Essay Topic:

The image of Israel as one of the most prominent countries all over the world.

Essay Questions:

What are the main peculiarities of Israel for an ordinary tourist?

How do Israel’s relations with Palestine influence its political reputation?

How has Israel obtained its fame historically?

Thesis Statement:

The life of Israel can be described through the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and this conflict is all about land. Israel’s history “rotates” around the conflict as its religious, social, economic and political life was tremendously influenced by it.

Israel Essay

 

Introduction: Every person all over the world has his own “picture” of Israel in his mind. Ordinarily, people turn to the following things while depicting Israel: 1) quote tourist slogans; 2) think about it as about the land of the Jews; or 3) think about is as the Jesus Christ’s birthplace. But in reality Israel is all of these together and a lot more. The economy of the country has become liberal. According to the 2005 data 20,5% of Israeli families which actually includes 34% of the country’s children live below he poverty line. The overall productivity of Israel in 2005 was $54,510.40.The agricultural sector of the country has significantly grown over the last 20 years. And it goes without saying that religion plays an outstandingly important part for Israel because being Jew is an object of special pride1.It is a country of a pure religion, a country that is very sensitive to insincerity, a country with a very harsh history. The contemporary situation in Israel is not reliable and not predictable by no means – being sufficiently calm at the surface it is unstable inside. Though the election of Mahmud Abbas as the Palestinian leader and the disengagement of Israel from the Gaza Strip in 2005 had some premises for a peace solution, basically the issue remains the same. The conflict of Israel and Palestine has a long history and even the solutions implying the existence of two independent sates provided by the president of America George W. Bush in 2002 had no way to survive after the horrible open violence which lasted all the way till February 2005. The life of Israel can be described through the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and this conflict is all about land. Israel’s history “rotates” around the conflict as its religious, social, economic and political life was tremendously influenced by it.

2. Israel from now till then

The year of 2000 was an awfully difficult year for Israel as it experienced the al-Aqsa Intifada. Global peace makers have put a lot of forces into the regulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1993 Israel signed the Oslo Accords (known as the Declaration of Principles) which was supposed to stop and prevent any violence between Israel and Palestine especially the violence that hurt civil innocent people but it did not. As the civil population suffered the cultural heritage was hurt too. Israel history is a constant war and it must be added that it is not about Palestine only. The whole time starting from the late fiftieth till the eightieth has been in the sate of war with Egypt and Jordan, and negotiations with Syria and Lebanon. Israel participated in the Suez War of 1956, in the Six Day War of 1967, in the War of Attrition of 1970, and in the Yom Kippur War of the year 1973. For good, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. The negotiations with Lebanon ended with the Israel’s withdrawn from the territory of southern Lebanon. All these numerous territorial conflicts between Israel and the Arab countries were the result of Israel’s independence which was proclaimed on May 14th, 1948. None of the Arab nations was interested in letting the newly formed state of Israel to prosper. Basically the 1948 war was a true War of Independence. A year before the UN General Assembly accepted the Partition Plan according to which two states were to exist: the Jewish with 55% of the land and the Arab with 45% of the land2. And though Israel represented by David Ben-Gurion approved having this part of territory, the Arab-nations refused to accept it. This became the beginning of Israel’s sleepless nights and constant wars.

Arab states considered Israel as their own land since as they conquered he land back in 638 CE, but originally it was the land of the Jews. 1881 was the year when Jewish started migrating to Israel in order to consolidate and live together in their own culture. These kinds of migrations had several waves; special impact had those after the WWI. The horrors of Nazism and holocaust left the Jews with no other choice than to hide in their original land. The growth of the number of Jews over the years made Palestine angry and protective as the Arabs were not even satisfied with White Paper of 1939 according to which the migration of he Jews was limited to only 75,000 and did not allow the Jews to purchase land. This pre-independence history created a strong base for the existence of various political parties and a specific cultural and economic development of the country. Israel is a democratic republic and over the years of constant wars it made everything possible to keep democracy alive as the elections to Knesset are held every four years. The Israel defense forces are sufficiently strong and the whole army system is very persuasive with two years of compulsory service for women and three for men. The country therefore primarily owing to its history has a strong military base and it still has not been proved that it does not process nuclear weapons. These factors make Israel an important country, whose situation cannot be left unnoticed.

Conclusion. The country is technologically advanced and is economically developing year by year. The culture of the country is completely defined by the religious direction. Jews highly respect their religion and consider the years of religious practice to be the best indicator of the cultural level of the person.The state of Israel over the years of a hard fight against the aggression of the Arab nations has become a strong country in all the spheres. The situation in Israel in its relations with Palestine remains unstable and even dangerous in many regions. The violence against Israel has caused a lot of generations to grow up on the hatred to Palestinians. Israel has suffered a lot and has put major forces into the development to the country the Jews have dreamt about so strongly.

1 76.2% of Israelis were Jews by religion, 16.1% were Muslims, 2.1% Christian, 1.6% Druze and the remaining 3.9% are not classified.

2“ Jerusalem was planned to be an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status”.[1]