Israel historical timeline

Chronology

c. 2000 BC — Canaan and the Canaanites appear in Near Eastern and Egyptian texts, the population organised as politically independent city-states. The tell sites that dot the country — Megiddo, Hazor, Beth Shean — are these cities, layered.
539–520 BC — Cyrus the Great, having taken Babylon, permits the exiled Judean population to return, and the Second Temple is completed around 520 BC. Everything at the Western Wall and on the Temple Mount dates from this structure and its later rebuilding rather than the first.
37 BC — Herod the Great is installed as a dynastic vassal of the Roman state. Masada, Caesarea and the Temple platform itself are his building programme, which is why so much of what visitors climb is Herodian.
AD 6 — The area is annexed as the Roman province of Judaea, and tension with Roman rule leads to a series of Jewish–Roman wars.
634–641 — The Rashidun Caliphate conquers the Levant. Caliph Umar lifts the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem and permits them to worship there. The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa follow within decades, and the Old City acquires the three-religion geography it still has.
1516 — The Ottomans conquer the region and rule it as part of Ottoman Syria for four centuries. The walls around Jerusalem's Old City that visitors walk are Ottoman work.
1881 — The First Aliyah begins as Jews flee pogroms in eastern Europe for Ottoman-ruled Palestine. The Second Aliyah of 1904–1914, after the Kishinev pogrom, brings some 40,000 more, nearly half of whom eventually leave.
1917 — The Balfour Declaration states Britain's support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. In 1920 the territory is divided between Britain and France under the mandate system, and the British-administered area becomes Mandatory Palestine — the whole region known, from 1920 to 1948, as Palestine.
1919–1929 — The Third and Fourth Aliyahs bring a further 100,000 Jewish immigrants.
1930s — Nazism and persecution in Europe drive the Fifth Aliyah and an influx of 250,000. It is a cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–39, suppressed by British security forces and Zionist militias, and Britain then restricts Jewish immigration in the White Paper of 1939. Tel Aviv's Bauhaus quarter is built by the architects of this wave.
1946 — On 22 July the Irgun bombs the British administrative headquarters in the King David Hotel, killing 91.
1947 — On 29 November the UN General Assembly adopts Resolution 181 (II), recommending partition into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem under an international regime.
1948 — On 14 May, the day before the Mandate expires, David Ben-Gurion declares the establishment of a Jewish state; the armies of four Arab countries enter the following day. Over 700,000 Palestinians flee or are expelled. A ceasefire after a year of fighting fixes temporary borders known as the Green Line, with Jordan annexing the West Bank including East Jerusalem and Egypt occupying the Gaza Strip. No independent Palestinian Arab state is established.
1949 — Israel is admitted to the United Nations on 11 May. Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries take the Jewish population from 700,000 to 1,400,000 in three years and two million by 1958; some 1,150,000 Jewish refugees arrive between 1948 and 1970.
1967 — Egypt masses its army at the border, expels the UN peacekeepers who had been in Sinai since 1957 and blocks Israel's access to the Red Sea. In the Six-Day War that follows, Israel captures and occupies the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, and Israeli forces expel about 300,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. The occupation dating from this war is the reason large parts of this country carry separate travel advice.
1973 — Egypt and Syria attack in Sinai and the Golan on 6 October, opening the Yom Kippur War, which ends on 25 October.
1980 — The Jerusalem Law reignites international controversy over the city's status, and is read by some as reaffirming the 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by decree.
1993–1994 — Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister from 1992 on a platform of compromise, oversees the Oslo Accords, signed for Israel by Shimon Peres and for the PLO by Yasser Arafat, and the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. The Palestinian Authority created by Oslo is why the West Bank is administratively divided today.
2000 — Ehud Barak withdraws from the southern Lebanon buffer zone occupied since 1986 and negotiates at Camp David. Late in the year, after a contested visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada begins.
2005 — Under a unilateral disengagement plan Israel removes its settlers and forces from the Gaza Strip; Israel and Egypt operate a land, air and sea blockade of it. The Second Lebanon War follows in July 2006 after a Hezbollah assault and cross-border abduction.
2023 — On 7 October, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza led by Hamas launch coordinated attacks on Israel and approximately 1,300 Israelis, predominantly civilians, are killed. Israel then conducts one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invades Gaza on 27 October.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

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Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — Early references to 'Canaan' and 'Canaanites' appear in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian texts (c. 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as…, After capturing Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, issued a proclamation allowing the exiled Judean population to…, In 37 BCE, Herod the Great was installed as a dynastic vassal of Rome following the Roman-Parthian Wars. In 6 CE, the area was annexed as the Roman province…, In 634-641 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant. Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644) lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem and…, In 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and ruled it as part of Ottoman Syria, The first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, known as the First Aliyah, began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, The Second Aliyah (1904-1914) began after the Kishinev pogrom; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left eventually, Chaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement secured the Balfour Declaration of 1917, stating Britain's support for the…, In 1920, the territory was divided between Britain and France under the mandate system, and the British-administered area (including modern Israel) was…, Under the British Mandate (1920-1948), the entire region was known as Palestine, The Third (1919-1923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924-1929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine, The rise of Nazism and the increasing persecution of Jews in 1930s Europe led to the Fifth Aliyah, with an influx of 250,000 Jews. This was a cause of the…, The British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939, On 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine in the southern wing of King David Hotel, killing 91, On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II), which recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab…, On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, declared 'the establishment of a…, After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the…, The 1949 armistice left Israel controlling more territory than had been allocated to it under the UN partition plan. No independent Palestinian Arab state…, Israel was admitted as a member of the UN on 11 May 1949, An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel during the first three years increased the number of Jews from 700,000 to…, In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's…, In the ensuing Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights…, On 6 October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, opening the…, The 1980 Jerusalem Law was believed by some to reaffirm Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by government decree and reignited international controversy…, Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but continued to occupy a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister following an election in which his party called for compromise with Israel's neighbours. The following year,…, Shimon Peres with Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan, prior to signing the Israel-Jordan peace treaty in 1994, Ehud Barak, elected prime minister in 1999, withdrew forces from southern Lebanon and conducted negotiations with PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S.…, In late 2000, after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada began, In 2005, as part of a unilateral disengagement plan, Israel removed its settlers and forces from t[he Gaza Strip], In July 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated the…, On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, launched a series of coordinated attacks on Israel, leading to the start of the Gaza… (September 2026).