East.
Fourth: Diplomacy
Israel conducts a full range of diplomacy. It maintains traditional friendly relations with the West; upholds its position as a strategic ally of the United States; actively develops relations with the CIS countries and Eastern European countries; promotes the Middle East peace process and seeks to realize reconciliation with the Arab countries; and expands its relations with the countries of Africa and Asia.
Relations with China
On January 9, 1950, Israel declared its recognition of the People's Republic of China*** and the State of China.On January 24, 1992, Israel established diplomatic relations with China at the ambassadorial level.
V. History
Israel has a long history and is the birthplace of the world's major religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The distant ancestors of the Jews were the Hebrews, a branch of the ancient Semitic race. They began to migrate from Egypt to Palestine at the end of the 13th century B.C., and established the Hebrew Kingdom and the Kingdom of Israel.
Israel originally referred to a people rather than a place, with the earliest known reference to it appearing in 1211 BC. For the past 3,000 years, Jews have viewed Israel as the centerpiece of their national and spiritual life, calling it the "Holy Land" or "Promised Land". Israel has special significance in Judaism, and the remains of the Temple and related religious rituals are an important foundation of the modern Jewish tradition. A series of Jewish dynasties existed in the region for more than a thousand years, beginning in 1200 BCE.
Through the ancient kingdoms of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, the Jews declined and were expelled from the region. In particular, after the suppression of a large-scale uprising in 132 AD, the Roman Empire expelled the Jews from the region and changed the name of the place to "Syria-Palestine," in an attempt to erase the traces of the Jewish people's millennia-long connection to the land. Nevertheless, a small number of Jews have remained in Palestine, but the main Jewish population has moved from southern Israel to the north. Two of the most important Jewish scriptures, the Mishnah and the Talmud Torah, were also written during this period. After the Muslims seized control of the region from the Byzantine Empire in 638 AD, several Muslim states ruled the region; these included the Umayyads and Abbasids, as well as Khorezm and Mongolia, which were ruled by the Mamluks between 1260 and 1516, and then became an Ottoman province in 1517.
Zionism and the return of the Jews
For centuries, many exiled Jews have been trying to return to Israel, and in the 18th century there were several small waves of return, ranging from hundreds to thousands. In 1878, the first large Jewish farm colony appeared in Petah Tikva. The first major wave of return began in 1881, when Diaspora Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of the world began to return to Palestine, the land of the ancient Jewish state. Jews purchased land from the Ottoman Empire and the Arabs and settled there. As the Jewish population grew, so did the tension between them and the Arabs.
In 1896, the Viennese journalist and playwright Theodor Herzl launched the Zionist movement (also known as the "Zionist movement"), which called on Jews around the world to return to their homeland and restore their way of life. "World Zionist Congress", which resolved to establish "a publicly recognized and legally guaranteed homeland (or state)". Corresponding institutions such as the "Jewish National Fund" and the "Palestine Land Development Corporation" were established to help Jews from all over the world emigrate to Palestine.
The growth of the Zionist movement gave impetus to the Second Wave of Returns (1904-1914), in which some 40,000 Jews returned to settle in the country. in 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Balfour, issued the Balfour Declaration, which stated that "His Majesty's Government are in favor of the establishment of a Jewish national state in Palestine, and will do their utmost to facilitate its realization". In 1920, the League of Nations entrusted Britain with the jurisdiction of Palestine, and in 1922 Britain divided the Trust Territory into two parts: the eastern part (now Jordan) was to be inhabited by Arabs, and the western part was to be inhabited by Jews.
After World War I, there was a third and fourth wave of Jewish returns. In a Palestinian riot that broke out in 1929, Arabs killed 133 Jews. Several more riots followed in 1936-1939. In response, Britain issued a White Paper in 1939 limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 and restricting the purchase of land by Jews. This White Paper was seen by many Jews and Zionists as a betrayal of the Jews and a violation of the Balfour Declaration. The Arabs were not appeased and wanted to stop Jewish immigration altogether.
In 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany, setting off a fifth wave of Jewish returns, and by 1940, Jews made up 30 percent of the population. In 1940, Jews made up 30 percent of the population, and the Holocaust in Europe gave further impetus to the return of the Jews; between 1944 and 1948, more than 200,000 Jews came to the Palestinian areas by various means. By the end of World War II, there were 600,000 Jewish residents in Palestine.
Restoration
In 1947, the British government decided to disengage from the Trust Territory of Palestine in light of escalating violence between Jews and Arabs and frustrated peace efforts. Jewish immigration had been growing steadily since the late 19th century, and the idea of Jewish restoration, influenced by the Jewish pogroms of World War II, was gaining international support. The United Nations established the Special Committee on Palestine, and in November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted on the 1947 UN Partition Plan, with 33 countries in favor (including the United States and the USSR), 13 against, and 10 abstaining, adopting a resolution to partition Palestine into two states, with the Jews and Arabs having approximately 55% and 45% of the territory respectively. owning about 55% and 45% of the territory, with Jerusalem placed under UN administration with a view to avoiding conflict.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the day the U.N. adopted the partition plan, David Ben-Gurion accepted it, but it was flatly rejected by the League of Arab States. The League's top committee ordered three days of violent raids on Israel's Jewish civilian population, attacking buildings, stores, and residential neighborhoods, followed by a response from Jewish-organized underground militia forces, and the fighting soon spilled over into a large-scale conflict that led to Israel's War of Independence in 1948.
On May 14, 1948, the night before the end of the British Mandate, the State of Israel was declared. Eighty-five percent of eligible voters turned out to cast ballots in national elections on Jan. 25, 1949, followed by the convening of the 120-seat first Knesset. Two of the men who had led Israel to statehood became the country's leaders, David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish Agency, was elected the first prime minister; and Haim Weizmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization, was chosen by the Knesset to be the first president.
On May 11, 1949, Israel gained a seat at the United Nations, becoming the 59th member state.
1948 War of Independence
After the establishment of the state of Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon declared war on Israel, beginning the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi forces from the north were held back near the border, while Jordanian forces from the east took the eastern part of Jerusalem and attacked the western part of the city. However, Jewish militia forces managed to hold off the Jordanian army, and underground National Army Organization forces (Irgun) stopped the Egyptian army from the south. Beginning in June, the United Nations declared a one-month cease-fire, during which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was officially established. After months of fighting, a cease-fire was agreed upon in 1949 and a temporary border was drawn, known as the Green Line. Israel was given an additional 23.5% of the area of jurisdiction west of the Jordan River, while Jordan held a mountainous area in southern Israel and Samaria, which later became known as the West Bank. Egypt took possession of a small strip of land along the coast, which later became known as the Gaza Strip.
The exodus of large numbers of Arabs from the new Jewish state, which the Palestinians called the Nakba (?), was expected to affect 400,000 people. The unresolved conflict between Israel and the Arab states and the problem of the Palestinian refugees continues to this day. Following the 1948 war, the Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began to withdraw to Israel, and the large number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries tripled the population of Israel. Over the next few years, nearly 850,000 Sephardic Jews fled or were expelled from Arab countries, with about 600,000 of them moving to Israel, while others immigrated to Europe and the United States.
The 1950s and '60s
Israel was politically disgraced when a scandal erupted over an attempted bombing of Egypt by Moshe Sharett, who served as Israel's prime minister from 1954 to 1955. Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, much to the displeasure of Britain and France. After being attacked by a series of underground Arab militias, Israel secretly allied itself with Britain and France and declared war on Egypt. After the Suez Canal crisis, the three countries were condemned by the United Nations and Israel was forced to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula.
In 1955, David Ben-Gurion became Israel's prime minister again and served until 1963, when he resigned. After Gurion's resignation, Levi Eshkol succeeded him as prime minister.
In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal and one of the masterminds of the Holocaust of European Jews, was arrested in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and returned to Israel for trial. Eichmann became the only criminal in Israel's history to be sentenced to death by a court.
In the political arena, relations between Israel and the Arab states were again strained in May 1967, when Syria, Jordan, and Egypt revealed the existence of a new state of affairs. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt revealed their intentions to go to war, and Egypt expelled the UN peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip. After Egypt violated previous treaties, blocked the strategic Tiran Strait, and deployed a large number of tanks and planes along Israel's borders, Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt on June 5, citing Egyptian provocations. In the Six-Day War, Israel defeated the armies of all its Arab neighbors and won a complete victory in the air battlefield. Israel captured the entire West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in one fell swoop, and the Green Line, drawn in 1949, became the administrative demarcation line between Israel's jurisdiction over its internal territories and the occupied areas. Israel later returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt after a peace agreement was signed.
During the war the Israeli Air Force mistakenly bombed a U.S. intelligence ship, the USS Liberty, killing 34 American troops. U.S. and Israeli investigations concluded that the accident was a misfire due to the Liberty's identification difficulties.
In 1969, Mrs. Meir, Israel's first (and to this day only) female prime minister, was elected.
The 1970s
The period between 1968 and 1972, known as the War of Attrition, saw many skirmishes break out along the borders between Israel and Syria and Egypt. In addition, in the early 1970s, the Palestinian armed forces carried out terrorist attacks on an unprecedented scale against Israel and Jews in various countries, culminating in the Munich tragedy at the 1972 Summer Olympics, when armed Palestinian militia took members of the Israeli delegation hostage and killed all hostages. Israel responded with a retaliatory Operation Wrath of God, in which a group of Israeli Mossad agents traveled around the world to assassinate those responsible for the Munich tragedy.