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→ Main article: Prehistory of Palestine
Prehistory extends from the oldest human traces to the beginning of a broader written tradition. Some representatives of Homo erectus left Africa about two million years ago. The oldest traces in Israel, which are considered to be secure, could be dated to 1.4 million years ago and were discovered south of the Sea of Galilee in Israeli and Jordanian territory. Another wave of migration followed about 600,000 years ago. At least 250,000 years ago Neanderthals (stone working techniques assigned to them could be proved) appeared in the region and others possibly came from Europe in cold times, living here at the same time as the archaic Homo sapiens. Considered the direct ancestor of modern humans, it evolved in East Africa at least 200,000 years ago and can be traced to Palestine 110,000 years ago. Some of these anatomically modern humans may have left Africa about 130,000 years ago. But they disappeared again from Israel 80,000 years ago, only to reappear there 50,000 years ago. Once again they lived with Neanderthals in the same region, probably sharing descendants. Between 45,000 and 28,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared. In the Jordan Valley, a 200 km long, 2000 km² lake was formed 70,000 years ago and existed until 12,000 BC. People continued to live from big game hunting, smaller animals and fishing also played an increasingly important role, and gathering activities continued.
As early as 18,000 B.C., there are increasing signs of more permanent camps - a village-like structure is attested - limited production of food, and wild barley was ground and baked. The main hunting game was gazelles, and camps were established along their migration routes. Around 12,000 B.C., houses made of semicircular stone settlements with superstructures of clay appeared, and cereals were planted by 11,000 B.C. at the latest. Signs of rituals and sacrifices increased, the dead were usually buried in a contracted position, occasionally the skulls were buried separately. The art, which until then had been quite abstract, was supplemented by more realistic depictions, which are considered to be the oldest pictorial documents of the Near East.
In the epoch between 9500 and 8800 BC agriculture was practiced, but the production of clay vessels was not yet known. The most important site is Jericho, which stands out among the settlements, most of which were less than half a hectare in size, with an area of 4 hectares. Around 8000 BC, a wall 3 m high surrounded the city, which housed perhaps 3000 people, but from 7700 to 7220 BC the city was uninhabited. From 8300 B.C. onward, grain production, which until then had been limited to the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights, continued to spread, and around 7600 B.C. there was a major expansion of the settlement area, accompanied by migratory movements or greater population growth. Most of the older settlements were abandoned.
Jericho re-emerged around 7220 and was inhabited until 6400 BC. The migration patterns of the epochs before the "mega-villages" were resumed around 7000, besides fixed settlements continued to exist. It was only after this phase that stabilization occurred, providing the conditions for urban structures, and ceramics also came into use. Sha'ar HaGolan, a site of 20 ha in area, may have been the largest city between 6400 and 6000 BC. Long-distance trade can be attested as far as Anatolia and the Nile, perhaps migrations took place there. Between about 5500 and 4500 BC there were no contacts with Egypt, probably due to climatic deterioration. Between 4400 and 4000 BC, livestock and the type of agriculture there again point to Palestinian origins. In the Copper Age, Teleilat Ghassul in the Jordan Valley was one of the largest settlements, covering an area of 20 ha. It contained spacious houses 3.5 by 12 meters in area, as well as a temple. Between 3500 and 3300 B.C. there was a drastic cultural collapse, but no traces of violence have been found.
After that, a Bronze Age epoch called "early urban" began, which maintained trade relations far beyond Palestine, especially with Egypt. Egyptians can be documented along the trade routes to Palestine in a settlement network. Egypt, now centralized under a pharaoh, sought to gain control, sometimes by force, over raw materials between the Sinai and Lebanon, which were of great importance for the enormous building activity associated with the pyramids there. Closely related to these battles may be the existence of numerous fortified settlements. More than 260 settlements with a total population of perhaps 150,000 are known from this period in western Palestine alone, mainly in Galilee, Samaria and Judah. Among them, Beth Yerah and Yarmuth were the largest with 20 and 16 ha respectively, some cities had city walls up to 8 m thick, Beth Yerah had perhaps 4000 to 5000 inhabitants. City gates and large temple complexes like those at Megiddo were built. At the end of the Early Bronze Age, urban culture collapsed and pastoralism became dominant. At the same time, "Asiatics" repeatedly attacked the Nile Delta until the Semitic Hyksos took over there after 1700 BC.
Development since the appearance of the Israelites in Canaan until the 19th century
→ Main article: Roman Palestine
The first archaeologically proven traces of an early or proto-Israelite settlement in the Mashreq region date back to the period between the 12th and 11th centuries BC (cf. Land Grabbing of the Israelites). According to biblical tradition, Jerusalem was conquered by David from the Jebusites in about 1000 B.C. and chosen as the capital of his great empire; this fell into two kingdoms after the death of Solomon, the heir to the throne. The northern kingdom of Israel perished in 722 B.C. in battle against the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon in 587 B.C.. The country subsequently became part of the Persian Empire, then of the empire of Alexander the Great, and finally of the Seleucid Empire.
The uprising of the Maccabees in 165 BC brought Israel state independence once again for about 100 years. In 63 BC, the period of Roman suzerainty began. The Romans divided the territory into two provinces: Syria in the north, Judea in the south. In the Jewish War, Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Temple were completely destroyed in 70 AD. The last Jewish revolt in Israel against Roman rule (Bar Kochba revolt) was put down in 135 AD. Part of the Jewish population was expelled. The land itself has been called "Palestine" ever since. This name, which goes back to the Philistine people, who had already been absorbed into the neighboring peoples at that time, was given to the country due to a decree by Emperor Hadrian to erase the memory of the Judean inhabitants whose revolt he put down. Nevertheless, Palestine - along with Rome and its provinces in Europe and North Africa, and apart from Mesopotamia (Babylonia) - remained a center of Judaism; until the Middle Ages, both the Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis led the way in the development of the Jewish religion and way of life outside these areas as well.
In the course of the Islamic expansion, the area came under Arab rule in 636. Since that time, Palestine has been inhabited by a majority of Arabs. The Crusaders ruled what they called the "Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem" from 1099 to 1291. They were followed by the Mamluks from 1291 to 1517, and then by Ottoman rule from 1517 to 1918. None of these authorities had provided a separate administration for Palestine or considered the area an independent geographical entity. Even for the Ottomans, the region was a part of Syria, probably going back to the Roman designation Syria. The country was divided into three districts.
See also: Islamic conquest of the Levant
Zionist movement
1880–1917
The beginning or precursor of the Zionist movement is considered to be the Eastern European collective movement Chibbat Zion ("Love of Zion"), which emerged around 1880. Its local chapters were represented in numerous Russian and Romanian cities. Members of Chibbat Zion called themselves Chowewe Zion ("Friends of Zion"). They collected about 3000 emigrants for joint settlement projects in Palestine. During Ottoman rule, Palestine was sparsely populated and economically stagnant. The arrival of the first Jewish immigrants from 1880 onwards gave impetus to the economic development of the country. In the following decades, many more people, Jews and Arabs alike, immigrated to Palestine - partly for this reason.
The first major immigration movement (aliyah) of Jews to Palestine occurred around 1882. In the summer of 1882, a Russian group of six reached Palestine and, with the financial and logistical support of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, established the settlement of Rishon LeZion ("First in Zion"). Between 1880 and 1895, Edmond de Rothschild financed the establishment of more than 30 other colonies in Palestine, including the important moshavot (settlements) of Petach Tikva, Zichron Ja'akow, Rosh Pina, Chadera and Yesod ha-Ma'aleh. Since then, Baron Edmond de Rothschild has been considered the "father of the colonization of Palestine." In 1891, the German-Jewish Zionist Baron Maurice de Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association, which received extensive financial support from Baron de Edmond de Rothschild from 1899. In 1898, according to the Jewish Colonization Association, 5200 Jews were living in Palestine in agricultural model settlements.
Between 1890 and 1914, Cologne was the center of German Zionists and was considered the capital of Zionism for several years. In Cologne in 1893, the two important Zionist functionaries Max I. Bodenheimer and David Wolffsohn founded the Cologne Association for the Promotion of Agriculture and Crafts in Palestine. Bodenheimer also founded the National Jewish Club Zion Cologne, was chairman of the Zionist Association for Germany, and established the Jewish National Fund from his apartment on Cologne's Neumarkt from 1905 to 1914.
However, the key and leading figure of political Zionism became Theodor Herzl. In 1896, during the Dreyfus Affair in France, Herzl wrote the book The Jewish State - Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. In it, Herzl elaborated his idea of a sovereign state organization to give the haphazard and scattered emigration of European Jews a common goal and to secure the Jewish settlement work under international law. Herzl based his idea hardly on religious motives, but on the failure of Jewish emancipation precisely in the civilized countries of Europe. Thus, until then, Herzl had seen France in particular as a haven of social and cultural progress. Now he judged that anti-Semitism would never disappear, that all efforts of the Jews to assimilate would rather strengthen it. Only the gathering of the Jews in their own country could therefore be the way out.
Herzl's book, unlike the writings of his ideological predecessors, was widely read and provided the impetus for the international fusion of the existing national Jewish associations. On August 29, 1897, 200 delegates elected by their associations met in Basel for the first Zionist Congress. There Herzl called for the first time for a Jewish state in Palestine legalized under international law. As a result, the World Zionist Organization (WZO for short) was founded with the maxim: "Zionism strives for the creation of a public-legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people." In his diary Herzl wrote: "In Basel I founded the Jewish state... Perhaps in five years, in any case in fifty, everyone will realize it."
In 1901, at the 5th Zionist Congress in Basel, the World Zionist Organization established the Jewish National Fund to provide the first targeted support for Jewish settlement in Palestine. The second aliyah was triggered by pogroms and the failure of the Russian Revolution in 1905. By 1914, some 40,000 mostly young Russian Jews had emigrated to Palestine. There, the Jewish population grew to about 85,000 by 1914. In 1907, at the 8th Zionist Congress, the World Zionist Organization established the Palestine Office in Jaffa, and David Wolffsohn was elected president of the World Zionist Organization. With a loan from the Jewish National Fund, he made possible the construction of the first houses in Ahuzat Bajit, later Tel Aviv, laying the foundation for the first Hebrew city founded in 1909. By 1938, Tel Aviv's population had grown to 150,000.
1917–1948
In the midst of World War I came what was probably the most important chapter in the founding of Israel: on November 2, 1917, on the initiative of the British diplomat Lord Milner, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued by letter the Balfour Declaration, named after him, to the committed British Zionist Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild. According to it, the British government viewed with favor the "establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine" and would make the "utmost effort to facilitate the attainment of this object." This statement adopted the World Zionist Organization's (WZO) formulation of the goal. This was the first time a European state had recognized the Zionist goal of a Jewish state in Palestine. In doing so, the rights of the resident non-Jewish population were to be preserved.
The British victory in World War I ended Ottoman rule in Palestine in 1917. Following the Sanremo Conference in 1920, the League of Nations gave Britain the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, with the territory now jointly occupied by Israel and Jordan. Among the terms of the mandate was that the British should allow the Balfour Declaration to be implemented, but it should not affect the rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The Mandate power was required to allow Jewish immigration, to settle these Jewish immigrants cohesively, and to use former Ottoman state land for this purpose. Express care was to be taken that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political position enjoyed by the Jews in any other country."
In July 1922, the British divided Palestine into two administrative districts, Palestine and Transjordan, which comprised about three-quarters of the Mandate territory. Initially, Transjordan and Palestine were still considered as an administrative unit with uniform Mandate laws, the same currency and the same Mandate passports (see also: White Paper of 1939), but Jews were only allowed to settle west of the Jordan River. In the eastern part, in Transjordan, today's Jordan, the British installed the Hashemite ruler Abdallah, who had been expelled from the Arabian Peninsula.
Baron Edmond de Rothschild founded the Palestine-Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) in 1924 and appointed his son James Armand de Rothschild as director of the organization. The fourth aliyah followed between 1924 and 1932. With the NSDAP's rise to power on January 30, 1933, the nationwide persecution of Jews in Germany began. The first measures of the Nazi regime were the boycott of Jews on April 1 and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service and the Law on the Admission to the Bar of April 7, 1933, as a result of which many German Jews lost property, profession and social status. On August 25, 1933, the Ha'avara Agreement between the Jewish Agency, the Zionist Association for Germany and the German Reich Ministry of Economics came into effect to facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. In the fifth aliyah, 250,000 German Jews emigrated to other countries from 1933 until the start of the war in 1939. From 1933 to 1941, about 55,000 Jews reached Palestine from the German Reich - about a quarter of all Jewish immigrants. Nazi persecution of Jews greatly accelerated the influx of European Jews to Palestine beginning in 1935. Since refugees were still allowed to take up to 1,000 English pounds with them at that time, Palestine experienced an economic boom, which in turn increased the influx of Arabs there. The financial transactions required for emigration from Germany to Palestine were handled 75 percent by the Palästina Treuhandstelle zur Beratung Deutscher Juden GmbH (Paltreu). The Paltreu was founded after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 by Max M. Warburg, his Hamburg M.M.Warburg-&-CO-Bank, the Berlin banking house A.E. Wassermann and the Anglo-Palestine Bank created by Theodor Herzl.
After the Arab uprising against Palestinian Jews began in 1936, the British refused to implement the Balfour Declaration. Instead, the British Peel Commission presented a first partition plan in July 1937. According to this plan, a large part of Palestine was to be allocated to the Arabs, while the smaller part with the most Jewish settlements was to be allocated to the Jews. Jerusalem and a coastal strip were to remain British Mandate territory. Chaim Weizmann, who headed the WZO since 1935, advocated the adoption of this plan at the 20th Zionist Congress in order to save as many persecuted Jews as possible. The newly immigrated Jews were immediately enthusiastic, but the Arab representatives rejected the plan and demanded that all of Palestine become an Arab state. The plan failed.
In the 1939 White Paper, the British government unilaterally determined that the Balfour Declaration had already been realized. Within the next five years, a maximum of 75,000 Jews were still to be allowed to immigrate to Palestine. At a conference in London in August 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried to persuade the WCO representatives to renounce a Jewish state in Palestine. Chamberlain's attempts were unsuccessful.
Germany's Orient policy culminated in fraternization with Arab nationalists in a joint struggle against the British and Jews. In 1941, the British-appointed Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem and influential leader of the Arab nationalist movement, was received by Adolf Hitler in Berlin. From Berlin, he is said to have planned with Adolf Eichmann the murder of Jews living in the Arab region.
With the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Shoah began with organized mass murders of Soviet Jews and deportations of German and Eastern European Jews to ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe. Between July and October 1941, the most important decisions regarding the expansion of the extermination of Jews were made: the construction of extermination camps now began and German Jews were ordered to wear the Jewish star throughout the Reich. The ongoing Holocaust became known outside Germany in the fall of 1941, but this did not lead to any targeted countermeasures. At the Biltmore Conference convened in New York City in 1942, U.S. delegates to the World Zionist Organization and a group led by David Ben-Gurion, later founder of the State of Israel, called for the first time for "opening the gates of Palestine" to establish there a Jewish commonwealth with a democratic constitution on the European model. This was rejected by the British government, which prohibited the publication of the Biltmore program in Great Britain and Palestine.
Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in January 1943, the number of Jewish refugees grew again. The British government now had Jewish settlements in Palestine searched with increasing frequency, arrested illegal immigrants, and banned Zionist newspapers. In 1944, the underground Zionist organizations Irgun and Lechi expanded their attacks against the British. At the same time, about 100,000 of the 500,000 Palestinian Jews by then were fighting with the Allies in Europe against the Germans. In the final months of the war, the Allies liberated some of the Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. No European state except France and Sweden agreed to take in the surviving Jews after the war ended on May 8, 1945. The World Zionist Organization demanded that at least the surviving concentration camp prisoners be allowed to immigrate. U.S. President Harry S. Truman urged the British to admit 100,000 Jewish immigrants immediately, but British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin stuck to the low monthly quota. From the Soviet Union, some 175,000 Polish Jews expelled by the Nazi regime had been deported to their homeland since February 1946, but were rejected there by local Poles, many of whom had taken over their property. 95,000 of them then fled to Palestine via Western Europe. The Haganah, the Jewish brigade of the British army, and the Mossad now jointly organized the illegal immigration of Shoa survivors, the so-called Bericha.
The British had 50,000 of them returned to displaced persons camps in the American zone of occupation in Germany in 1945/46; others were interned in Cyprus. During a raid on June 29, 1946, the British army captured all Jewish Agency members and leading Zionists who could be found in Palestine and detained them for weeks in a camp in Lod, about 20 kilometers east of Tel Aviv.
In 1946, attacks by the terrorist underground organization Irgun increased steadily, especially on British railroad lines. Paramilitary task forces of the Haganah, which had by then split from the British, blew up ten bridges on May 16-17. In return for the terrorist attacks, British mandate holders arrested all Zionist leaders on June 29, whereupon on July 22 Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, who later became Israeli prime minister and foreign minister, blew up a side wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where British headquarters were located. Many people were killed, with casualty figures varying from 91 to 176.
The escalation of unrest continued throughout 1947 - until the United Nations General Assembly voted by a two-thirds majority on November 29 for the UN partition plan for Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state, with Greater Jerusalem to be placed under international control as a corpus separatum. With the UN decision and the beginning of the British withdrawal, Arab riots and attacks now resumed. The day after the UN partition plan was announced on November 30, 1947, the initially guerrilla-like Israeli-Arab civil war, the Palestine War, began. There were raids by Arab irregulars on Jewish settlements and residential areas and counter-attacks by Jewish paramilitary units. Shortly thereafter, the flight and expulsion of the Arab population from the areas now allotted to Israel began, sometimes accompanied by the destruction of their villages, buildings and documents. Often this resulted in the loss of proof of the existence of the Palestinian population and thus of their claim to rights. The Arab population subsequently rejected Israel's right to exist, which has consequences for the region to this day.
See also: History of the Jewish Forces in Palestine
History of the State of Israel
1948: Foundation of the State of Israel
Since the British Mandate for Palestine was to end at midnight on May 14, 1948, a Friday, the Jewish National Council assembled in the house of former Mayor Dizengoff in Tel Aviv at 4 p.m. before sunset and thus before the Sabbath began. Under a portrait of the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in the Declaration of Independence "by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and by virtue of the decision of the UN General Assembly." Eleven minutes later, the United States of America, through U.S. President Harry S. Truman, recognized the new state, followed by the Soviet Union on May 16 and Czechoslovakia on May 18.
The anniversary of the founding of the state, Yom haAtzma'ut, is celebrated on the 5th of Iyyar according to the Jewish calendar (roughly from April 20 to May 20 according to the Gregorian calendar).
1948: War of Independence
→ Main article: Palestine War
On the very night of its founding, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria declared war on the new state. This was followed by the Israeli War of Independence (First Arab-Israeli War), which lasted from May 1948 to January 1949 and brought Israel considerable territorial gains compared to the partition plan - especially in the western Galilee around Akko and in the northern Negev. In 1949, cease-fire agreements were signed with each of the Arab aggressors. Iraq withdrew from the West Bank without such an agreement. The territories intended for the Palestinians according to the partition plan came under Jordanian (West Bank including East Jerusalem) or Egyptian (Gaza Strip) occupation.
During the war, some 850,000 Arabs fled Palestine. Some of these refugees were expelled by Israeli forces, and some were evacuated by Arab forces for strategic reasons. As a result of this dwindling of the Arab population, the majority in the State of Israel since that time has consisted of Jews.
The first election to a constituent assembly, held on January 25, 1949, was won by the socialist-Zionist Mapei party, followed by the left-wing socialist Mapam. David Ben-Gurion became prime minister. The following years saw alternating coalitions of Zionist-Socialist, religious and Arab parties.
After the nationalization of the Suez Canal, which Egypt carried out against existing law, France, Great Britain and Israel decided on the Suez Campaign in 1956. Following an Israeli attack, the two former great powers were to intervene as seemingly neutral forces and occupy the canal area. On October 29, 1956, Israeli troops advanced into Gaza and the Sinai, and European troops began landing on November 5, but the campaign had to end. Under pressure from the United States and the UN, the three invaders withdrew from the occupied territories by March 1957. However, the Israel-Egypt border was subsequently secured by UN peacekeepers, and access to the Gulf of Aqaba was free for Israeli shipping to the Israeli port of Eilat. The United States made a commitment to Israel to keep this international waterway open.
1967: Six Day War
In 1966, the number of attacks by Arab terrorists had risen to 41, and there were already 37 attacks in the first four months of 1967. Egyptian forces occupied the demilitarized zone of the Sinai on May 15, 1967 (the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence). They were supported by exiled Palestinian combat units. On May 16, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser called on UN troops stationed since 1956 to leave the border area with Israel. On May 18, Syrian troops prepared for combat operations on the Golan Heights, and UN Secretary-General Sithu U Thant complied with Nasser's demand without resistance and withdrew UN troops. Radio Cairo reported on May 18: "As of today, there are no more international peacekeepers protecting Israel. Our patience has run out. We will no longer complain to the United Nations about Israel. From now on, total war against Israel prevails, and it will lead to the eradication of Zionism," and from Syria, on May 20, Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad said, "Our armed forces are absolutely equipped not only to repel aggression, but also to launch a liberation strike and blast the Zionist presence out of our Arab homeland. The Syrian army, finger on the trigger, is united ... as a military, I firmly believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."
On May 22, the Egyptian army again closed the Strait of Tiran (the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba) to Israeli shipping. On May 30, Jordan also concluded a military pact with Egypt. Nasser then announced, "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have marched on Israel's borders ... they will accept the challenge. Behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the entire Arab world. This will astonish the whole world. Today it will realize that the Arabs are ready to fight. The hour of decision is here. The time for declarations is over, the time for action has come."
On June 4, Iraq joined the military alliance of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and Iraqi President Abd ar-Rahman Arif commented, "The existence of Israel is a mistake that must be corrected. This is the opportunity to erase the disgrace that has been done to us since 1948. Our goal is clear: to wipe Israel off the map."
On June 5, 1967, the Six-Day War began. Israel pre-empted the looming joint attack by Egypt, Syria and Jordan with a pre-emptive strike and, after military success, controlled the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and finally the Golan Heights. On June 11, the cease-fire was signed. On June 19, the Israeli cabinet decided to return the territories in peace negotiations. On September 1, the Arab states adopted the Khartoum Resolution, which stipulated that they would not negotiate with Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, demanded that Israel withdraw from territories captured in the Six-Day War. In return, Israel was to be guaranteed territorial integrity.
More than 175,000 Palestinians fled their homes. After the war, Israel began building Jewish settlements to increase Israel's strategic depth and better control the occupied territories.
Between 1968 and 1970, the "war of attrition" between Israel and Egypt took place. From 1969 to 1974, Golda Meir was the first woman to hold the office of prime minister of Israel.
1973: Yom Kippur War
On October 6, 1973, the Jewish festival of atonement Yom Kippur, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
The attack took the unprepared Israelis by surprise and initially brought the attackers initial military success. From the Israeli point of view, contrary to what Arab strategists had thought, the surprise attack did not have a negative effect on conscription. On the contrary, the call-up of reservists proceeded exceptionally quickly, despite the initial surprise and some confusion at the mobilization depots. During the highest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, public life was almost completely at rest, which meant that no road traffic interfered with military transports and reservists could be quickly located in their homes and synagogues. Less than 24 hours after the start of hostilities, the first elements of two reserve divisions under Avraham Adan and Ariel Sharon reached the towns of Baluza and Tasa, each 250 kilometers from their home bases.
The Syrians invaded the Golan Heights with over 1400 tanks, and the Egyptians broke through the Israeli defenses and crossed the Suez Canal. With the exception of a small area around Port Said on the Mediterranean coast, the Egyptians succeeded in capturing the Bar-Lew line and occupying a strip parallel to the Suez Canal.
However, the Israelis managed to repel the attackers relatively soon. In the north, the counteroffensive led to a defeat for the Syrian army, which was already defeated in a few days - by October 10 - and had to leave behind 870 tanks and thousands of vehicles and guns. The Syrians were pushed back to 32 kilometers outside Damascus, and the Syrian capital was bombed massively, causing many civilian casualties. However, the Israeli troops did not succeed in breaking through the Syrian front.
In the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli troops also pushed back the Egyptians and crossed the Suez Canal on October 16. South of the Bitter Lakes, the Israelis, led by General Ariel Sharon, succeeded in encircling the Egyptian 3rd Army that remained on the eastern shore. The Israeli army was now across the Suez Canal, 120 km from Cairo.
On October 22, the United Nations Security Council, under pressure from the United States, issued Resolution 338 calling on all parties to cease fire. When the cease-fire took effect on 22 October (northern front) and 24 October (southern front), the Syrians were defeated; the trapped and unsupplied Egyptian 3rd Army faced annihilation.
After the cease-fire began, negotiations to disengage troops between the warring parties began in a tent at milepost 101 on the road between Cairo and Suez. These negotiations dragged on for months.
Casualties were high on both sides. More than 2600 Israeli soldiers fell, 7500 were wounded and 300 were taken prisoner. The Israeli Air Force suffered heavy losses from the use of Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles. On the Arab side, there were over 8500 casualties.
The war traumatized the Israeli public, which had hardly perceived the foreign policy threat because the Israeli army had until then been considered invincible. The reproaches resulting from the massive losses forced the Israeli head of government, Golda Meir, to resign in April 1974.
For the Arab world, the war represented a political success. The war signaled to Israel that the Arab world was an opponent not to be underestimated militarily.
The Yom Kippur War triggered the 1973 oil price crisis.
1977: Start of the peace process
In May 1977, the 9th Knesset election changed the political landscape of the country. While left-wing governments had always dominated the country since the founding of the state, a conservative majority now emerged in parliament for the first time; Menachem Begin became prime minister of a coalition of conservative, liberal and religious parties.
On November 9, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat announced a peace initiative in the Egyptian parliament, as he had done in 1971. The extent to which there was a genuine desire for reconciliation with Israel from the outset, or merely the goal of regaining the Suez Canal and the Sinai, cannot be fully understood, since the 1971 initiative was followed by the invasion of Israel (Yom Kippur War). The fact is: On President Sadat's initiative, a peace process got under way in 1977, and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty (see also Camp David Agreement) was signed, which, among other things, regulated the return of the Sinai by 1982.
Immediately after the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli legislation was extended to the occupied eastern part of Jerusalem. On July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law, declaring Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel. However, the annexation of East Jerusalem, as well as the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, are not internationally recognized and condemned.
During the First Gulf War between Iraq and Iran, Israeli aircraft bombed and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad in June 1981 (Operation Opera). This operation was justified by the nuclear threat posed to Israel by Iraq.
Beginning in the 1980s, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians increased.
In June 1982, the first Lebanon War began due to PLO attacks against Israel. In response, Israeli head of government Menachem Begin ordered Lebanon to be attacked by Israeli forces, as the PLO coordinated its actions from Beirut. After the Israeli occupation of Beirut, the PLO withdrew from Lebanon. The war ended in September of the same year, with estimates of 10,000 casualties. Israel occupied southern Lebanon until 1985, after which Israel established a security zone with the SLA until 2000. Syria de facto occupied Lebanon until 2005.
1987: First Intifada
In 1987, violent unrest broke out among Palestinians, the so-called First Intifada. The following years were marked by this confrontation, but also by peace negotiations that led to the introduction of Palestinian self-government for the areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the meantime, progress was made, but there were setbacks and serious crises - for example, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin by a Jewish extremist and repeated suicide attacks by Palestinian terrorists. The so-called Oslo peace process reached its greatest stalemate for the time being after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO leader Yasser Arafat failed to reach an agreement at Camp David in 2000 under the mediation of then U.S. President Bill Clinton. The main points of contention were the return of Palestinian refugees, the division of Jerusalem and the relinquishment of territories that Israel had conquered in the Six-Day War. Even relatively far-reaching concessions by the Israelis, such as the relinquishment of 95% of the disputed territories, could not prevent the negotiations from failing.
In assessing the negotiations and the reasons for their failure, there are different, controversial views (see Camp David II).
2000: Second Intifada
Only a few months later, in September 2000, the Second Intifada broke out, during which peace negotiations were broken off. Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military actions, such as the invasion of Arab cities, cost the lives of several thousand people on both sides until early 2005. The al-Aqsa Intifada ended with the Sharm ash-Shaykh Agreement, signed on February 8, 2005, by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Following the success of the radical Islamic terrorist organization and party Hamas in the parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories and of the Israeli party Kadima in the 2006 elections to the Knesset, from which Ehud Olmert emerged as the new prime minister, the domestic political situation in Israel intensified dramatically. In the summer of 2006, the situation escalated when Israel responded to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hamas with attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Hezbollah's solidarity with Hamas through the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers marked the beginning of the Second Lebanon War.
After years of obstacles, the diplomatic rapprochement between the Vatican and Israel seems to be becoming more concrete. The point of contention is an old law still in force in Israel that denies churches permission to own property. The Holy See wants to get back its historical properties that were "stolen" by the state. These include, for example, the pilgrimage house in the seaside city of Caesarea.
On December 28, 2008, the Israeli army launched Operation Cast Lead, a series of heavy airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip after short-range rockets were fired from there at Israeli localities. On January 3, 2009, the operation was expanded to a ground offensive.
On May 31, 2010, the Ship-to-Gaza incident occurred, in which a number of ships were intercepted by the Israeli military attempting to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Nine activists were killed in the incident. Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated massively since then. Even before that, Turkey under the Erdogan government had distanced itself from Israel, becoming an advocate of Hamas and seeking to close ranks with Iran, whose president it called its "best friend."
In July 2014, after a murder of three Jewish religious students and a still unsolved revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager, a renewed conflict had erupted between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli army launched Operation Protective Edge and began invading the Gaza Strip. On August 26, the fighting ended with a cease-fire.
Following a government crisis between Likud and the liberal parties in November 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu removed his Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni from office on December 2. New elections were therefore held in March 2015, which Netanyahu's party won.
Since October 2015, there have been repeated knife attacks by Palestinian terrorists on passers-by and security forces. In this new wave of violence, 34 Israelis and at least 220 Palestinians, as well as a tourist from the United States, have been killed so far (as of July 1, 2016). Most of the Palestinians were shot and killed by security forces during attacks and attempted attacks on Israelis. Often, the perpetrators act alone and without a superior structure. Israeli authorities blame radical incitement of Palestinians.
