History And Geography

History

The history of Israel can be traced back to Abraham (Old Testament), who established the belief that there is only one God, the creator of the entire universe. The state of Israel was born as the end result of the Zionist movement, conceived in the 19th century to create a homeland for Jews. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD as a result of which ancient Jews were scattered all over the world.

After the World War II, the British withdrew from Palestine and the area was partitioned into Arab and Jewish states by the United Nations. However, the Arabs who rejected the agreement outright did not accept this partition. In a series of wars that followed, the Israelis defeated the Arabs, which increased the tension prevailing between the two sides. Following the 1967 war, a lot of land not included in the country's profile was occupied by Israel. Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai on 25th April 1982 was an outcome of the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.

On 26th October 1994, the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed, which resolved a number of outstanding territorial and other disputes prevalent between Israel and Jordan. On 25th May 2000, Israel unilaterally vacated southern Lebanon, an area that had been conquered and occupied by it since 1982.

Keeping in mind the framework drafted at the Madrid Conference in October 1991, negotiations on bilateral terms were carried on between Israel and Palestinian representatives (from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Syria to achieve some sort of permanent settlement. On 24th June 2002, the U.S President George Bush laid out a strategy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which considered and comprised of a two-state solution. However, the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli violence prevalent since September 2000 has undermined the agreement intended at creating a permanent status.

Geography

Israel is located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. On the north it borders Lebanon and on the northeast, Syria. Jordan lies on the east and southeast of it, while Egypt is located on the southwest. The western part of Israel faces the Mediterranean Sea.

In spite of being geographically small, the area has an extremely diverse landscape and climate. It is divided into four sections, the coastal plain, the central hills, the Jordan Rift Valley, and the Negev Desert. The Mediterranean coastal plain extends from the Lebanese border in the north to Gaza in the south. This stretch is only interrupted by the Cape Carmel situated at Haifa Bay. It is about twenty-five miles wide at Gaza and narrows toward the north to about three miles at the Lebanese border. The land is relatively fertile and humid (historically malarial) and is reputed for its citrus and viniculture. Numerous short streams traverse the plain, of which only two, the Yarqon and Qishon, have continuous water flows.