Country profilesIsrael

Humanitarian profile

Private donors, such as Jewish lobby groups in the United States and elsewhere form the basis of humanitarian aid to Israel. The Palestinian territories, however, are a far bigger recipient of aid. Israel is not a major aid donor. Israel's ongoing humanitarian problems are related to sporadic conflict in and around the Palestinian territories and with neighbouring Lebanon.

Country snapshot

Israel is a small, young country but it has had a huge impact on global affairs.

Its creation in 1948 forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in hitherto British-ruled Palestine. Their descendants now live as refugees in the blockaded Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and in neighbouring states.

Israel’s Arab neighbours sought to destroy it in a string of wars but its right to exist has been championed by the United States, its main ally, and Western countries among others.

The Palestinians’ plight has enraged the Arab world for decades as a peace process alternately limps forward and stalls.

The thorniest issues remain Israel’s security in a hostile region, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel’s ties with the United States have turned frosty over its reluctance to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, Washington’s underlying support for the Jewish state is not in question.

Israel sees its main threat today as coming from Iran, fearing it is developing nuclear arms that could reach it. Tehran denies this.

Military service is compulsory for Jewish men and women and defence spending is one of the highest proportions of gross domestic product in the world.

The majority of the population is Jewish, and a significant minority is Arab.

Israel has chosen Jerusalem as its capital after annexing East Jerusalem and adjacent areas of the West Bank, though this is not recognised internationally and most embassies are in Tel Aviv, the largest city, on the Mediterranean coast.

Government

Israel is a democracy. The president can serve for one seven-year term and is chosen by the parliament, or Knesset. It is a largely ceremonial role.

The prime minister holds the real power and selects the cabinet. The one-chamber Knesset has 120 members elected by popular vote every four years.

Economy

Israel has a relatively prosperous free-market economy which is strong in computing, other technologies and military equipment. These top the list of exports along with cut diamonds and foods, especially citrus fruits.

Key imports include oil, grains, raw materials and military equipment, which usually lead to a trade deficit.

About half of the government's external debt is owed to the United States which is Israel’s main source of economic and military aid. The European Union is also a major trading partner.

The average income per head is $25,000 (some 20 times that of Palestinians), and four out of five people work in the service sector. A quarter of citizens, however, live below the national poverty line of some eight dollars a day.

Despite limited arable land and water, agriculture has been intensively developed and much produce is exported.

The economy has recovered quickly from a brief recession in the global financial crisis of 2008-09 which hit exports that account for almost half of GDP. The government responded to the crisis with a fiscal stimulus package and the banking sector is sound.

Ninety percent of Israelis live in cities, literacy is near-universal and life expectancy is over 80 years.

History

The Middle East conflict, based on the Israeli-Palestinian rivalry for land and resources, has gone on since well before most living people were born and is rarely out of the news.

Since the collapse of communism it has been the frontline for one of the world’s main cultural-ideological divides, between the West and the Arab/Islamic world. Much of the time it seems intractable.

Modern Israel’s roots are in the Zionist movement which began in the late 19^th century among European Jews seeking an escape from anti-Semitism, particularly after bloody pogroms in the Russian empire.

Zionists wanted a Jewish state in their ancient homeland surrounding Jerusalem, where Jewish states had flourished twice, once in the distant past and then again for 100 years before the Roman occupation in 63 B.C. 

The League of Nations awarded Britain the mandate for Palestine after the end of Ottoman Turkish rule in World War One. London favoured establishing a Jewish state in part of the area. As colonial ruler, it clashed with both Arabs and Jewish immigrants.

After Britain decided to abandon Palestine following World War Two, the United Nations voted in 1947 to divide the area into Jewish and Palestinian states. Arabs, granted the smaller portion under the partition plan despite their greater population, rejected it.

Sympathy among the great powers for the Jews after the Nazi Holocaust helped Israel win international recognition after it declared independence on May 14, 1948, the last day of Britain’s mandate. The next day Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon invaded, but were defeated.

Israel and its Arab neighbours went to war again in 1967. Israel won and occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) became the main group to represent the Palestinian people and internationalised its struggle with plane hijackings and other attacks. Israel and the United States considered the PLO a terrorist organisation until 1991.

The last four decades have seen alternating periods of conflict and progress towards a settlement:

1973 – Israel defeats Arab neighbours in three-week war

1979 – Peace deal with Egypt; Israel leaves the Sinai Peninsula three years later

1982 – Israel occupies southern Lebanon

1987 – Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, pressures Israel to end occupation. It lasts several years until peace talks

1993 – The "Oslo Accords" provide for an interim period of Palestinian self-rule

1994 – Peace deal with Jordan

1994 - Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Arafat, and Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

1995 - Rabin assassinated by an Israeli extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu takes office in 1996 and Oslo peace talks begin to unravel  

2000 - Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon

2000 - Peace talks end with failed Camp David summit. A second Intifada begins and lasts until 2005

2003 – The Quartet – the United States, European Union, Russia and United Nations – draws up peace plan, called the roadmap, which is signed by Israel and Palestinians, but it quickly derails

2005 - Israel makes unilateral decision to pull troops and settlers out of Gaza Strip but keeps control of borders and later mounts an economic blockade when Islamist movement Hamas wins elections in 2006

2006 – Month-long conflict with Iranian-backed Hizbollah movement in Lebanon

2008-9 – Three-week conflict with Hamas in Gaza Strip

2009 - Netanyahu, seen as Likud hardliner, forms coalition that includes hardline nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party. Under pressure from the new Barack Obama administration in Washington, Netanyahu says he will support the creation of a Palestinian state, but opposes giving up occupied land and stop expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a key Palestinian condition for returning to stalled peace talks

2010 – Washington is furious with Israel for announcing more settler homes in East Jerusalem during a visit by Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden.

Some 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Their settlements are illegal under international law.

Israel is building a barrier within the West Bank to separate Palestinian and Jewish areas. Israel says it is required for security. The World Court has upheld Palestinian complaints that it should not be built on occupied land.

Legal snapshot

The legal system is a mix of English common law with continental European influences and, for personal matters, Jewish, Christian and Muslim legal systems that reflect Ottoman roots.

There is as yet no formal constitution; some similar functions are met by the 1948 Declaration of Establishment and the Israeli citizenship law.

The country has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction. It does not recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court.

It ranks high in Transparency International’s index measuring perceived levels of public-sector corruption (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

Israel gets an overall ‘strong’ rating from U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity in its report measuring anti-corruption measures, government accountability and civic freedoms.

However, corruption allegations have reached the top.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been accused of corruption on suspicion of receiving tens of thousands of dollars from a U.S. businessman while in public office. He has said he is innocent. Other senior figures have faced similar accusations in recent years.