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Israel

The state of Israel was founded in 1948, amid the first of several Arab-Israeli conflicts. Israeli society is composed of Jews who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as Palestinian Arabs who remained after the establishment of the state. Roughly half of the Jewish population was born in Israel; many are third-generation Israelis.

A parliamentary democracy with a free-wheeling party system, and a self-declared "Jewish state," Israel has not fully defined the relation between synagogue and state. Because of the Jewish character of the state, religious authorities exercise dominance over aspects of social and family relations, including the prohibition of inter-marriage and the absence of civil marriage. The social cohesion that prevailed in Israel's first decades has partly broken down with the slow dismantling of the state sector and the corresponding widening of class divisions, which have an ethnic dimension. Palestinian Arab citizens face various forms of official and unofficial discrimination.

All these tensions are overlain by Israel's military occupation, since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Successive Israeli governments built thousands of homes for Jewish settlers in all three territories, an action that conflicted with Israel's obligations under the Geneva Conventions, according to all interpretations but Israel’s. Settlements were also constructed in the Gaza Strip, though these were dismantled and Israeli soldiers withdrawn in 2005. The occupation has sparked two Palestinian uprisings, the second one entailing massive use of Israeli military force against Palestinian civilians and increased Palestinian attacks on civilians inside Israel. Over the years 2002-2005, a new consensus formed behind the idea of unilateral "separation" from the Palestinians.

Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East and the largest annual recipient of US aid. It has signed peace treaties with two former Arab antagonists, Egypt and Jordan, and has full diplomatic relations with Mauritania and Turkey, but its conflicts with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon remain unresolved.

Facts and Figures »