Israel

Israel is a country in the Middle East, bounded on the north by Lebanon, on the east by Syria and Jordan, on the south by the Gulf of Aqaba, and on the west by Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

Jerusalem is the capital city. The population of approximately 6 million includes Israeli settlers in the West Bank, in the Israeli- occupied Golan Heights, in the Gaza Strip, and in East Jerusalem. About 80 percent of the population is Jewish; the remainder is mostly Arab. The three broad Jewish groupings are the Ashkenazim, or Jews who came to Israel mainly from Europe, North and South America, South Africa, and Australia; the Sephardim, who trace their origin to Spain, Portugal, and North Africa; and Eastern or Oriental Jews, who descend from ancient communities in Islamic lands. The major religious denominations are Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Druze. Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and English are widely spoken.

Israel has a technologically advanced market economy, with substantial government participation. Its natural resources are limited. However, Israel has intensively developed its agricultural and industrial sectors over the last decades. It is largely self-sufficient in terms of food, except for grains. Leading exports include diamonds, hightechnology equipment,rift gold and agricultural products. Israel’s account deficits are usually covered by large transfer payments from abroad and by foreign loans, especially from the United States. Israel’s economy grew rapidly in the early 1990s, due to the influx of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and the opening of new markets at the end of the cold war. The economic growth, however, began slowing in 1996, when the government imposed tighter fiscal and monetary policies. In 1948, after fifty years of efforts by the Zionist movement (founded at the end of the nineteenth century by Theodore Herzl) to establish a sovereign nation as a homeland for Jews, Jewish settlers in the territory formerly called Palestine were able to declare the independence of the state of Israel. Fighting immediately ensued between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, who were helped by neighboring Arab states. With the Israelis victorious, many of the Arabs who lived in Palestine were forced to flee. They became refugees, living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Those Arabs who remained behind became a minority within the now predominantly Jewish state of Israel.

Since its independence, Israel has been in an intermittent state of war with neighboring Arab countries over territories such as the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the formerly Jordaniancontrolled West Bank of the Jordan River, including East Jerusalem.

In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a treaty under which Israel was to return the Sinai to Egypt. This led to a permanent peace with Egypt. Despite Iraqi missile attacks against Israel, Israel refrained from entering the Gulf War in 1990–1991. In 1994, Israel signed a nonbelligerency agreement with Jordan, and in 1995,rift gold Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the historic Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, broadening Palestinian self-government. The assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a right-wing Jewish radical in November 1995 climaxed the bitter national debate over where the peace process was leading, and led to further peace negotiations sponsored by the United States. Currently the PLO and Israel share control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and negotiations continue on the subject of a permanent peace settlement and sovereignty over these areas.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy. The unicameral Parliament—the Knesset—enacts laws and elects the president every five years. The prime minister exercises executive power. The independent judicial system includes both secular and religious courts.