Does anyone know the history of Israel in laymans terms?

Answer 1

1945 - Israel given statehood by the UN
1949 - under pressure from Britain, Arabs give up 50% more space than originally allotted by the UN.
1956 - Israel invades and occupies the Sinai peninsula for several months with British and French backing.
1964 - PLO formed with determination to destroy Israel for what it had done.
1967 - 6-day war. Israel destroys the Egyptian air force on the ground, conquers and occupies Sinai and Gaza, then conquers the West Bank from Jordan, and Golan Heights from Syria. UN resolution 242 called for Israeli to withdraw, anf for the establishment of peace.
1973 - Egypt retook the Suez canal and a small strip on the other side, while Syria retook Golan heights, but after the US resupplied them, they took all of it back, and further into Syria, almost to Damascus, and took the Suez back and a strip on the far side inside Egypt.
1979 - Israel and Egypt sign peace treaty.
1981 - Israel destroys nuclear power plant in Iraq, and assasinate Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
1982 - Israel invades Lebanon to fight PLO.
1993 - Oslo Declaration of Principles - Israel and PLO agree to mutual recognition.
1995 - Oslo Interim Agreement signed, and the Palestinian Authority was established.
1997 - Israel and Palestinians agrre on redeployment of troops to the West Bank city of Hebron.
2002 - Israel to build a wall through and surrounding an area in the West Bank. A refugee camp and several small villages would be trapped inside the circumference of the wall, cut off from all supplys and food.
2004 - International Court of Justice rules that the wall violates international law.
2006 - In retaliation for the kidnapping of two soldiers by last remnants of Hezbollah (which had been 95% disbanded and disarmed by the new Lebanese secular, westernized Democracy), Israel invades and occupies 1/3 of Lebanon, displacing over 1 million people and killing thousands.

Can you see now why the Arabs dislike the Israeli Government? It's not the people that they hate, it's the radical right-wing zionists that have been invading and occupying greater and greater territories from their neighbors ever since they were given a country in 1945!

Ken y head...It wasn't since moses and the golden calf...that had nothing to do with the Arabic people. Abraham's first son, Ishmael (the one that he had when he slept with the maid), was sent away because Abraham liked his second son Issac (from his wife) better. Ishmael's descendants became the Arabic people, Issac's descendants became the Jewish people.

Leogirl...many countries lived in what is now Israel over the millenia. Dozens! The Israelites never possessed it for very long at a time. There are also dozens of other civilizations that have been around and still speak the same language much longer than Israel. India, for example, has writings going back to 10,000BC. Sanskrit is still spoken and written today. Many shamanic societies, like in South America, Southeast Asia, Australia, North American Natives, still live in the same place and speak the same language since 7000-8000 years ago.

Answer 2

Yes, I do know some.

Palestine never existed as a country, ever. The land was owned by many groups and countries throughout history. The UN gave the land to the Jews to form a Jewish state. The land actually came from the British. A lot of animosity was actually caused by the British because they promised both groups the same land.

The land was often described by Western travelers in the 18th and 19th centuries as "desolate" and "empty," but after World War I, there was a surge of immigration not caused by nationalist feeling but by the employment opportunities and improved quality of life that accompanied Zionist immigration and land development;

Israel has one basic goal, the right to exist. There have been extremists of course who pop up every now and then that want to reestablish the original Israel border as outlines in the Bible. They are few and far between. Israel is a secular country not a religious one, it is a Democracy not a Theocracy or Monarchy. The founders of Israel were secular Jews with little interest in religion.

During the six day war the Arab world attacked Israel and lost. When the Arabs lost they also lost territory, which is actually very common in most wars. This includes the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza. Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel and enjoy reasonable relations. Israel was attacked because the Arab nations did not want them there.

Answer 3

Israel was created in May 1948 by the partition of the geographic area known as Palestine, which had previously been administered by the British. The nation of Israel was to give a place for displaced survivors of the Holocaust. At the same time this partition was made, provisions were made for a Palestinian state for the Muslim Arabs who lived in the area. They rejected this, and went to war with Israel days after the partition. To this day, they still do not have their own nation.

Over the course of its history Israel has been attacked by neighboring Arab nations like Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. All times Israel has managed to hold its own and remain a nation, and even managed to annex territory of its attackers. Over the years this land has been given back however.

In the late 1970s peace treaties were signed with Egypt and Jordan. These nations no longer attack Israel, but are not necessarily friendly toward Israel either.

Recently the Israeli government has been moving settlers out of the land designated for Palestinians and has tried unsuccessfully to help these people get their own nation started.

This past summer, the terrorist group Hezbollah, violated Israeli territory and kidnapped several soldiers leading to a war with Lebanon. There is a cease fire in place, but don['t count on it to last for any ammount of time.

Answer 4

Along time ago, in the same land they inhabit now (only lots more of it), lived the Israelis. They got kicked out by their enemies, the anti-Israelis. Jerusalem, which they never totally evacuated, and where many poor Israelis lived in squalor, became a symbol of hope of their returning to the land they had been kicked out of long ago.

During the holocaust, Jerusalem became their only hope and many went back looking for their long-lost relatives (the only family they had left).

In 1948, there was a war, and to settle the war, the UN carved up Israel and made Jerusalem an international city. In 1967, there was another war. Israelis won. America supported the Israelis (which made the anti-Israelis really, really angry with America. Israelis took back some of the property they had been run out of long ago.

The losers never got over it, there having been bad blood for centuries between these two groups.

In futile efforts to appease the anti-Israelies, the UN has tried to carve up Israel, but it never works.

The anti-Israelis will not be happy until the Israelis are "run into the sea." Because of America's support of the Israelis the anti-Israelis also want to "run Americans into the sea."

Answer 5

What is now Israel was, until WW I, a part of the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim country that embraced what is now almost all of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire had been around since the 16th Century or so and was an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary in WW I. As such, it suffered a fate even worse than Germany when defeated.

During WW I, the Allied Powers (our side) tried to ferment revolt in the area because the Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Turks out of Istanbul. So the Palestinians and other Arabs in this part of the Ottoman Empire resented being ruled by the Turks who, though Muslim, were of a different race and spoke a different language.

To ferment a revolt of the Arabs against the Turks, the British tapped a young man in the Foreign office. This man was Thomas E. Lawrence, who we know today as Lawrence of Arabia. He was given a pile of money and arms and was instructed to use them as necessary to get the Arabs to rise up against the Turks so the Turks would have a civil war to fight and would not be able to contribute much to the war effort.

Lawrence was left to his own devices as to how to best do this. So what he did was visit each sheik or emir he could find. He would tell him how the Arabs were superior to the Turks and deserved to have their own country and king. Lawrence would promise this emir he would have the backing of the British government to be king of a new Arab Islamic nation.

Each time a sheik or emir bought into that, Lawrence arranged for the emir to have arms and this Arab tribe would launch a small attack on a nearby Turk/Ottoman garrison. Then Lawrence mounted his faithful steed (a camel in this case), scoot across the desert to the next sheik he saw, make the same pitch and promise. Numbers are not clear but it is believed he promised more than a dozen sheiks and emirs they would be king of a unified Arab nation and told each he alone had the backing of the British government to be King.

At the same time that was happening, the Zionist movement, largely centered in England, was sending settlers to the area in the same way there are Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank today. England was hoping the Jews in Palestine would also rise up with the Arabs against the Turks. So the British Parliament passed the Balfour Declaration expressing the government's support for a Jewish National homeland in Palestine.

As a result of these various actions, the Turks had their hands full with constant, but really quite small, uprisings in their own country that hindered them to some extent in providing assistance to Germany and Austria-Hungary.

At the end of the war, there was the need to dictate terms to the Ottoman Empire just as was done to Germany at the Treaty of Versailles. England sent a young man in the Admiralty to attend the Cairo Conference (1921 I believe) and represent the British government.

While in Cairo, Churchill got word that several of the Arab armies organized by Lawrence were marching on Cairo. Seems they had learned that Lawrence did not have the authority to make the promises he did. Obviously they could not each be the king of a unified Arab state.

So Churchill did about all he could do. He dragged out a map of the middle East and drew lines in the sand that created the various Middle Eastern countries we know today including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan among others. He, on behalf of the British government, installed each of these local chieftains as a king of their own little part of the Middle East.

But the Zionists reminded Churchill and the British of the Balfour Declaration and demanded their own homeland in what was then Palestine. England and the League of Nations decided that Palestine should not be an independent country but should be a League of Nations mandate area administered by the British.

The British did not want to affront the Arabs by turning their land over to the Jewish but they could not ignore their own stated policy of supporting the Zionist goal of a homeland in the Middle East. They even tried to convince the Zionists that Palestine and Jerusalem were the wrong places for them to set up their homeland and tried to get the Zionists to accept a part of a country in Africa (Please, I don't remember what country) but the Zionists would have none of that so they just kept sending settlers to Palestine and reminding the British of its promise.

But then WW II and the Holocaut took place. The Zionists had no more patience and told the British government that they were taking the British government at its word and would be settling, en masse, in Palestine and setting up their own country of Israel. Britain and the US floated a plan to partition Palestine into 2 states - the same proposal that continues to be proposed today - and the Zionists accepted that proposal. The Palestinians didn't like the fact that half of their country was being given away to Europeans of a different race, religion, language and culture so they turned this down.

When the Palestinians turned that down, the Jewish settlers in the area unilaterally declared the sovereign state of Israel and dared anyone to do anything about it. The Arab countries attacked. The US was the first country to recognize Israel. Britain, being reminded of the Balfour Declaration, then recognized Israel as well. With US and British aid, Israel defeated the Arab powers in 1948 and in several wars since.

Sorry so long but hope its in layman's terms.

EDIT:
Seems funny that people do not know much about the history of the area before WW II. I guess people just think Israel popped up out of the ocean floor after Hitler.

Answer 6

Israel became a Country after WW2. It was determined that it was the best place for all of the displaced Jews after the atrocities committed by Hitler.

Answer 7

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store."

Answer 8

yep Jews and Moslem's been fightin every since moses came down with the ten commandments.caught them with the golden calf. .the group split right there. the group that followed moses all died in the desert he took there children to Jerusalem.40 years after the first bunch got there
both sides feel they were the chosen people of Israel and have fought to this day