A Brief History
The land we know today as Israel has had many names during
its history. In ancient times it was Canaan and Pilistia (coastal land
of the Philistines), then Israel and Judea, before reverting to
Palestine (the name ultimately derived from the Philistines). In 1948
the modern State of Israel was proclaimed.
Early Times
Cave dwellers were the earliest inhabitants of the region,
especially in the Carmel (Haifa) area. The first real settlements,
founded in the Late Stone Age (c.7500 b.c. – 4000 b.c. ), included the
world’s oldest walled town, Jericho. This was also the time when people
started rearing animals, irrigating the land, and making pottery. By
the Early Bronze Age (c.3200 b.c. –2200 b.c. ), people had begun
fortifying their towns, building temples and palaces, and founding the
first city-states.
It was also the time when the region was the homeland of the
Canaanites and other tribes familiar from the Bible, which is still the
best source of knowledge about ancient Israel. It tells us that Abraham
made a covenant with God which called for his descendants to conquer
many lands. So Abraham, the first Patriarch, led his nomadic group of
Israelites from Mesopotamia to the mountains of Canaan, where they
fought the ruling Egyptians. Eventually famine compelled Abraham’s
tribes to move into Egypt and into captivity. In about 1250 b.c. ,
Moses, the Israelites’ new leader, parted the Red Sea and led his
people back to Canaan to confront the Philistines, who now controlled
much of the land. Moses died on the journey to the Promised Land, but
Joshua took over from him, and between 1400 b.c. and 1000 b.c. the
tribes of Israel conquered all the lands north and south of Jerusalem,
most famously bringing the walls of Old Jericho tumbling down with the
sounds of their horns. At this time only the northern area was known as
Israel; the south was called Judah. In its Greek form, Judea, it was
applied to just Jerusalem and its immediate surroundings.
In about 1023 b.c. , the chiefs of the tribes of Israel
elected Saul to be their first king. David, the son of Jesse, later
became king and conquered Jerusalem, the last undefeated place in the
whole territory, and made it his Royal City. He also strengthened the
city and brought in the Ark of the Covenant (holding the Ten
Commandments) to sanctify it as a holy city and to unite the tribes.
His kingdom prospered, and by the time his son Solomon succeeded him,
in about 965 b.c. , almost all the extensive, rich lands between the
rivers Nile and the Euphrates were part of the Kingdom of Israel.
King Solomon ruled during the Golden Age of Jerusalem and is
remembered for his wisdom, for the construction of the First Temple,
and for his copper mines in the south. After 37 years of rule, Solomon
died and the kingdom was split between the northern and southern
tribes. In about 721 b.c. , the north (Israel) was invaded and
devastated by Assyrians. The tribes of Israel were then scattered to
roam the world as the Ten Lost Tribes. Even more devastating was the
587 b.c. invasion by the Nebuchadnezzar-led Babylonians. Jerusalem was
razed, the Temple destroyed, and its people forced into exile and
slavery.
By the fourth century b.c. the Babylonians had been
overthrown, and the Israelites returned to their land, which was now
under the more tolerant rule of the Persians. The Persians were
followed by Alexander the Great, after whom came two Greek generals
Seleucus and Ptolemy, who brought Hellenistic control to the Eastern
Mediterranean for some two centuries. Around a.d. 141, the three
Maccabee brothers overthrew the Seleucids and established their own
Hasmonean dynasty and an extensive empire which dominated Palestine as
far as the Golan in the north and Gaza in the south.
Romans and Christians
The Roman invasion of Palestine in 63 b.c. swept aside
Jewish resistance, and in 40 b.c. Herod the Great, whose engineering
feats and brutality became legendary, was installed as the King of
Judea.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in 6 or 5 b.c. (his birth was
miscalculated in the sixth century), though it was only in the final
three years of his life and ministry that his teachings became a major
problem for Jerusalem’s rulers. Ironically, Jesus was condemned not by
the Romans, but by the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish legislative court,
largely because of his “blasphemous” declaration that he was the Son of
God. After his crucifixion, the rather precarious balance of Jewish
government under Roman rule turned to revolt in a.d. 66, when the
Zealots took Jerusalem. They held it for only four years, but the city
was razed once again (just as Jesus had prophesied), the fortress of
Masada fell, and the Jews were again taken into exile and slavery.
Jewish culture nonetheless survived the second destruction of the
Temple. Its centre moved to Tiberias in the Galilee.
In a.d. 331, Constantine, the Roman emperor, legalised
Christianity and together with his mother, Helen, developed and
excavated Christian sites. Pilgrim interest in the Holy Land (as it was
first called at this time) began on a massive scale that has continued
to this day. Thus began a period of prosperity which was only brought
to a violent end in 614 when Persian armies invaded. Once again Judea
was conquered by foreign forces and Jerusalem reduced to rubble.
Arabs and Crusaders
In 622 Islam was born, according to the teachings of the
prophet Mohammed. Islamic armies swiftly conquered the whole of the
Middle East. By 638 they controlled Palestine, and with the
construction of the Dome of the Rock and the El-Aksa Mosque in
Jerusalem this became the third-holiest of all Muslim cities (after
Mecca and Medina).
Muslim rule was largely tolerant, and continued peacefully
for nearly four centuries with a joint Christian-Muslim protectorate of
Holy Places. In 1009, however, churches were destroyed by the fanatical
Caliph (Arab ruler) Hakim, and in 1071 Seljuk Turks took over Jerusalem
and began attacking Christian pilgrims. The Pope called on Christian
Europe to launch a Crusade to defend the Holy Land, and in 1099, under
the command of Godfrey de Bouillon, the Crusaders took Jerusalem. Their
brutality was legendary; Jews fared no better than Muslims and were
massacred as “God killers. ” The Crusaders set up their own kingdom in
Jerusalem and began another Crusade to gain more of the Holy Land. They
managed to control much of the country for nearly a century before the
Muslim leader Saladin (Salah-ad-Din) defeated them in 1187. A year
later, Richard the Lionheart, one of the leaders of the Third Crusade,
won back Akko (Acre) but failed to regain Jerusalem. Other Crusades
followed, but the knights never recovered their earlier territories,
and by the end of the 13th century were faced with a new enemy.
Mamelukes to Zionism
Akko fell to the Egyptian Mamelukes (freed slaves of
Turkish/Circassian origin) in 1291, bringing to an end the Crusader
period. The Mamelukes ruled Palestine for two hundred years, leaving
behind some very fine architecture.
In 1516, the Turkish Ottoman dynasty conquered the whole of
Jerusalem and the Holy Land, extending their Middle-Eastern empire.
Their second sultan, Suleiman (the Magnificent), is renowned for
constructing new walls and gates and roughly reshaping the Old City of
Jerusalem into its modern form. During his reign Palestine flourished,
but his successors proved less able, and over the next four centuries
the country continuously declined to become a virtual backwater.
In the last decades of the 19th century, many thousands of
Jews of the Diaspora seeking refuge from persecution immigrated to
Palestine. In 1878 the first modern Jewish colony was founded at Rosh
Pina, and in 1896 Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionism movement
that called for the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, published
his seminal work, The Jewish State.
The British Mandate
Around the turn of the century Britain and other countries
had noted with great interest the developments in Palestine, and during
World War I the British courted Jews and Arabs for help to get rid of
the Ottoman Empire. They promised to the one a national Jewish homeland
and to the other protection of their rights, as set out in the 1917
Balfour Declaration.
The Ottoman Empire surrendered when World War I ended the
following year, and, following a declaration by the League of Nations
(the forerunner to the United Nations), Britain became rulers of
Palestine by mandate. A massive inflow of Jewish immigrants from around
the world followed, increasing tension between Arab and Jew. In spite
of British attempts to appease both sides, Arab attacks on Jewish
settlers became common, Jews retaliated, and the British imposed
restrictions on Jewish immigration. A Jewish underground resistance
force (Irgun) was set up to fight the British and smuggle more Jews
into Israel.
In the 1930s, persecution of European Jews forced even
greater numbers to flee to the Holy Land. Palestinian ports, such as
Haifa, were blockaded by the British to prevent more Jewish immigrants
from flooding in. World War II forced the Jewish people into an
alliance with the British against the common Nazi enemy. Even so, by
1947 immigration had swollen the Jewish population to such an extent
that Jews now outnumbered Arabs three to one (600,000 to 200,000), and
the violence continued to escalate. Unable to solve “the Palestinian
problem,” the British presented it to the United Nations, whose
solution was to partition the country into two territories. According
to this plan, areas that were predominantly Arab — the Gaza Strip, the
central part of the country, the northwest corner, and the West
Bank — were to remain under Arab control as Palestine, while the
southern Negev Desert and the northern coastal strip would form the
new State of Israel. Jerusalem, the most fiercely disputed real-estate,
came under international protection.
The State of Israel
On 14 May 1948 the British Mandate ended and the State of
Israel was proclaimed. Immediately the first Israel-Arab war erupted,
with the new state engaged in fighting the combined armies of Egypt,
Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. After a year of war the UN interceded
to broker a peace agreement. Israel’s boundaries were redrawn and
expanded to almost what they are now, whereas the Palestinian Arab
territories were reduced to the central-eastern area, known as the West
Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem was divided
into east and west, under the control of Jordan and Israel
respectively.
Jewish settlers still flooded into Israel, and new
settlements continued to be built. But the young state was soon engaged
in another crisis with an Arab neighbour. Gamal Nasser’s
nationalization of the Suez Canal international waters triggered a
combined Israeli-French and British attack on Egypt, and the start of
the Sinai War. The outcome was further territorial gains for Israel
with control of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. However, strong
international pressure forced Israel to withdraw — with Egypt
reclaiming the Sinai and a UN force installed in the Gaza Strip.
No fewer than eleven years passed before the next major
Arab-Israeli conflict flared. As Arab armies massed on the borders of
Israel in 1967, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the air forces of
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq with a preemptive strike. The war was
over in six days. Israel gained total control of Palestine, including
Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as Egypt’s Sinai and
Syria’s Golan Heights.
Attempting to regain the Sinai and the Golan, Egypt and
Syria struck back at Israel in 1973, on the holiest day of the Jewish
year, Yom Kippur. Israel was caught off guard but held out on the
Syrian front for over a month. Finally, peace was agreed, with a UN
buffer zone created in Golan Heights.
Egypt and Israel made an important movement towards a
permanent peace between an Arab nation and Israel when they agreed to a
treaty in 1978. Yet, further military action lay four years away. The
Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon in 1982 to safeguard its
northern border against attack by the Palestine Liberation
Organization. Israeli forces then penetrated north to bombard PLO
positions in Beirut. They forced the PLO out, but without much support
within Israel.
Intifada to the Present
A fatal road incident in the Gaza Strip in December 1987
set off the Palestinian intifada (uprising) against the Israeli troops
in the Occupied Territories. Stone throwing and petrol bombing were
early weapons, but subsequently the Palestinian Fundamentalist movement
Hamas took to other forms of anti-Jewish violence, such as the 1994
suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv bus which resulted in the death of 22
people.
More traumatic to the hard-bitten Israelis was the
launching of Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa during the Gulf War of
1990–91. Little physical damage was inflicted, but the psychological
effect was significant. The Israelis couldn’t even retaliate, being
restrained by pressure from the American government, which wanted to
preserve the Arab alliance against Iraq.
The most dramatic recent changes in the relationship
between Arab and Jew became public in 1993 when the Oslo peace accord
was finally made between former enemies, the PLO (acknowledged
representative of the Palestinian people) and the Israeli government.
The accord allowed Jericho and the Gaza Strip a limited form of
self-government under the auspices of the PLO. Another bout of progress
occurred in 1994 when a peace agreement was signed with Jordan, leading
to the opening of the southern Eilat-Aqaba and Arava border routes. In
November 1994 the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin, and his foreign minister Shimon Peres jointly accepted
the Nobel Peace Prize in celebration of their considerable
achievements.
One year later Rabin was assassinated. His successor,
Benjamin Netanyahu, an American-educated conservative, has slowed the
implementation of the Oslo accord.
The peace process is fragile; the Gaza Strip is still given
to unrest and the Israeli government watches cautiously to see if
Yasser Arafat’s PLO can effectively police its allotted territories,
free of the influence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (“Holy War,” an
Islamic fundamentalist movement). The Palestinian Arabs are irritated
by Israeli land seizures. For visitors the peace dividend is currently
considerable, allowing access to the number of great sights that lie in
the Sinai and Jordan, including the fabulous city of Petra.
