Whilst Israel is relatively new country,the land has a long and often very complex history stretching back thousands of years to the very beginnings of human civilization. It has been invaded by virtually every empire worth its salt including the Persians, Romans Ottomans and the British. It is also the birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem is also a sacred city for Muslims.
Israel has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, with Neanderthal remains from the region dating back 50,000 years. Its strategic location serving as the gateway from Asia to Egypt and Africa had made Israel an ideal target for conquerors through the ages. The first nation to have influence was the great Egyptian civilization. Approximately 1000 B.C, an independent Judean Kingdom was set up under King Saul. After intermittant civil war, the land was conquered by the Assyrians and Persians, and in ~330B.C by Alexander the Great. A newly independent Jewish state ruled by the Maccabees was conqured in the 1st century B.C by the Romans. Around 30AD, Jesus Christ began his ministry in the Galilee. Following a revolt in 179A.D, the Jews were expelled from the land, starting nearly 1800 years of exile. The area was captured by Muslim invaders in the 7th Century. In the middle ages, European Christians invaded in a period known as the crusades, but after a few centuries were expelled. The land was then ruled for many years by different Muslim empires, culminating in the Ottoman empire.
During WWI, Palestine, as it was known, was captured by the British, who agreed to the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in 1917. During this period there was mass migration of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe that eventually culminated in the Holocaust. The events of WWII significantly strengthened the Independence movement, which led to civil strife between Jews and both the British and Arabs.
Following World War II, the British withdrew from their mandate of Palestine, and the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement firmly rejected by the Arabs. Subsequently, Israel's Arab neighbors invaded the new nation with the hope of regaining territory previously held by the Ottoman Empire and preventing the creation of an independent Jewish state. The Israelis defeated the Arabs in a series of wars confirming their independence, but the uprooting of thousands of Palestinians from their homelands has created deep tensions between the two sides. On 25 April 1982, Israel withdrew from the Sinai pursuant to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. Outstanding territorial and other disputes with Jordan were resolved in the 26 October 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. In addition, on 25 May 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982. In keeping with the framework established at the Madrid Conference in October 1991, bilateral negotiations were conducted between Israel and Palestinian representatives (from the Israeli-occupied West Bank) and Syria, to achieve a permanent settlement. But progress toward a permanent status agreement has been undermined by the outbreak of rounds of bloody Palestinian-Israeli violence since September 2000.
