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Israel
Located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is the only Jewish-majority state in the world. It has a total land area of 22,072 sq km with an estimated population of approximately 7.7 million as of 2010.
6,421 Questions
What atrocities has Israel committed against the Palestinians?
Answer 1
The question is one-sided. Israel has certainly made mistakes and civilians have been killed. Israel is defending itself against the terrorists of the nationality named in your question; and collateral incidents do sometimes occur, just as by the hands of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Unlike Palestinian terrorists, Israel never deliberately targets innocent people.
Answer 2
The question is appalling. It asks the responding contributor to spend time and thought, and come up with a list of charges that can be used to condemn.
One can only reiterate the statement in Answer 1, and urge you to think about it: Unlike many of its neighbors, Israel never deliberately targets innocent people.
Answer 3
While agreeing with Answers 1 & 2 that the question is biased and written in a way so as to avoid mentioning of the numerous Palestinian atrocities against Israelis, there are several particular atrocities committed by Israelis (mostly without government sanction) against Palestinians that are commonly mentioned as actual atrocities (see below). However, most people who use the term "atrocity against the Palestinians" use it to refer to anything that Israelis do regardless of whether it is considered an atrocity when Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians do the exact same things.
Deir Yassin (1947): This is probably the best-known Israeli atrocity. The Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization entered the Palestinian town of Deir Yassin and massacred 107 non-combatant Palestinians. The Israeli leadership under Ben Gurion made it clear that such activities would not be tolerated and forcibly disbanded the Irgun.
Qibya Massacre (1953): Called Operation Shoshana by the Israeli Defense forces, Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank. 69 Palestinian Arabs, two thirds of them women and children, were killed and 45 houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed. The attack followed cross-border raids from the Jordanian occupied West Bank in which Israeli civilians were killed. The U.S. State Department and Jewish communities around the world condemned the attack.
Kafr Qasim Massacre (1956): On October 29, 1956, Israeli border police (MAGAV) conducted a raid in the Arab-Israeli town, resulting in 48 Arab civilians dead, including 6 women and 23 children. Arab sources usually give the death toll as 49, as they include the unborn child of one of the women. The Israeli court found that the command to kill civilians was "blatantly illegal", and sentenced the border police responsible to lengthy jail terms which were later pardoned by the government. In December 2007, President of Israel Shimon Peres formally apologised for the massacre.
Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre (1994): American-born Israeli Baruch Goldstein, a member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Abraham Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, West Bank. The attack left 29 male worshippers dead and 125 wounded. The attack only ended after Goldstein had expended his ammunition and was beaten to death by survivors. Within 48 hours of the massacre, riots all across the West Bank led to altercations between Palestinians and Israeli Defense forces, leading to the deaths of another 19 Palestinians. The Israeli government condemned the massacre and responded by arresting members of the Kach movement, forbidding certain settlers from entering Arab towns and demanding that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles. Goldstein was denounced by mainstream Orthodox Judaism and was widely described as insane by Israelis.
How did Zionism create conflict in the Middle East?
Zionism is certainly one of the causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It is not the only cause of the conflict and is also not the most important cause of the conflict. Zionism is responsible for the existence of the State of Israel since Zionism was the Jewish Nationalist movement to establish a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. Without Israel, there would be no Arab-Israeli conflict.
However, it is worth noting that while Zionism is a base cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, numerous other far more lethal conflicts (like the Iran-Iraq War) have nothing to do with Israel.
What organization declared Israel an independent state?
The citizens and administration of Israel did, in 1948.
United Nations Resolution 181 only provided permission for Israel to declare a state. As said above, it was the Israelis who actually did the Declaring.
Do Arab Israelis consider themselves to belong to the Arab People or to Israel?
Almost every type of Arab Israeli considers himself to be a part of the Arab People in the same way that German Americans still consider themselves to be ethnically German even though they do not live inside of a German State (such as Germany, Austria, or Switzerland). The more pertinent question is whether they see Israel as their State of Citizenship in a positive light or a more positive light than they would see having the citizenship of an extant Arab State or Palestine.
The majority of Israeli Arabs consider themselves ethnically Palestinian. (Note that a minority of Arab Israelis do NOT consider themselves Palestinians and do not identify with that society, but all Palestinians at this point in history are Arabs.) They hold Israeli citizenship but are forbidden from serving in the Israeli Army. (This is as opposed to Jewish Israelis and some other Arab Israelis who are required to serve in the Israeli Army.) Within Israel, they often talk of how disgruntled (to put it mildly) they are with the current political structure and the treatment of the non-Israeli citizen Palestinians.
Regardless of any disagreement that ethnically Palestinian Arab Israelis may have with the State of Israel, the vast majority, if pushed to answer, would not give up their Israeli citizenship for the citizenship of any other Arab State. This sentiment, combined with the fact that they pay Israeli taxes, work at Israeli companies, and carry Israeli passports makes Arabs outside of Israel see these Arab Israelis as Israelis first and Arab second. Concurrently, since Israel is by law a Jewish State, the ethnically Palestinian Arab Israelis are seen by most Jewish Israelis as Arabs first and Israelis second. Caught in the middle, most ethnically Palestinian Arab Israelis feel that although they are Israeli citizens, they are truly Arabs in a foreign state.
As concerns Arab Israelis who are not ethnically Palestinian, such as the Druze and Bedouins and other minorities which are called Arab Israelis by laymen even though they are not Arab such as Circassians and Armenians, the situation is markedly different. These Arab Israelis (which cumulatively form less than 5% of the Arab Israeli population) have declared sole loyalty to the State of Israel and consider themselves Israeli non-Jewish citizens. The Druze and Circassians put their men in the mandatory Israeli Army draft pool and a number of Bedouin voluntarily join the Israeli Army as trackers. They have little to no interest in joining with other Arab Nations.
Note: There are certainly exceptions, but this is the general answer.
When did israel take control of the West Bank?
Israel has a number of issues as concerns giving up control of the West Bank. This list a non-exhaustive set of reasons.
1) Strategic Physical Defense Issues: If Israel were to withdraw out of the West Bank, the area around the city of Herzliyya would be only 8 miles wide. If this area was breached by an attacking Arab army, Israel could be cleaved in two (Galilee and Central Regions) in only fifteen minutes and would greatly threaten Israeli viability.
2) Strategic Air Defense: The Judean Highlands, which make up the lower half of the West Bank are some of the tallest mountains/hills in Israel. As a result, they have a large number of radar towers used to maintain vigilance over all of Israeli airspace. Without a highland position, of which there are few in 1949-Israel, such a sensor array would be ineffective at scanning Israeli airspace.
3) Palestinian Militants: Even though Salam Fayyad has done an incredible job of reducing the amount of Palestinian Extremists operating in the West Bank, there still remain a number of Terrorist organizations in the territory. A withdrawal from the territory would not only embolden them, but make communications, meetings, and other dealings easier for them. The Palestinian Police cannot control the territory alone at this point.
4) Israeli Settlements: Israel has 121 settlements with nearly 350,000 inhabitants in the West Bank. (This does not count for internal redistribution in Jerusalem). Many of these settlements are firmly entrenched both in the minds of their occupants and in terms of their building structures (such as government offices, universities, highways, and other markers of long-term settlement). Removing these settlements would be one of the most difficult things for Israel to do militarily-speaking and politically-speaking (as a number of political parties actively support West Bank settlement).
5) Jerusalem: Jerusalem has a lot of significance to Jews and both Eastern Jerusalem and the Old City of Jerusalem are considered part of the West Bank. The idea of a unified Jerusalem is considered very special to a great number of Israelis and control of the Old City is seen as the only practical way to make sure that Jews can access the holy sites there. (Under Jordanian occupation, Jews could not go to their holy sites.)
6) Non-Jerusalem Holy Sites: The West Bank (by sheer accident of history) happens to be where much of Ancient Israel used to exist. Therefore, a number of Biblical cities with an Israelite past, like Hebron, Jericho, Bethlehem, Shchem (Nablus), and others, are in the West Bank. There are numerous holy sites in those places as well as the historical past buried in them. Many Israelis do not want to lose access to those places as well.
7) Religious Zionism: There are numerous political parties (and the Israelis they represent) who believe that Zionism refers to Divine Mandate to create a State in all lands controlled by the Israelites. Since the Israelites controlled the West Bank (and it was the center of their Kingdom), the West Bank is necessarily, in their view, part of any Jewish State.
When will the war in the middle east stop?
There is no single "war in the Middle East". There are numerous Middle East Conflicts. All of them ended or will end when one of three criteria are met:
(1) One side is victorious and has completely eliminated all opposition. An example of this is the Turkish War of Independence where the Ottoman Elite were completely eradicated by the Young Turks and the Greek Forces were evicted from Anatolia.
(2) One side is removed from conflict by a third party. An example of this is the Iran-Iraq War. The fighting was ended by ceasefire in 1988 without a true victor, but the overthrow of the Iraqi State by the USA in 2003 allowed the new Iraqi State to make peace with Iran and re-establish diplomatic ties.
(3) Both sides find a mutually acceptable compromise. An example of this is the Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1991 that allowed the Lebanese Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites, and other minorities to resolve many of their differences. All of the parties accepted the agreement.
Who are Israel's best-known actors?
Here are some of the most famous ones: Male: Lior Ashkenazi, Moni Moshonov, Oshri Cohen, Moshe Ivgy, Assi Dayan, Alon Abutbu, Avi Kushnir, Sharon Alexander, Ze'ev Revach Female: Gila Almagor, Yona Elian, Tiki Dayan, Keren Mor, Ronit Elkabetz, Ayelet Zurer, Yael Abecasis, Anat Waxman, Assi Levi
What is the average yield of wheat in Israel?
At present, it's about 100,000 metric tons annually, though it has varied in the past. See also:
Why did the creation of the state of Israel lead to a conflict in the middle east?
During WWII, Britain made two promises in its search for allies. One, it promised the Palestinians that if they joined them and overthrew the Ottoman Turks, they'd be given their own country. Two, Britain promised the Zionists that if they joined their cause, a Jewish homeland would be created for them.
After the war, Britain found itself between a rock and a hard place. To compromise, Britain partitioned the land. That is, they split the land in two and gave the western half to the Zionists and the eastern half to the Palestinians.
Needless to the say, this didn't fly well, and ever since, the Palestinians and the Israelis have been fighting for the land.
What are some things that Israel can improve on?
Their policies concerning Palestinians and their claim to land. Their social policies regarding single parents and women. Their settlement policies on the West bank. Their policies on controlling Palestinians moving within the West bank.
What happened to the army of Israelites at Ai?
This refers to the invasion of Canaan by the Israelites, which the Bible says took place around 1400 BCE. Joshua chose thirty thousand men and sent them away by night to wait beyond the city. Next morning, with the bulk of his army and all the people, he camped on the northern side of the city, then sent five thousand men to wait in ambush between Bethel and Ai. As expected, the king of Ai came out of the city with the army, to attack the Israelite camp, and the Israelites made as if to flee. Then the Israelite army hidden in reserve entered the city and set it on fire.
Certainly, the tactic used to entice the king of Ai to leave the city undefended, is an example of military genius - except that there was no city of Ai at that time. Archaeologists have confirmed that the city of Ai had been abandoned several centuries before the time this conquest is supposed to have taken place. The name given to the city, Ai, actually means 'Ruins', reflecting the fact that the Hebrew people had never known the place to be other than a ruin and did not know its former name.
This was a glorious legend of military genius that the Israelites must have been proud of, but it was no more than a legend, created long after the people had forgotten how they really came to occupy the Canaanite hinterland.
Who ended up with the holy land after the ninth crusade?
After the collapse of the Crusader States by the end of the ninth Crusade, Palestina was made part of Egypt's Bahri Mamluk sultanate which ruled Palestina until almost 1400 AD. After that, the Ottoman Turks ruled the country until the early 20th century.
Haifa is a city located in which country?
Haifa is a city located in the northern part of Israel and it built on Mt. Carmel. The city is somewhat unique in that it has a tiered structure, building up from the base of the mountain.
