🇮🇱 Israel

Following a revolt in Judah the Neo-Babylonian king besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, dissolved the kingdom and deported much of its elite. The exile became the formative catastrophe of Jewish history and the origin of the idea of return to Zion.

After capturing Babylon the Achaemenid founder allowed the exiles to return, and the Second Temple was completed around 520 BCE. The region was governed as the province of Yehud Medinata.

The conquest brought the area under Hellenistic rule, subsequently contested between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires as part of Coele-Syria. Ongoing Hellenisation generated cultural tensions among the Jewish population.

Antiochus IV's decrees outlawing Jewish practices triggered the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE, weakening Seleucid control. By 142/141 BCE the Hasmoneans had secured autonomy and established an independent Jewish kingdom that expanded into neighbouring territories in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BCE.

The Hasmonean civil war ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and in 37 BCE Herod was installed as a dynastic vassal of Rome after the Roman–Parthian Wars. Roman suzerainty replaced Jewish independence.

In 6 CE direct Roman provincial rule replaced the client kingdom. Tensions with Roman administration led to a series of Jewish–Roman wars and widespread destruction.

The uprising briefly created an independent Jewish state before being brutally suppressed, devastating and depopulating Judea's countryside. Jerusalem was rebuilt as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, Jews were expelled from surrounding districts and the province renamed, though a small Jewish presence continued with Galilee as its religious centre.

Constantine embraced and promoted Christianity and Theodosius I made it the state religion, after which laws discriminating against Jews and Judaism were passed and Jews were persecuted by church and authorities. Christian immigration and local conversion produced a Christian majority by the middle of the 5th century.

Revolts against Byzantine rule erupted towards the end of the 5th century and continued until the late 6th. They resulted in a large decrease in the Samaritan population.

The Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and a short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius in 614 were reversed when Byzantium retook the area in 628. Byzantine restoration was brief, ending with the Muslim conquest a few years later.

The Muslim conquest ended Byzantine rule, and Caliph Umar lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering and worshipping in Jerusalem. Control then passed over six centuries between the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates and the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties, amid steady Arabisation and Islamisation and a fall in population from around 1 million to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period.

The most catastrophic known earthquakes occurred in 31 BCE, 363, 749 and 1033 CE, with the Jordan Valley segment rupturing repeatedly. Accumulated slip deficit since 1033 is sufficient to cause a magnitude 7.4 event, and as of 2007 many public buildings and 50,000 residential buildings were expected to collapse in a strong quake.

Papally sanctioned incursions from the end of the 11th century sought to wrest Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. The Ayyubids pushed the crusaders back before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in 1291.

The Ottomans ousted the Mamluks and absorbed the region, ruling with relative religious freedom for Christians, Muslims and Jews under the millet system, in which non-Muslims were dhimmi paying the jizya tax. The conquest was accompanied by the 1517 Safed and Hebron attacks on Jews. Ottoman rule lasted until the First World War.

Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition were invited to settle in and rebuild the city. It was part of a sixteenth-century consolidation of Jewish communities in the Four Holy Cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron and Safed.

The migration was among the largest organised Jewish arrivals of the Old Yishuv period. Earlier, a 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans had destroyed Safed and Tiberias, and in the later 18th century the Perushim, Eastern European opponents of Hasidism, settled in Palestine.

The Ottoman governor's defence of Acre forced the French to abandon their Syrian campaign. It preserved Ottoman control of the Levantine coast.

A revolt by Palestinian Arab peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation under Muhammad Ali was suppressed; Muhammad Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840. The Tanzimat reforms were then implemented across the empire.

The first wave of modern Jewish migration began as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, followed by the 1882 May Laws increasing discrimination in tsarist Russia. Of the three million Jews who emigrated between 1882 and 1914, only 1% went to Palestine, driven mainly by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity. Zionism emerged in this period as a political movement, alongside the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language.

Begun after the Kishinev pogrom, the wave included Zionist socialist groups who established kibbutzim based on an exclusively Jewish labour economy. That doctrine became a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, and Second Aliyah figures went on to lead the Yishuv.

Bar-Giora was founded in 1907 as the first Jewish armed militia in Palestine, replaced two years later by the larger Hashomer. These were the ancestors of the Haganah and ultimately the Israel Defence Forces.

Although Second Aliyah immigrants largely sought communal agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv was established as a planned urban centre. It became the core of Israel's largest metropolitan area, Gush Dan.

Chaim Weizmann's lobbying secured a British statement of support for the creation of a Jewish 'national home' in Palestine. Weizmann read the declaration as meaning the country's future would be negotiated between Britain and the Jews, excluding Arabs, and Jewish-Arab relations deteriorated sharply thereafter. It became the foundational international endorsement of the Zionist project.

The Third Aliyah (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyah (1924–1929) together added around 100,000 Jewish immigrants. The steady growth of the Yishuv shifted the demographic balance of the mandate.

The Jewish Legion had assisted the British conquest of Palestine in 1918, and in 1920 the British-administered area including modern Israel was named Mandatory Palestine. Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration produced the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of the Haganah militia, from which Irgun and Lehi later split.

The mandate terms incorporated the Balfour Declaration's promise to the Jews alongside similar provisions for Arab Palestinians. The population was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews about 11% and Arab Christians about 9.5%.

The rise of Nazism and increasing persecution in Europe drove an influx of some 250,000 Jews to Palestine. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–39.

The revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration was crushed by British security forces working with Zionist militias. Some 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 wounded and 12,622 detained, with an estimated ten per cent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled — a decisive weakening of Palestinian Arab capacity.

The paper capped Jewish immigration to Palestine just as Jews were fleeing the Holocaust and other countries turned refugees away. In response the clandestine Aliyah Bet movement was organised to bring Jews to Palestine, with most ships intercepted by the Royal Navy and refugees interned at Atlit and in Cyprus.

From 1944 the UK faced insurgency over immigration restrictions, intensifying after the war as the Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in armed struggle. About 30,000 Palestinian Jews had served in the British military during the war, and by its end some 31% of Palestine's population was Jewish.

The 22 July 1946 bombing killed 91 people and was the deadliest attack on the British during the Mandate era, launched in response to Operation Agatha raids. The insurgency continued through 1946 and 1947 despite British military and police efforts.

After failed mediation between irreconcilable Jewish and Arab positions, Britain handed the issue to the new UN. On 15 May 1947 the General Assembly created a Special Committee, whose report proposed replacing the Mandate with independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationally administered Jerusalem.

The insurgency peaked in July 1947 with widespread guerrilla raids; Irgun took two British sergeants hostage as leverage against pending executions of its operatives, then killed and hanged them. The incident caused widespread outrage in the UK and contributed to the September 1947 cabinet decision to evacuate Palestine.

On 29 November 1947 the Assembly adopted a plan assigning 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews, who were about a third of the population and owned 6–7% of the land. The Jewish Agency accepted; the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected it, and after a three-day strike and riots from 1 December the situation spiralled into civil war.

Zionist militias and the Israeli military drove out or caused the flight of more than 700,000 Palestinians during and after the 1948 war, destroying much of Palestine's Arab culture, identity and national aspirations. Some 156,000 Arabs remained and became Arab citizens of Israel. The refugee question has shaped the conflict ever since.

An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries raised the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000 in the state's first three years, reaching two million by 1958. Many arrivals were housed in ma'abarot transit camps, with over 200,000 living in tent cities by 1952, and European Jews were often favoured over those from Middle Eastern and North African countries.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Israel merged its paramilitary organisations, chiefly the Haganah, into a single national army. Conscription later gave Israel one of the world's highest proportions of citizens with military training, with roughly 176,500 active troops and 465,000 reservists.

Forests grew from 2% of Israel's area in 1948 to 8.5% by 2016 as a result of sustained afforestation. It was one of the state's most visible environmental transformations.

After months in which Arab militias attacked Jewish areas and were met mainly by the Haganah with the smaller Irgun and Lehi, the Haganah shifted to offensive operations. This reversal shaped the territorial outcome on the eve of independence.

On the day before the British Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel. The declaration, made as British forces withdrew from the Mandate for Palestine, immediately triggered war with neighbouring Arab states. The conflict resulted in the displacement of a large number of Palestinian Arabs, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba; the precise number displaced is disputed among historians.

Four Arab armies, later joined by contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, entered the territory with the purpose of preventing the establishment of the Jewish state. The Arab League framed the invasion as restoring order. Israel survived the war, establishing its military as the decisive institution of the new state.

After a year of fighting a ceasefire established temporary borders that left Israel with more territory than the UN partition plan had allotted. Jordan annexed the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip; no Arab state was created.

General Assembly Resolution 273 made Israel a UN member state one year after independence. Membership conferred international legitimacy on the new state.

The law granted Jews an unrestricted right to immigrate to Israel and obtain citizenship. It became the legal engine of mass Jewish immigration and a defining feature of the state's character.

Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank in 1950 after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, its population mainly Palestinians including refugees of the 1948 war. From Israel's occupation of the area in 1967 until 1993 those Palestinians lived under Israeli military administration.

Facing an austerity crisis with food, clothing and furniture rationed, Ben-Gurion concluded a reparations deal with West Germany. The agreement triggered mass protests by Jews angered that Israel would accept monetary compensation for the Holocaust, but eased the fiscal crisis; by 2007 Germany had paid 25 billion euros to Israel and survivors.

The law established state secular, state religious, ultra-Orthodox, communal settlement and Arab schools. The segmented system entrenched separate educational tracks that persist, alongside high tertiary attainment of 49% among 25–64-year-olds by 2015.

Israel began giving aid in Burma in 1955 and then shifted to Africa, formalising humanitarian work with the creation of Mashav, its Agency for International Development Cooperation, in 1957. Though small in scale, the programme created goodwill until relations soured after the 1967 war.

Israeli forces crossed into Sinai in October 1956 after Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, acting under a secret alliance with Britain and France and in response to blockades of the canal and the Straits of Tiran and fedayeen attacks; a British and French intervention followed. International pressure, particularly from the United States and the UN, forced an Israeli withdrawal within months in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights, and border infiltration fell significantly.

Israeli agents seized Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial. He remains the only person executed in Israel following conviction in a civilian court, and the trial shaped national Holocaust memory.

The PLO became the most important of the Palestinian and Arab groups opposing Israel, initially committed to 'armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland'. It later signed the Oslo Accords and recognised Israel.

After the Six-Day War and the Arab League's 'Three Nos' resolution, Israel faced Egyptian attacks across the Sinai and Palestinian attacks worldwide. Israel responded to the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes with an assassination campaign and raids on PLO headquarters in Lebanon.

After Egypt massed troops, expelled UN peacekeepers and blocked Israeli access to the Red Sea, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike (Operation Focus); Jordan, Syria and Iraq then attacked. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, enlarged Jerusalem's boundaries to include East Jerusalem, and expelled around 300,000 Palestinians. The 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary with the occupied territories.

Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack on Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan Heights on 6 October 1973, with coordinated assaults across the Suez Canal. The war ended on 25 October with Israel repelling the attacks after heavy losses on both sides, and led to disengagement agreements the following year. An inquiry exonerated the government, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign.

From 1974 the US emerged as a particularly notable contributor of military assistance, providing $68 billion in military aid and $32 billion in grants since 1967. Under a 2016 memorandum of understanding the US is to supply $3.8 billion annually from 2018 to 2028, about 20% of Israel's defence budget.

Air France Flight 139, hijacked by Palestinian guerrillas en route from Israel to France on 27 June 1976, was stormed days later by Israeli commandos who rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages. The operation demonstrated long-range special forces capability.

President Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian signed the agreement on 17 June at the Palace of Versailles, with Pakistan mediating, ending months of direct conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Israel said its forces would remain in Lebanon despite the deal.

The 28 June vote ended decades of Israeli reluctance to use the term, a position previously shaped by strategic ties with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Armenia welcomed the decision; Turkey did not immediately comment.

The move followed the ruling coalition's failure to pass a long-disputed law on military conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox seminary students. An election was scheduled to be held by 27 October 2026.

Extensive joint strikes killed the Iranian Supreme Leader and sparked the 2026 Iran war and the 2026 Lebanon war. The stated aims were to destroy Iran's military and nuclear programme and achieve regime change.

The 8 February measures were widely described by critics as a step toward annexation. One minister called them a form of de facto sovereignty and said no Palestinian state would be established.

The 28 February strikes targeted Iran's leadership and nuclear-linked sites; President Trump indicated the goal was regime change. Israel declared a state of emergency and closed its airspace as Iran began firing missiles at Israeli cities in the following days.

The four weapons agreements, announced on 31 January, came alongside a separate $9 billion sale to Saudi Arabia. The approvals followed months of heightened tension between Israel and Iran.

The 17 December agreement covers supply over 15 years from Israeli offshore fields. It extends an energy relationship that has grown since the discovery of the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields.

The 26 December recognition of the self-declared state, which broke from Somalia in 1991, was followed by the opening of reciprocal diplomatic missions in early 2026. Somalia rejected the move as a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The application, made on 30 November, concerned corruption cases against him that had been before the courts since 2020. Herzog's office said the request would be considered through the usual process.

The releases on 13 October came three days after the Netanyahu cabinet ratified the ceasefire, ending two years of war that began with the 7 October 2023 attacks. Israel freed 1,968 Palestinian prisoners in exchange, and President Trump addressed the Knesset the same day.

Israel began renewed airstrikes targeting Iran's air defences, missile launchers, military leadership and nuclear programme, escalating into full-scale war. It marked the deepest direct confrontation yet between the two states.

After nearly a year of Hezbollah rocket fire in support of Hamas, Israel killed Hezbollah's secretary general in September 2024 and invaded Lebanon in October, exchanging missile barrages with Iran. A November 2024 ceasefire required Israeli withdrawal, mostly completed by February 2025, though forces remained in five outposts in southern Lebanon against the agreement.

Israel struck Iran with airstrikes after Iranian strikes on Israel, the first direct exchange between the two states. The 2024 Iran–Israel conflict marked a shift from proxy warfare to open confrontation.

Following February 2024 public hearings, the ICJ found that occupation of the Palestinian territories violated international law, constituted systemic discrimination breaching the racial discrimination convention, and should end as quickly as possible with reparations paid. The opinion followed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016 declaring settlements a flagrant violation of international law.

After clearing militants from its territory, Israel launched one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invaded Gaza on 27 October with the stated aims of destroying Hamas and freeing hostages. It became the deadliest episode for Palestinians in the entire conflict and the most significant regional military engagement since 1973. A UN Special Committee, multiple governments and human rights organisations concluded Israel was committing genocide.

Palestinian militant groups from Gaza led by Hamas carried out coordinated attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing roughly 1,200–1,300 people, predominantly civilians, and taking about 250 hostage. It was the deadliest single attack on Israel in its history and triggered a two-year war in Gaza; national mental health data showed probable PTSD in Israel nearly doubling from 16.2% to 29.8%. Estimates of Palestinian deaths in the subsequent war vary widely between sources and remain disputed, with figures commonly cited in the tens of thousands.

Growing regional cooperation with Arab League countries through the 2010s culminated in the accords, which normalised relations with additional Arab states. The security focus shifted from the traditional Arab–Israeli conflict towards the Iran–Israel proxy conflict.

On 19 July 2018 the Knesset characterised Israel as principally a 'Nation State of the Jewish People' with Hebrew as its official language. Arabic was downgraded from official status to a 'special status in the state'.

By 2014 desalination programmes provided roughly 35% of drinking water, projected to reach 70% by 2050, and by 2015 over half of household, agricultural and industrial water was artificially produced. The water technology industry was worth around $2 billion a year in 2011.

Direct negotiations resumed in July 2013 but were suspended in late April 2014.

The prime minister assembled a governing coalition following general elections held in January 2013.

Israel had built a countrywide network of charging stations through the company Better Place, which closed in 2013. The country later set a target of 30% electric vehicles on its roads by 2030.

Israel began producing offshore gas in 2004; Tamar was discovered in 2009 and Leviathan in 2010, with Tamar entering commercial production in 2013 at over 7.5 billion cubic metres annually and Leviathan following in 2019. Domestic gas transformed Israel's energy security, with 199 bcm of proven reserves as of 2016.

The November 2012 confrontation was the latest in a series of clashes with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel launched an eight-day operation in Gaza in 2012 in response to rocket attacks, another following escalation by Hamas in July 2014, and an eleven-day round of fighting in May 2021. The recurring cycle defined the Gaza–Israel conflict in the 2010s.

Negotiations launched in September 2010 broke down following the expiration of Israel's ten-month partial moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank.

Accession confirmed Israel's status as a developed economy. The Economist later ranked it the fourth most successful economy among developed countries for 2022.

The breakdown of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel led to a three-week, 23-day war in the Gaza Strip lasting from December 2008 into January 2009. As a result Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela suspended political and economic ties with Israel, and relations with Turkey took a downturn.

Israeli aircraft struck and destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor. The operation repeated the precedent set against Iraq in 1981.

A Hezbollah artillery assault and cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated a month-long war including an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Fighting wound down after UN Security Council Resolution 1701, with Israeli forces mostly withdrawing by October 2006 while continuing to occupy the Lebanese portion of Ghajar.

The election of Hamas to head the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 halted relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Israel unilaterally removed its settlers — around 7,800–8,000 people living in the Gush Katif settlements — and its forces from the Gaza Strip, completing the withdrawal in September 2005 under prime minister Ariel Sharon and ending a 38-year military presence inside Gaza. Israel retained control of Gaza's airspace, coastline and most land crossings, and after Hamas took power in the 2007 Battle of Gaza it tightened control of the crossings by land, sea and air.

Israel's 120-member parliament initiated work on a formal constitution to replace its patchwork of Basic Laws. No Israeli legislation has ever defined the territory of the state.

Elected prime minister in 2001, Sharon spearheaded construction of the West Bank barrier and carried out unilateral disengagement from Gaza. The International Court of Justice's 2004 advisory opinion found the wall's construction within occupied Palestinian territory violated international law.

After a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount, an uprising began that met disproportionate repression from the Israeli state and featured recurrent Palestinian suicide bombings. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed.

Elected prime minister in 1999, Barak ended the occupation of the southern Lebanon buffer zone held since 1982, where Israeli forces had fought Hezbollah. He also negotiated with Arafat and Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit, offering a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and over 90% of the West Bank; the talks failed with each side blaming the other.

Rabin, who had become prime minister in 1992 on a platform of compromise with Israel's neighbours and signed the Oslo Accords, was killed by a far-right Jew opposed to the accords. The murder was a shock to Israeli democracy and weakened the peace process.

The treaty, signed in October, formally ended a state of war between the two countries and established diplomatic relations. It was the second peace agreement Israel reached with an Arab state, following Egypt in 1979.

Excluded from Asian sport since the 1978 Asian Games because Arab countries refused to compete with it, Israel gained admission to European football in 1994. The move ended its sporting isolation.

Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in Washington in September 1993, providing for mutual recognition and giving the new Palestinian Authority the right to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while the PLO recognised Israel's right to exist and pledged an end to terrorism. Further negotiations on a permanent settlement were never concluded, and support on both sides eroded amid continued settlement building, checkpoints and Palestinian suicide attacks.

Diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, broken in 1967 after the Six-Day War, were renewed in 1991, the same year full relations with Turkey were established. India established full diplomatic ties in 1992 and built a strong military, technological and cultural partnership.

Iraq fired missiles at Israel and the PLO supported Saddam Hussein; despite public outrage Israel heeded American calls not to hit back. Since the war all Israeli homes have been required to have a reinforced security room impermeable to chemical and biological substances.

Israel agreed to withdraw from Hebron, though this was never ratified or implemented, and Netanyahu signed a memorandum covering further West Bank redeployments and security issues. Major international human rights organisations criticised it for encouraging human rights abuses.

Immigration from the former Soviet states between 1990 and 1994 raised Israel's population by twelve per cent, part of over a million Russian-speaking arrivals by 2004. Waves of Ethiopian Jews also immigrated from the 1980s. The influx reshaped Israeli language, politics and religious composition, with about 300,000 arrivals not deemed Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate.

The first Arab-led party contested Knesset elections, and by 2022 Arab-led parties held about 10% of seats. It marked the political enfranchisement of a fifth of the population within Israeli parliamentary life.

Israel's first satellite launch made it the eighth nation with independent space launch capability. The country was later ranked ninth in the world on Futron's Space Competitiveness Index in 2012, and Ilan Ramon became its first astronaut in 2003 aboard the fatal Space Shuttle Columbia mission.

An uprising against Israeli rule began in the occupied West Bank and Gaza in December 1987 with uncoordinated demonstrations, protests, strikes and clashes, becoming more organised over roughly six years and adding economic and cultural measures against the occupation. Over 1,000 people were killed, and the uprising contributed to the diplomatic process that led to the Oslo Accords in 1993.

The withdrawal on 25 April 1982 was carried out pursuant to the 1979 Israel–Egypt Peace Treaty.

Following PLO attacks, Israel invaded Lebanon, destroying the PLO's military forces within six days and defeating Syrian units. The Kahan Commission held Begin and several generals indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and found defence minister Ariel Sharon personally responsible, forcing his resignation. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but held a buffer zone until 2000.

On 7 June 1981, during the Iran–Iraq War, Israeli aircraft bombed the reactor under construction in order to impede Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. The strike established a doctrine of pre-emptive action against regional nuclear capability.

Israel extended its law to the Syrian Golan Heights captured in 1967. The international community largely rejected the move and the UN Security Council declared the Golan Heights Law null and void.

The law was believed by some to reaffirm Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem and reignited international controversy over the city's status. The UN Security Council declared it null and void.

Following Sadat's 1977 visit to Israel and speech to the Knesset — the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state — Sadat and Begin concluded the Camp David Accords in 1978 and signed a peace treaty in Washington in 1979. The treaty ended the state of war, provided for Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, completed in 1982, and committed the parties to negotiate Palestinian autonomy. It was the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab state.

A PLO guerrilla raid from Lebanon on 11 March 1978 led to the Coastal Road massacre, prompting an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. It began a prolonged Israeli military involvement in Lebanon.

The election marked a turning point in Israeli political history, ending Labour Zionist dominance of government. Begin's premiership brought both the Egyptian peace treaty and incentives for Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.