Known officially as the "State of Israel," the country was established on May 15, 1948, in the midst of the
1948 War and immediately after the end of the
British Mandate. Its establishment as a Jewish homeland was the fruition of the goal of the Zionist movement, which had begun in the late 19th Century. Israel is located in the Middle East, with Egypt bordering on the South, Lebanon and Syria on the North, and Jordan to the East. Israel's internationally recognized borders are its 1948 borders (which are considerably larger than the borders drawn in the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan); however, since the 1967 war, Israel has also occupied the
West Bank (including
East Jerusalem) and the
Gaza Strip and there are hundreds of thousands of
Israeli settlers in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. Many of the settlers and their supporters advocate for a "Greater Israel" where a large amount of the land conquered in 1967 would be annexed to Israel. (Israel also conquered the
Golan Heights in the 1967 war, and it was annexed shortly thereafter. The
Sinai Peninsula, also conquered in that war, was returned to Egypt as part of the first
Camp David Accords. In Israel's 1992 Basic Law, it defines itself as a Jewish and Democratic state. The tension between these two terms functioning in a multi-ethno-religious state such as Israel, where approximately 80% of Israeli citizens are Jewish, and most of the remaining 20% are
Palestinian Citizens of Israel, has led to a great deal of debate. See "
Zionists Proclaim New State of Israel," Gene Currivan, The New York Times, May 15, 1948. See also "
The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel," Jeremy Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, Oct 26, 2010; and "
Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the 'Ethnic Democracy' Debate," Ruth Gavison, Israel Studies, 1999 4 (1).