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Israel is a parliamentary democracy. Its governmental system is based on several basic laws enacted by its unicameral parliament, the Knesset. The president (chief of state) is elected by the Knesset for a 5-year term. The prime minister (head of government) exercises executive power and has in the past been selected by the president as the party leader...
Israel has a diversified, technologically advanced economy with substantial but decreasing government ownership and a strong high-tech sector. The major industrial sectors include high-technology electronic and biomedical equipment, metal products, processed foods, chemicals, and transport equipment. Israel possesses a substantial service sector and...
Until recently, Israel's culture has been predominantly religious, be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Although the hoe-that-field, pick-that-fruit, scoutlike kibbutz feeling is still in evidence, and although Judaism is the state religion, Israel is rapidly turning into a cosmopolitan consumerist society. Most Jewish Israelis play it both ways, leading...
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was preceded by more than 50 years of efforts to establish a sovereign nation as a homeland for Jews. These efforts were initiated by Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, and were given added impetus by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which asserted the British Government's support for the creation...
Area: 20,325 sq. km. [fn 1] (7,850 sq. mi); about the size of New Jersey. Cities: Capital--Jerusalem. [fn 2] Other cities--Tel Aviv, Haifa. Terrain: Plains, mountains, desert, and coast. Climate: Temperate, except in desert areas. Location: Middle East, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Egypt and Lebanon Map references: Middle East Area: total...
Of the approximately 6.4 million Israelis in 2001, about 5.2 million were counted as Jewish, though some of those are not considered Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law. Since 1989, nearly a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union have arrived in Israel, making this the largest wave of immigration since independence. In addition, almost 50,000...
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