Israel

Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest, and it has a short outlet on the Gulf of Aqaba, an arm of the Red Sea. The country is small, yet its landscapes range from coastal plains and hill ranges to a deep rift valley and desert terrain in the south, so a single state contains several distinct environments.

The terrain is shaped by the tectonic boundary that runs through the Jordan Rift Valley, which contains the Dead Sea, the lowest exposed land surface on Earth. Climate varies sharply with latitude and elevation: the north and centre have Mediterranean conditions with winter rain, while the Negev and Arava in the south are arid. Water is the central constraint on this geography, and supply depends on a mix of desalination, reservoirs, groundwater and irrigation. The population, roughly 9.5 to 10.3 million depending on the source and on whether areas such as East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are counted, is highly urbanized and concentrated mainly on the central coastal plain.

This entry first covers boundaries, physical regions, geology, hydrology, climate and ecology, then turns to water, resources, population, agriculture, economic and transport geography, and historical settlement patterns. It treats the territorial status of disputed areas by setting out the competing positions rather than evaluating them. The closing sections address religious and heritage landscapes and environmental pressures, including climate change.

Location, boundaries and territorial extent

Israel occupies the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean, at the southern end of the Levant, where Asia meets Africa. Its coordinates are given as 31°N 35°E. The country runs about 424 km from north to south, and its east–west width varies from 114 km at the widest point to 10 km at the narrowest. Its southern half is dominated by the Negev, which covers some 16,000 square kilometres, more than half of the country's total land area. At the far southern tip, Israel reaches the northern extremity of the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aqaba, a deep inlet that lies southeast of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian Peninsula.

Israel borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank to the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip to the southwest. The legal status of these frontiers differs considerably. Israel has internationally recognised borders with Egypt, dating from the 1979 peace treaty, and with Jordan, dating from the 1994 Wadi Araba treaty. Its northern borders with Syria and Lebanon rest on 1949 armistice lines that were never converted into peace treaties. The Egyptian boundary itself follows an earlier international line, demarcated in 1906 between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire.

The reference line for pre-1967 territory is the Green Line. It is the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbours after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The agreements were explicitly not peace settlements. The Egyptian–Israeli text stated that the armistice demarcation line was not to be construed as a political or territorial boundary, and similar provisions appear in the agreements with Jordan and Syria. Even so, the line served as the de facto border of the State of Israel from 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967, and it remains the reference point for the boundary between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. Territory east of this line, including the West Bank (about 5,879 km²) and Gaza (about 378 km²), lies outside the 1949 boundary and is treated in the territorial status section.

Reported area figures differ because the sources apply different definitions. The standard national total is approximately 20,770 km², which includes 445 km² of inland water. The figure of 22,072 km² that appears alongside it reflects a broader territorial definition. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics includes East Jerusalem, annexed since 1967, and the Golan Heights, annexed since 1982, while excluding the West Bank other than East Jerusalem. The gap of roughly 1,300 km² between the two totals is therefore mainly accounted for by these two areas, but the sources do not agree on their size. The Golan Subdistrict administered by Israel is listed at 1,154 km², while the entire Golan Heights plateau is given as 1,800 km², and older estimates put the Golan at 1,150 km² and East Jerusalem at 70 km². Because the Golan and East Jerusalem are contested, figures with and without them are both used in practice, and the choice should be stated explicitly in any comparison.

The coastline is short but strategically important. The coastline measures 273 km, and most of it faces west onto the Mediterranean Sea, with a short stretch at the southern tip on the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba. The main ports are Haifa and Ashdod on the Mediterranean, and Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba. The Gulf itself is a long, narrow basin. It extends 180 km from Eilat and Aqaba and joins the Red Sea at the Straits of Tiran, and its width is at most about 24–28 km. Israel's share of the gulf shoreline is small. One source describes it as only a few kilometers, from the city of Eilat to the border with Egypt at Taba, while an older survey gives Israel nearly 12 km of coast on the gulf. The Gulf is shared with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and the coastline lengths of the four states differ markedly.

Israel's offshore jurisdiction extends beyond its territorial waters. Its Exclusive Economic Zone covers 26,352 km², a figure that is roughly one and a quarter times the land area of the Gaza Strip and West Bank combined in the 1949 frame of reference.

Physiographic regions

Israel is commonly divided into four physiographic regions: the Mediterranean coastal plain, the central hill country, the Jordan Rift Valley and the Negev Desert. The first three form roughly parallel north–south strips, while the Negev occupies most of the south. The Golan Heights in the northeast, although under Israeli administration since 1967, lie outside the pre-1967 armistice line and are usually described separately, as are the northern slopes of Mount Hermon.

The coastal plain runs from the Lebanese border in the north to the Gaza Strip in the south, interrupted only by the promontory of Mount Carmel at Haifa Bay. Its width varies considerably, from roughly 40 km near Gaza to about 5 km at the northern end. Its central part, the Sharon, is characterised by a sandy, red-tinted soil that has long supported citrus cultivation, while the Philistine plain to the south is a broader lowland with a mix of loess and dune sand. The plain is traversed by short streams, and because it combines flat land, reliable water and a Mediterranean climate, it has become the country's main settlement belt, holding the largest cities, most industry and the bulk of the population.

East of the coastal plain rise the hill ranges of the Galilee, Samaria and Judea. The Galilee is the most elevated part of the north, where Mount Meron, at about 1,200 m, is the highest peak within Israel's internationally recognised territory. The hills are divided by the Jezreel Valley, a broad, fertile lowland that connects the coastal plain with the Jordan Rift. South of it, the Samaria and Judea ranges form a continuous upland, interspersed with terraced valleys. Mount Carmel stands apart as a distinct upland, a ridge rising sharply from the coast at Haifa and separated from the inland hills by lower ground. Over half of Israel's territory within the pre-1967 armistice lines is hilly or mountainous.

The Jordan Rift Valley is a segment of the Dead Sea Transform, a deep trough that runs the length of the eastern border. Its northern end contains the Hula Valley, a basin that was historically marshland and that now forms a much smaller, managed wetland. South of the Hula the Jordan enters the Sea of Galilee and then passes through the Jordan Valley proper. The Beit She'an valley, where the Jezreel Valley meets the rift, is one of the most important lowland sections, and the rift continues south to the Dead Sea, whose surface lies about 417 m below sea level. South of the Dead Sea, the trough continues as the Arava Valley, an arid plain that leads to the Gulf of Aqaba. The contrast between the lush northern basins and the desert-like southern rift is one of the sharpest environmental gradients in the country.

The Negev Desert occupies most of the southern half of the country and is the largest of the four regions. Its surface is dominated by plateaus, wadis, dune fields and bare rock, and it is the setting for the makhtesh, a landform found in only a few places on Earth. The most famous, Makhtesh Ramon, is roughly 40 km long, 2 to 10 km wide and about 500 m deep. Unlike a volcanic or meteorite crater, a makhtesh was produced by erosion: a dome of uplifted rock was worn away, exposing softer layers such as chalk and sandstone beneath harder caps of limestone and dolomite, so that the resulting depression is ringed by steep walls and drained by a network of channels. The Arava, which connects the Dead Sea with the Red Sea outlet at Eilat, is a long, flat desert trough that forms the border with Jordan and is largely covered by alluvium and wadi deposits.

The Golan Heights form a basalt plateau in the northeast, rising to around 1,100 m in its northern part, while the southern slopes of Mount Hermon reach over 2,000 m. The highest point under Israeli administration, on the Hermon massif, is about 2,224 m, making the Golan the highest terrain the country controls. Its volcanic soils and elevation give it a markedly different character from the rest of the northeast, and its status is discussed in the territorial section.

Geological structure and tectonics

Israel lies along one of the most active fault systems in the Middle East. Its geology is shaped mainly by the fault zone that runs north–south through the Jordan Rift, the Dead Sea Transform. This is a left-lateral, strike-slip plate boundary whose published length ranges from about 1,000 to 1,100 km. It connects the spreading centre that opens the Red Sea in the south with the East Anatolian Fault in Turkey. The fault forms the northern part of the Syrian-African rift system, which extends more than 6,000 km from Turkey to Mozambique. Its formation is linked to the late Cenozoic breakup of the Afro-Arabian continent, after which Arabia drifted away from Africa. Cumulative left-lateral displacement along the fault is estimated at roughly 100 km, and modern slip-rate estimates cluster around 4 ± 2 mm per year. Along the Arava valley, the fault has produced a sequence of structural features, including pull-apart basins, of which the Dead Sea basin is the largest. Transform-type motion is generally thought to have begun between about 12 and 18 million years ago, although the details remain debated.

Away from the rift, the bedrock of the hill country is dominated by Cretaceous limestone and dolomite, with older Jurassic strata exposed in places. These carbonate sequences form the Galilee, Samaria and Judean ranges and are cut by joints and faults that govern groundwater movement and slope stability. The Negev is structurally different. There, a thick succession of gently inclined Mesozoic and Cenozoic layers has been eroded into stepped escarpments, valleys and the erosional craters known as makhtesh, most notably Ramon Crater. Folding in the wider region also has a Late Cretaceous component. The Syrian Arc deformation belt, which formed when the Neotethys closed and reactivated older Jurassic faults, extends into the Dead Sea area, where a breached anticline is found at Wadi Araba.

The Golan Heights differ from the rest of the country because they are built largely of volcanic rock. The plateau is part of the Hauran (Harrat Ash Shaam) basaltic province, which extends into Syria. Its basalts were erupted mainly between about 5.5 and 0.1 million years ago, and their thickness increases from tens of metres in the south to several hundred metres in the north. The earliest Pliocene flows formed a broad plateau from southern Syria to the Lower Galilee, and later flows spilled into the subsiding Dead Sea rift as far as the Hula Valley. The plateau lies along the eastern margin of the Kinarot and Hula rift valleys, and its present relief began to take shape during the Pliocene eruptions. Later eruptions produced cinder cones, a maar at Birket Ram and a tuff ring at Mount Avital. The evidence therefore links the volcanism directly to the activity of the rift: the faulting and the magma rise occurred along the same tectonic belt.

The seismic record of the region is dominated by the Dead Sea Transform. The Gulf of Aqaba segment was the most active section of the twentieth century, and its 1995 earthquake, with a magnitude of about 7.1, was accompanied by thousands of weaker aftershocks. The 1927 Jericho earthquake, with a local magnitude of about 6.2–6.3, was the most destructive event of the century near Israel. It killed several hundred people and damaged Jericho, Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramla and Tiberias. The shaking was felt over a wide area, and the flow of the Jordan River was interrupted for more than 21 hours. Estimates of its epicentre have been revised over time: earlier locations near the Damia Bridge were later relocated several tens of kilometres south, toward the northern Dead Sea. Seismic-reflection data and a submarine slump in the Dead Sea are cited as evidence for rupture on a fault segment beneath the northern basin. Paleoseismic work also points to much larger historical events, such as the 1202 earthquake, which left a surface displacement of about 1.6 m along the fault.

For hazard assessment, the main difficulty is the scarcity of instrumental strong-motion records around the Dead Sea. Researchers therefore combine the long historical archive of the Holy Land with geological evidence such as fault offsets and lake-sediment slumps, and they calibrate regional attenuation relationships using site measurements at locations damaged in 1927. Comparison of the 1927 and 1995 events illustrates a practical point: the Jericho earthquake caused far more casualties and damage than the larger Gulf of Aqaba event, because its epicentre lay close to populated areas. Hazard models for Israel must therefore account not only for the magnitude of the fault segments but also for where the settlement is located.

Rivers, lakes and the Dead Sea

The Jordan River system

The Jordan River is the region's principal surface watercourse. After the Mediterranean, it is the largest source of water within Israel's borders. Its headwaters lie on the slopes of Mount Hermon and the Anti-Lebanon range, where three springs form the upper stream: Hasbani, in Lebanon; Dan, in Israel; and Banias, in the Syrian Golan under Israeli control. Springs supply roughly half of the upper river's flow, and winter runoff supplies the rest. The river runs about 223 km from its confluence of headwaters to the Dead Sea, and its meanders make the channel longer in practice. Below the Sea of Galilee the river continues south through the Jordan Valley, gaining the Yarmouk, its largest tributary, and the Zarqa from the east, along with several wadis.

The river's discharge has collapsed. Before large-scale diversions, the Jordan delivered roughly 1,300 to 1,370 million cubic metres a year to the Dead Sea. Recent estimates put the flow reaching the lake at about 20 to 200 million cubic metres annually. Five riparian states (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories) divert water through canals and pipelines, and the Yarmouk's flow has fallen sharply since the 1950s. Salinity rises steadily from the river's source to its mouth, and the lower course now carries agricultural return flows and inadequately treated wastewater. The loss of inflow is the main driver of the Dead Sea's decline.

Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret)

The Sea of Galilee, known in Hebrew as Lake Kinneret, sits in the central Jordan Rift Valley. It is a pear-shaped freshwater lake of about 165 km² at full level, with a maximum depth of roughly 43 m. Its surface lies around 210 m below sea level, which makes it the lowest freshwater lake on Earth. The Jordan enters from the north and leaves from the south, and the lake's level fluctuates considerably between wet and dry years.

For most of the state's history, the lake was Israel's principal reservoir. The National Water Carrier, completed in 1964, lifts water from a pumping station in the lake's northwest corner and conveys it over a height of some 240 m to irrigate the Jezreel and coastal plains and to supply the Negev. Daily monitoring of the lake was tied to three reference lines: the upper red line marked danger, the lower red line prohibited pumping, and the black line signalled a risk of lasting ecological damage. Since 2005, large coastal desalination plants have reduced dependence on the lake, and the reversal of part of the carrier now pushes surplus desalinated water northward into the lake, usually in winter, to build up the reservoir. The lake nevertheless remains vulnerable. During a recent episode, an algal bloom forced southern desalination plants offline for about two weeks; authorities increased pumping from the lake and from aquifers, and the lake lost about 3.3 million cubic metres within ten days. Summer evaporation alone can lower the surface by about a centimetre a day.

Dead Sea hydrology

The Dead Sea is a terminal, endorheic basin: it has no outlet, and water leaves only by evaporation. Its catchment covers roughly 41,650 km², and about 60 per cent of its freshwater input comes from the Jordan, with groundwater supplying much of the remainder. Its surface lies about 430 m below sea level and continues to fall, at around one metre a year in recent decades. The shoreline has retreated, and the lake's area has shrunk by about a third since the 1960s. It is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, with a maximum depth near 300 m. Its brine contains roughly 277 g of dissolved salt per kilogram, which gives it a density of about 1,240 kg/m³, so swimmers float easily.

The lake's vertical structure has changed fundamentally. In the late 1950s and 1960s the Dead Sea was meromictic, meaning that it stayed permanently stratified. Warmer, fresher surface water floated over a dense, saline deep layer that never mixed with it. When the lake level fell by 3.5 to 4 m in the 1970s, the upper layer grew saltier and denser, and the water column turned over completely in February 1979. Since then the lake has been holomictic: a thermocline forms in summer, at a depth of about 25 m, and winter cooling of the surface triggers mixing of the whole column. Exceptionally wet winters, notably 1979–80 and 1991–92, diluted the surface again and temporarily restored stratification. Halite, or rock salt, precipitates when the brine saturates, and the lake's salt deposits record these shifts between stratified and mixed conditions.

Coastal streams and Negev wadis

Israel's Mediterranean rivers are short and have historically been heavily polluted. The Kishon drains the Jezreel Valley and enters the sea at Haifa Bay, where it has long received industrial effluent. The Yarkon rises from springs in the Petah Tikva area and flows through the northern edge of Tel Aviv to the coast; it is partly embedded in the Yarkon Park, and both its water quality and riverbanks have been the focus of extensive rehabilitation and sewage-treatment projects.

The Negev, by contrast, has no permanent rivers. Its wadis (seasonal watercourses, known in Hebrew as nahal) carry water only after rainfall. Because the desert surface is crusted and sparsely vegetated, intense storms produce rapid runoff, and water can surge down narrow canyons within minutes or hours, turning dry channels into flash floods. Major wadis such as Nahal Zin and Nahal Paran drain toward the Arava and the Gulf of Aqaba, and their flood hazard is a standing concern for hikers and road users.

Climate and precipitation gradient

Climate types

Israel's climate is usually described as Mediterranean in the north and centre and as hot semi-arid to desert in the south. Under the Köppen–Geiger system, the coastal strip is classed as a dry-summer subtropical climate (a mild Mediterranean climate with a dry summer and the warmest month above 22°C). The interior belt is classed as hot semi-arid (BSh), and the southern regions as hot desert (Bwh) The regions in southern Israel have a Bwh Climate; a hot desert clima. The country's weather reflects its position between Egyptian aridity and the moister eastern Mediterranean, a boundary that gives the country's climate its sharp internal contrasts.

Winter-concentrated rain and the north–south gradient

Precipitation is concentrated in the cooler months. Around 70 percent of average rainfall arrives between November and March, while the summer months are usually dry (About 70 percent of the average rainfall in the country falls between November and March; June through August are often rainless.). The rainy season opens in October or November and closes in April or May at the research sites, and it is shorter at the drier ones (The length of the growing season is determined by the rainfall, usually commencing in October—November and ending in April–May, with shorter seasons in drier sites.).

Totals fall steeply toward the south. Long-term means at three study sites along a roughly 100 km transect are 540 mm at the Mediterranean site, 300 mm at the semi-arid site and 90 mm at the arid site (The long-term mean annual rainfall in these three sites is 540, 300, and 90 mm). The northern tip receives roughly 1,100 mm, while the extreme south falls below 100 mm (In the extreme south, rainfall averages less than 100 mm annually; in the north, average annual rainfall is about 1,100 mm.). Sources differ on the northern figure, with some citing values as high as 1,128 mm or about 1,200 mm, depending on the station and period used. Variability also rises toward the southeast: All parts of the country experience both temporal (year to year) and spatial uncertainty which increases southeastwards. Agriculture is concentrated where annual rainfall exceeds 300 mm, a threshold that encloses only about one-third of the country (The areas of the country most cultivated are those that receive more than 300 millimeters of rainfall annually; only about one-third of the country is cultivable.).

Temperature extremes

Annual temperature swings are wide. Nationally, January is the coldest month at about 5–10 °C and August the hottest at about 18–38 °C (January is the coldest month, with temperatures from 5°C to 10°C, and August is the hottest month at 18°C to 38°C.). The Dead Sea basin is among the hottest places in the country. Ein Gedi, on the western shore, has an average annual temperature of about 24 °C and mean daily maxima of about 38 °C in July, with roughly 50 mm of precipitation a year (The average annual temperature is 23.9 °C (75.0 °F), and around 50 mm of precipitation falls annually.).

Eilat shows a similar pattern of extreme heat and dry air. Its 1991–2020 averages put the mean maximum for July and August at about 40 °C (Eilat - Average temperatures (1991-2020)), and summers there often exceed 40 °C (Temperatures often exceed 40 °C (104 °F) in summer, and 21 °C (70 °F) in winter). Winter values vary between sources, so the January mean should be read as approximate. The nearby Red Sea moderates the desert's diurnal swings, since the sea water assists in reducing heat during the day and then emitting it during the night, making the desert nights much less cold.

Coastal humidity, elevation and local effects

The coastal plain stays much less arid than the interior. Summers there are hot but damp, because the sea supplies moisture, and afternoon sea breezes limit peak heat. Elevation has the opposite effect. Jerusalem, at about 754 m, shows a distinct orographic influence on its rainfall (The Centre (Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem) receives 500–700 mm; Jerusalem's elevated position (754 m a.s.l.) gives it a distinct orographic signature.). Snow falls on higher ground in January and February, notably on the Golan Heights and in the central highlands (During January and February, precipitation may take the form of snow at the higher elevations of Israels central highlands, especially in the Golan heights, but also around Jerusalem.).

The Dead Sea lies far below sea level, and this low altitude adds to its heat and aridity, making it one of the hottest and driest places in the country. Its climate is therefore a sharp contrast with the cool, wet upland slopes only a short distance away. Projections of how these patterns may shift under climate change are treated in the environmental section.

Ecosystems, flora and fauna

Israel sits where several large biogeographic regions meet, and the steep changes in rainfall, altitude and soil within a small area produce a flora and fauna far richer than the country's size would suggest. Botanical surveys record roughly 2,600 to 2,800 plant species, with the exact count depending on the survey and the definition of "species" used. One widely cited count gives 2,630 species within about 29,600 km², a density that compares favourably with much larger regions such as the Californian coast. The classic phytogeographic scheme, developed by Michael Zohary and others, places most of the country in the Mediterranean and Irano-Turanian territories and the southern deserts in the Saharo-Arabian territory, with isolated Sudanian enclaves in the far south. Some accounts add a high-altitude tragacanth zone in the northeast, so the number of recognised units varies between four and five. The Mediterranean and Irano-Turanian regions belong to the Holarctic plant kingdom, whereas the Sudanian region belongs to the Paleotropical kingdom. Israel is therefore a place where temperate, steppe, desert and tropical floras overlap, and where many species reach the limit of their range. The Eurasian plant assemblage of the north is joined by desert and savanna elements in the south.

The Mediterranean territory is defined by an average annual precipitation of about 350 mm or more. In the hills, where rainfall is roughly 500 to 700 mm, dense evergreen scrub known as maquis dominates, with kermes oak (Quercus coccifera) and terebinth (Pistacia terebinthus) among its characteristic woody plants. Tabor oak (Quercus ithaburensis) forms open woodland in parts of the lowlands, and the main surviving woodlands of the twentieth century were concentrated in the mountains of Judea, Carmel and Galilee. The coastal plain, by contrast, has been largely converted to farmland and settlement, so its original vegetation survives only in fragments. The Irano-Turanian territory receives roughly 200 to 300 mm of rain, almost all in winter, and is covered by shrubby steppe with wormwood (Artemisia) associations. Further south, the Saharo-Arabian territory is a contracted shrub desert in which plants are largely confined to wadi beds and rocky depressions, and rainfall of up to about 200 mm supports only a brief spring flush of growth.

Much of the woodland cover in the hill country is the product of twentieth-century planting. The forest cover of the modern state is largely the result of afforestation by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded in 1901. Early planting relied heavily on fast-growing conifers, and Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) became the dominant species in many plantations, so pine forests spread across the country from the 1930s onward. Reported totals of planted trees differ between sources: figures of about 240 million, 250 million and 260 million all appear, and the JNF itself reports its forests as entirely hand-planted and actively fights roughly 1,000 fires a year. The largest of the planted woodlands is the Yatir Forest on the northern edge of the Negev, which was begun in the 1960s. Pine plantations have also been criticised on ecological grounds. Those on Mount Gilboa threatened the endemic Gilboa iris (Iris haynei), and the JNF's species choices have been disputed by conservationists, a debate that touches on invasive species and habitat fragmentation in general.

In the Negev and the Arava, the vegetation consists of dryland shrubs, annuals and perennials concentrated in wadis, where runoff and deeper soil moisture allow plants to persist. The sandy areas of the south each have a different origin and climate, and therefore support different plant communities. Fauna is adapted to scarce water and high temperatures, relying on nocturnal activity, burrowing and efficient water use. Reptiles are the best represented vertebrate group, with 97 native species recorded, whereas only seven amphibian species survive, most of them in rain pools and small ponds on the Mediterranean coast, a small total that is partly attributed to the early-twentieth-century draining of wetlands. Israel is estimated to host around 30,000 invertebrate species, a figure that is far less certain than the vertebrate counts.

The Hula Valley in the Upper Galilee illustrates how these biogeographic zones and wetland habitats interact with human land use. Before the 1950s, the Hula lake and its surrounding marshes formed the largest wetland habitat in the Middle East. Drainage carried out to create farmland and reduce malaria exposed black peat soil, which proved fertile but also led to subsidence, fires and the loss of much of the original habitat. The Hula Nature Reserve was established in 1964 as one of Israel's first protected areas. A partial reflooding in the 1990s created the Agamon Hula, a managed lake and shallow marsh that opened in 1994 and now supports large numbers of cranes, pelicans and other waterbirds. Restoration covers only a fraction of the original swamp, but the reserve hosts many species of conservation concern, and the valley is a regional model for wetland ecological restoration that balances farming with biodiversity goals.

The Great Rift Valley, which runs from the Jordan Valley through the Hula basin, forms a natural north–south corridor for migratory birds moving between Africa, Europe and Asia. Israel lies on this African–Eurasian flyway, and large numbers of birds, including storks, cranes, pelicans, herons and raptors, pass through twice a year in spring and autumn. Estimates of the scale differ: some sources cite about 500 million birds passing each year, while others give a daily peak of roughly 500,000 birds over the Hula wetlands during the busiest periods. The wetlands of the valley therefore function as a critical stopover habitat, and their protection is closely tied to the survival of the migratory populations that depend on them.

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Water resources and supply infrastructure

Israel's freshwater supply rests on a small number of groundwater bodies, a single large lake and conveyance network, and, since the late 1990s, a rapidly growing desalination sector. Two aquifers dominate. The coastal aquifer lies close to the surface beneath the coastal plain, running from the Carmel area in the north toward the Gaza border. It has been degraded by agricultural chemicals and by seawater entering as a result of over-pumping. In recent years, the aquifer has been subject to pollution from seepage of agricultural chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides. It is also increasingly subject to seawater infiltration due to over-pumping. The mountain aquifer, which lies beneath the central ridge, is larger. It underlies the central mountain ridge stretching along a north-south axis for some 150 km through Israel and the West Bank. Because the aquifer is karstic, contaminants can move through it quickly, so the mountain aquifer is especially prone to contamination due to its karstic nature and the quick transit of pollutants through it.

Monitoring by the Hydrological Service of the Water Authority has repeatedly shown the aquifers operating near their lower limits. In a September 2018 report, the mountain aquifer was only a few centimetres above its "red line" in the south and centre, and part of the southern coastal aquifer was already below it. If the groundwater level falls below the red line, there is a risk of saltier water penetrating into the aquifer from deeper geological levels. Because both aquifers extend under the West Bank and, in the case of the coastal aquifer, the Gaza Strip, their management also involves Palestinian and Egyptian users, not only Israeli ones.

The National Water Carrier is the main artery that moves water from north to south. It is about 130 kilometers (81 mi) long. Its purpose is to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee in the north of the country to the highly populated center and the arid south and to enable efficient use of water and regulation of the water supply in the country. The system combines pipelines, tunnels and open canals, and at full operation up to 72,000 cubic meters (19,000,000 U.S. gal; 16,000,000 imp gal) of water can flow through the carrier each hour, totalling 1.7 million cubic meters in a day. It was completed in June 1964. At that time 80% of its water being allocated to agriculture and 20% for drinking water. Its allocation shifted as urban demand grew, and by the early 1990s, the National Carrier was supplying half of the drinking water in Israel.

Desalination became the response to chronic deficits. Facing regular deficits in supply, in 1999 the Israeli government decided to pursue desalination as a strategy to address water scarcity. A drought in 1998–2002 had accelerated that decision. Since then, Israel has built five major reverse osmosis facilities at Ashkelon (2005), Palmachim (2007), Hadera (2009), Sorek (2013) and Ashdod (2015). Estimates of the desalinated share differ by year and by definition, so the figures should be read with care: one study gives approximately 50% of Israel's domestic water needs as of 2020, while another reports that desalinated seawater makes up more than 90 percent of Israel's domestic water supply. Projections of population growth suggest that by 2065 desalination will account for the majority of Israel's water production, under all population change scenarios.

Wastewater reuse and water-saving irrigation complete the system. Israel's strategy combines conservation, non-potable reuse, and desalination. Desalination also helps reuse, because lower salinity in wastewater improves water quality for agricultural reuse. Drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to plant roots and limits evaporation, is widely used in Israeli agriculture, and it is the method most associated with the country's arid-zone farming.

Natural resources and energy

Offshore natural gas

Israel's most consequential energy resource lies beneath the eastern Mediterranean. The Tamar and Leviathan gas fields lie roughly 50–80 miles off Israel's northern coast in the Levant Basin. Tamar was found in 2009 and has supplied domestic consumers since 2013, and now supplies roughly half of Israel's domestic natural gas consumption. Leviathan, found in 2010, is the larger of the two. It holds approximately 623 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas and entered production in 2019. In January 2026 the operators approved an expansion, and the project is intended to increase production capacity from 12 bcm to roughly 21 bcm annually.

Most of this gas is consumed as fuel for power plants. In one year of reported figures, the Tamar field produced 10.1bn m³, compared with 13.4bn m³ used in electricity production. Surplus volumes are sold abroad. Gas is piped to significantly increase natural gas exports to Egypt and Jordan. Under a later agreement, the Tamar partners will sell an additional 4 billion cubic meters (BCM) of natural gas per year to Egypt for a period of 11 years. Onshore, the system depends on processing and transport infrastructure. Tamar's output still needs additional processing at the Ashdod onshore terminal. The 46-km offshore natural gas Ashdod-Ashkelon pipeline is undergoing upgrades to handle higher volumes.

Dependence on a few offshore platforms creates a security vulnerability. In February 2026, acting on a "security recommendation", Israel's energy and infrastructure minister asked operator Chevron to suspend operations at the Leviathan platform until further notice. The operator reported that the suspension of flows lasted 33 days. Earlier, during the 2025 conflict with Iran, the smaller Karish field was also shut in temporarily, which left domestic supply solely reliant on the offshore Tamar gas field.

Dead Sea minerals

The Dead Sea is the most important non-hydrocarbon mineral source. Its brine is unusually rich in dissolved salts, and the mineral concession is administered under Israeli law. Extracting the minerals from the Dead Sea (potash, raw bromine and magnesium) under the current concession involves pumping seawater from the northern basin of the Dead Sea. The brine then moves into large evaporation ponds, where solar evaporation concentrates it. Potash production relies on the extraction and precipitation of carnallite, a compound comprising potassium chloride (KCl) and magnesium chloride mixed with sodium chloride (NaCl), in some of the largest solar evaporation ponds in the world. The carnallite is then processed into finished potash fertilizer.

The main producer is ICL, which operates Dead Sea Works. One set of 2025 figures reports approximately 3.57 million tons of potash from the Dead Sea, as well as 150,000 tons of bromine, 17,800 tons of metal magnesium, 185,000 tons of salt and 112,000 tons of solid magnesium chloride. Industry sources give a higher potash figure, over 4.6 million tonnes of potash every year, so the reported output varies with the year and the measure used. Israel's rank in global potash output is the world's 6th largest producer of potash. The company describes itself as the world's largest elemental bromine producer.

Part of the northern basin lies in the West Bank, and the status of that area is among the disputed territorial questions treated elsewhere in this entry. The government has also prepared a process for a future mineral concession.

Phosphate deposits and other minerals

The Negev holds Israel's main phosphate resources. The Campanian (Upper Cretaceous period) phosphate rock deposits of Israel are part of the Mediterranean phosphate belt extending from Turkey, through Jordan and Israel, and westward through Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Three open-pit mines operate in the region: the Company began operations at Oron in the 1950s and at Rotem and Zin in the 1970s. Mining is carried out by conventional open pit or quarrying methods, using drilling and blasting where necessary, and the phosphate rock is then concentrated in beneficiation plants. Production reached 3.1 Mt in 2020 from 2.8 Mt in 2019, measured as gross weight of beneficiated rock. Phosphate rock is mostly converted into phosphate fertilizer and phosphoric acid. Reserves at the existing mines are limited, and ICL is therefore promoting mining activities in the Barir Field to enable the continuation of its mining activities, following the depletion of existing reserves.

Phosphate processing has also been linked to uranium recovery. Since the 1950s, the processing chain at the Negev sites has recovered uranium as a by-product, which is a strategically sensitive activity. Other mineral resources in the region include copper, iron, manganese, phosphates and uranium.

Energy imports, grid and solar potential

Israel has historically depended on imported fuels for much of its primary energy, and the discovery of offshore gas reduced that dependence for electricity generation. Electricity is supplied through a national transmission grid that links generating stations, mainly gas-fired, with consumers across the coastal plain and the south. Solar energy is a growing component of the policy agenda. The Negev, with its high levels of solar radiation and large unpopulated areas, is widely regarded as a suitable location for utility-scale solar installations. Storage and grid integration are the main technical challenges that accompany a larger share of intermittent generation.

Population distribution and urban system

Size, density and growth

Israel's population figures depend heavily on the source. The statistics bureau provisionally estimated the population at 10.305 million on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 2026, and about 78.3 percent were counted as Jews and others, 21.7 percent as Arabs, with a further 304,000 foreign residents. The bureau's definition is broader than the state's territory: it includes Jews living in all of the West Bank and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, but excludes Palestinians in the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Other series are lower. Some international trackers place the country closer to 9.6–9.65 million depending on methodology and timing, and Worldometer's 2026 figure is 9,647,689.

Growth rates also differ. The bureau reports that during 2025, Israel's population grew by 1.1%, whereas Worldometer's compilation shows a 2025 rate of 1.39 percent. Over the longer run, the same compilation shows growth falling from 2.68% in 2000 to its 2025 value. In 2025, births of about 182,000 and deaths of about 50,000 produced natural increase of 132,000, while negative net migration was approximately 20,000.

Density is calculated against land area, which explains some of the spread in reported values. Worldometer uses a land area of 21,640 Km² and gives a density of 446 per Km² for 2026. A FAO-based series gives 455 people per square km for 2023, up from 442 in 2022. Density was far lower in the mid-twentieth century; the same FAO-based series records a minimum of 101 people per square km in 1961.

Urban share and metropolitan areas

Israel is one of the most urbanised countries in the region. Worldometer estimates that 91.4% of the population is urban in 2025. Urban classification follows national criteria, so the figure is not strictly comparable across countries. Urban population is the population living in areas classified as urban according to the criteria used by each country.

The major metropolitan areas are best understood through the statistics bureau's definitions, which have changed over time. Its revised metropolitan definitions include Jerusalem for the first time, along with Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be'er Sheva. Gush Dan, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, had a population of 4,156,900 on 31 December 2021, or 44% of Israel's population and covers a land area of 1,516 km². Jerusalem's metropolitan population was 1,164,000 residents in an earlier CBS series that included localities beyond the Green Line. Haifa's metropolitan area in 2026 is put at 1,215,000, and it is the third largest metropolitan area in Israel, behind Gush Dan and Greater Jerusalem.

The weight of the central city varies greatly. The population of Tel Aviv-Jaffa constitutes only 11% of the entire metropolis's population, whereas in Jerusalem the population of the city constitutes 71% of the total for the entire metropolis. The municipal figures are much smaller than the metropolitan ones. Tel Aviv-Yafo had 451,520 residents in December 2018, with a density of 8,600 persons per km² in a municipal jurisdiction of 52 km². Urban-area estimates for 2025 put Jerusalem at 920,478 and Haifa at 484,770.

Regional concentration

Population is strongly concentrated on the coastal plain. Gush Dan alone accounts for a large share of the national total within a small area, and its growth was shaped by policy. In the early decades after 1948, the government tried to disperse the nation's population to the periphery and discouraged settlement in the already-populated Gush Dan. The area still more than doubled in population within 20 years of the establishment of Israel.

Peripheral regions are much less dense. Among the administrative districts, the Central District has the largest population, while the Southern District has the largest area at 14,190 km². Older CBS data for 2005 show the contrast clearly: Yeruham at 227 persons per sq.km., and Omer at 300 persons per sq.km., compared with 7,170 persons per sq.km. in Tel Aviv. The Haifa metropolitan rings show a similar gradient, with the core at 4,304 persons per km² and the outer ring at 700.2 per km². Arab residents are concentrated in the north: the Haifa District has 237,200 Arabs, out of a total population of 939,000.

Age structure and birth trends

Israel has a young population by European standards. Worldometer's median age estimate is 29.3 years for 2026. The CBS-based age structure for 2023 shows 0–14 years: 28%, 15–64 years: 60%, 65 and over: 12%. The crude birth rate for the same year was 21.5 births per 1,000.

Fertility has declined from its earlier high. The Worldometer series shows a total fertility rate of 3.09 in 2015 and 2.73 in 2026, while the CBS-based figure for 2023 is higher, at 3.01 children born per woman. The difference reflects different estimation methods and reference years, so the trend is more reliable than any single value. Because natural increase remains positive and the median age is rising slowly, the population continues to grow, but at a pace well below the rates of earlier decades.

Population composition, languages and migration

Population shares and religious composition

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) estimated the population at 10.178 million at the start of 2026. Of these, 7.771 million are Jews and others (76.3 per cent of the total population), 2.147 million are Arabs (21.1 per cent) and 0.26 million are foreign nationals (2.6 per cent). The "Jews and others" category is a statistical grouping. It includes non-Jewish, non-Arab residents, so a strictly Jewish share is lower. A CBS-based table for 2023 gives Jews at 73.2 per cent and the non-Jewish, non-Arab group at 5.7 per cent.

Published percentages differ for several reasons. One is the population definition. The CBS counts Jews living in all of the West Bank and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which affects totals and shares. Another is the year and the source. Wikipedia's 2025 estimate lists 71.9% Jews; 21% Arabs; 7.1% others, while a 2026 compilation gives Jews 73.5% and Arabs 21.1%. A further estimate, provisional for the Jewish New Year of 2026, puts the population at about 10.3 million, with Arabs at 21.7 per cent and about 304,000 foreigners.

Religious composition is reported on a similar basis. One 2023 estimate gives 73.7% Judaism; 18.3% Islam; 1.9% Christianity; 1.6% Druze faith; 4.5% others. Muslims are mainly Sunni Arabs, and Christian and Druze Arabs form smaller communities. Among Jews, the ultra-Orthodox were estimated at about 13 per cent of the total population in 2020, up from roughly 10 per cent in 2009.

Natural increase and migration both shape these shares. In 2025 the population grew by 1.1 per cent, and approximately 182,000 babies were born (approximately 76 per cent to Jewish and "other" mothers, and approximately 24 per cent to Arab mothers). The CBS attributed the slowing of growth mainly to high emigration of Israelis.

Hebrew, Arabic and other languages

Hebrew is the state language. Under the British Mandate, the official languages were English, Hebrew and Arabic. After Israel's establishment in 1948, English was removed as an official language, leaving Hebrew and Arabic as co-official languages. The 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People changed this. It made Hebrew the state language and gave Arabic a "special status", and it did not explicitly call Arabic an official language. The law also states that the practical position Arabic held before 2018 is not weakened.

The legal meaning of "special status" remains contested. Critics regard the change as a symbolic downgrade that disadvantages Arab citizens. Supporters argue that the recognition of Hebrew is consistent with the policies of other countries which give official status only to the majority language. Courts have read the provision differently. One reading treats both languages as having official status, while another justice took a different view. Arabic remains in use in government documents and public signage, a practice that is still mandated under Israeli law and affirmed by Israel's Supreme Court.

Arabic is the first language of roughly one-fifth of citizens, including most Muslim and Christian Arab citizens and all Druze citizens. English, although not official, is widely used on road signs and logos. Yiddish and Ladino are also spoken within older communities. Immigrant communities have added further languages. Russian, Amharic, French and Spanish are heard in daily life, each reflecting a different immigration wave.

Immigration (aliyah)

Aliyah is the Hebrew term for Jewish immigration to Israel, meaning "ascent". Since 1948, more than 3 million Jews have arrived through aliyah. In 1948, 35% of the Jewish population were native-born; by 2020 the share had reached 78 per cent, so natural increase had become the main source of growth within the Jewish population.

Post-Soviet immigration was the largest single wave. Restrictions loosened in the early 1970s, and more than 150,000 Soviet Jews immigrated during this period. The 1989 change in US refugee policy and the end of Soviet emigration controls led to a far larger flow. In October 1989, the US government stopped treating Soviet Jews as refugees, as another country, Israel, was willing to accept them unconditionally. Between 1990 and 1998 Israel received 879,486 immigrants. Overall, the influx from 1989 to 2006 of 979,000 Russian-speaking migrants raised the population by more than 20 per cent. The arrivals were absorbed into a country of about five million, which strained the labour market. A considerable number were not Jewish under halakhic definitions, but were eligible for citizenship through a Jewish father or a Jewish spouse.

Later flows have been smaller and more varied. Since 2022, some 80,000 Russians and 20,000 Ukrainians and Belarusians with Jewish ancestry have made aliyah.

Geographic distribution of the Arab population

Arab citizens are concentrated in the north, especially in the Galilee, which has the largest share of Arab localities in the country. Druze communities, which are counted separately from Muslim Arabs in religious statistics, are also concentrated in the Galilee, on Mount Carmel and in the Golan Heights. Another large cluster is the so-called "Triangle" of towns in the centre-east, near the 1949 armistice line. In the south, most Bedouin Arabs live in the northern Negev, where many are in unrecognised villages. Mixed cities, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramla and Acre, contain both Jewish and Arab populations, though residential patterns are usually segregated. Arab localities generally have lower average incomes and fewer public resources than Jewish localities of comparable size, which is discussed in the economic geography section.

Agriculture and land use

Agriculture occupies a small share of Israel's economy but is technically advanced, and its geography follows the contrast between a rain-fed north and a desert south. The OECD reports that agriculture's share of GDP fell to 1.3% and its share of employment to under 1% over the past two decades. Rural Jewish communities, mainly kibbutzim and moshavim, produce roughly 80% of agricultural output.

Arid-zone farming methods

Most farming in the south depends on irrigation, and drip irrigation is the defining technique. Simcha Blass and his son Yeshayahu developed the system in the late 1950s, and Blass patented a practical plastic emitter in the early 1960s. In 1965 the technology was commercialised at Kibbutz Hatzerim in the Negev, the origin of the firm Netafim. Drip lines deliver water, and often fertilizer, slowly to the root zone, which reduces losses to evaporation compared with flood or sprinkler methods. Reports describe drip irrigation as the dominant method across Israeli farms, with flood irrigation largely absent, though some crops remain sprinkler-watered. Irrigation water also includes treated wastewater, a practice discussed in the water section.

Protected cultivation is used for high-value crops. Trial greenhouses in the Negev have grown strawberries suspended from the ceiling and fed through drip systems, with experiments on varieties and fertiliser regimes. In the Arava, the long valley between the Dead Sea and Eilat, open-field and greenhouse vegetable production is concentrated, and that region supplies a large share of the country's vegetable exports.

Cooperative settlements

The kibbutz, a collective community in which members pooled earnings and shared resources, was originally built around farming. Many kibbutzim later expanded into industry, and by 2012 only about 15% of kibbutzim were primarily engaged in agriculture. The moshav is a cooperative village in which families farm individual holdings while jointly purchasing inputs, marketing produce and sharing some services. Both models shaped land allocation and settlement patterns across the Galilee, the coastal plain and the Negev, and their collective marketing structures made it possible for small producers to reach export markets.

Principal crops and export orientation

By production value, poultry was the largest sector in 2023, at about 23%, followed by vegetables at about 16%. Field crops include wheat, sorghum, maize, sunflowers and cotton, many grown in the winter season. Fruit production covers citrus, apples, grapes, stone fruits, mangoes and dates. Export lists have typically included dates, peppers, avocados, carrots, flowers and herbs, sent mainly to Europe, Russia, the United States and East Asia. Israel's main export markets are the European Union and the United States.

Exports have been a smaller part of output than imports. In 2021 agricultural imports were valued at about $8.8 billion against roughly $2.5 billion in exports. Sources differ on self-sufficiency: some describe the country as growing most of its own fresh produce and animal products, while others state that Israel is not self-sufficient in food overall, largely because of imported feed grains and processing ingredients.

Afforestation and the land-use pattern

Tree cover was reduced in the late Ottoman period, when pine and oak were cut for railway construction. The Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded in 1901, began buying land and planting trees. By 1935 it had planted about 1.7 million trees on roughly 1,750 acres, and in its early decades it relied on fast-growing conifers, so pine forests spread widely. The JNF now reports more than 240 million trees planted, though estimates vary, with some sources giving figures above 260 million. Its forestry work focuses on afforestation in areas without earlier tree cover and reforestation in Mediterranean and semi-arid zones.

The largest example is the Yatir Forest, planted from the 1960s on semi-arid land at the edge of the Negev. It covers about 30,000 dunams and is dominated by Aleppo pine. In 2006 the state granted the JNF a 49-year lease over 30,000 hectares of Negev land for forest development.

Critics argue that pine plantations can displace shrubland and endemic plants, and that some projects encroached on land previously used by Arab farmers and herders. Forest fires in JNF woodlands in 2010, 2016 and 2021 intensified the debate. JNF forestry officials have rejected several of the critics' claims about pines. The result is a landscape in which planted conifers and orchards now cover land that was once largely open shrubland or cultivated by different communities.

Economic geography and industry

Israel's economic activity is concentrated in the central coastal region, while its productive base reaches further than the population map suggests. Finance and business services cluster in Tel Aviv, and the city's technology sector is the most visible part of that role. Technology companies operating in the city raised $14.1 billion in 2025, a 77% rise on the previous year, and exits reached a record $46 billion, according to the municipal ecosystem report. The same report counts more than 2,600 tech companies active in the city, alongside 190 multinational corporations. Technology employment is unusually dense there: about one in five residents works in the industry. In the Startup Genome 2026 survey, the city ranked behind only Silicon Valley, New York and London.

Sector structure and the high-tech economy

Beyond Tel Aviv, specialisations are spread across several cities. One regional profile associates Tel Aviv most with startups and venture capital, Haifa with semiconductors and robotics, Jerusalem with life sciences, and Beersheba with cybersecurity and AI. Official data show how large the high-tech sector has become at national level. The Israel Innovation Authority estimates that high-tech output in 2024 was about NIS 317 billion, or roughly 17% of GDP, with output virtually unchanged from 2023. A separate industry tally places the share higher, at a record 18.3%, equivalent to NIS 352 billion. The gap reflects different definitions of the sector rather than a contradiction in the underlying trend.

Exports are even more concentrated in high-tech. In the first half of 2025, high-tech accounted for 57% of all Israeli exports, and within that total 72% was software services and 28% was high-tech industry. Industrial high-tech exports have been stagnant for roughly a decade. The sector also shows signs of geographical change: a 2026 industry report notes that about 69% of employees at private Israeli technology companies were based in Israel in January 2019, a figure that had fallen to 62% by March 2026.

Macroeconomic profile

The IMF projects 2026 nominal output of $719.85 billion, and per-capita output of $69,804 in 2026. Growth in 2025 was 2.9% of GDP, although other compilations give a slightly higher figure of 3.1%. An older sector breakdown, dated 2017, puts agriculture at 2.4%, industry at 26.5% and services at 69.5% of output, which indicates how strongly services now dominate. On human development, the 2023 Human Development Index value for Israel is 0.919, classified as very high, and one compilation ranks the country 25th globally.

Industrial and port functions are concentrated in the Haifa Bay area, which hosts petrochemical and refining plants, power generation, and the container and bulk terminals of the port of Haifa. Beersheba, the largest city of the Negev, serves as the regional capital of the south. Its economy relies on public administration, university research at Ben-Gurion University, and an expanding cybersecurity and AI cluster.

Regional disparities

Economic opportunity is unevenly distributed. The Tel Aviv region and the central coastal belt have the highest concentrations of skilled jobs, wages and capital. The Negev and the peripheral parts of the Galilee lag behind on income, employment and access to high-skilled work. Disparities also run along national and communal lines: Arab localities, which are concentrated in the north and in parts of the south, generally show lower average incomes, lower employment rates among some groups, and fewer industrial and commercial zones than Jewish localities. Government development plans have repeatedly targeted these gaps, and their effectiveness has been a recurring subject of public debate.

Transport and infrastructure

Seaports

Israel's sea trade runs mainly through Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat, which are overseen by the national infrastructure agencies. The Haifa Port Company is responsible for most cargo operations in Haifa Port, which was established in 1933. Haifa Port is situated on the southern shore of Haifa Bay, on the Mediterranean, 90km north of Tel Aviv. The Haifa Port Company handled some 28 million tons of cargo during 2016, including 1.26 million TEU's of container traffic. Ownership has shifted over time. In 2005, the Israeli government decided to break up the Israel Ports Authority, and in 2022 a successful bid for Haifa Port was made by a consortium that included Adani Port Special Economic Zone.

Ashdod, about 40 km south of Tel Aviv, is the largest container port by volume. It handles the largest volume of cargo containers annually of all Israeli ports, with 1.525 million TEU in 2017. The port was built in the 1960s and opened in November 1965. Its deep-water berths extend into open sea, which is unusual for a port of this size.

Eilat is Israel's only Red Sea port, at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Because it lies outside the Mediterranean system, ships sailing from Israel can reach the Indian Ocean without passing through the Suez Canal. Its traffic is dominated by bulk and vehicle trade. Most of the tonnage is phosphate and potash exports via the port's fertilizer terminal, as well as vehicle imports from the Far East. Eilat is also the southern end of a crude oil link: a 254 km line links the Red Sea port of Eilat with the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon. Eilat's position has also been vulnerable. One reference records the port as closed in July 2025 after a Houthi blockade.

Air transport

Ben Gurion International Airport, the country's main international gateway, lies near Tel Aviv and serves Gush Dan and Greater Jerusalem. It has three runways. In 2025 the airport handled 19.2 million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in the Middle East. Figures in circulation differ by measure: one report cites 18.4 million passengers travelled through Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport this year, an increase of 33% compared to the previous year, which corresponds to the international total in the airport's statistics. Airport officials estimate that 22 million passengers will travel through Israel's main international airport next year.

Traffic has grown faster than capacity. By the mid-2020s it was operating close to its capacity limits, and the Israel Airports Authority has pursued a long-term expansion programme that includes a runway reconfiguration completed in 2014 and a new control tower in 2015. Operations have also been disrupted by security incidents. On 4 May 2025, the Houthi movement fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv, hitting the perimeter of the main terminal of Ben Gurion Airport.

Road network

The main north-south artery is Highway 6, the Trans-Israel Highway. It is the first Israeli Build-Operate-Transfer road constructed, carried out mainly by the private sector in return for a concession to collect tolls, and it began operating in 2002 and continues to be lengthened as construction proceeds on newer sections. Reported lengths vary: Wikipedia gives 204 km (127 mi), while the operating company cites 188 km, letting drivers cross from north to south without traffic lights in less than two hours. Its southern terminus is at Shoket Interchange, opened in November 2016.

Extensions are planned in the north. The operator describes a project of approximately 34 km that would be a three-lane road in both directions, linking the Somekh Interchange to Shlomi. Several other roads cross the centre. Highway 1 links Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, intersecting Highway 6 at Ben Shemen. The eastern access route Highway 5 is among the most congested stretches near Gush Dan, where the westward section surrounding Gush Dan is one of the most congested in Israel. A coastal highway runs along the Mediterranean plain, linking the port cities with the metropolitan areas.

Rail

Rail service is concentrated along the coastal plain and the Jerusalem corridor. Unlike the ports of Haifa and Ashdod, Eilat is not directly linked to the national railway network. The national network, operated by Israel Railways, connects Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and southern cities, and a fast line between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was opened in 2018, with a station at Ben Gurion Airport. Jerusalem's light rail has run since 2011 and is one of the city's main transit options, while Tel Aviv's light rail network has been built in stages and has experienced significant construction delays. Expansion plans focus on connecting outlying cities and reducing dependence on road traffic, which remains the dominant mode for both freight and passengers.

Historical geography and settlement change

Settled life in the southern Levant is very old. The oldest known permanent occupation at Jericho is linked to the Natufian culture, whose hunter-gatherers camped near the Ein es-Sultan spring. The Natufian groups in Jericho took advantage of the Ein as-Sultan spring and the waters of the Jordan River, which facilitated the development of agriculture and early food technologies. Sources disagree on the earliest date. One gives around 9000 BC for the first documented settlement, while another ties year-round habitation to the end of the cold, dry Younger Dryas, around 9600 BCE. The early Neolithic village at Tell es-Sultan later had a stone tower and wall, which represent the earliest preserved fortification system in the region. Because of this long sequence, Jericho is often described as one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns, though the phrase "oldest city" is used more loosely in tourist and popular sources.

During the Bronze and Iron Ages, the region was organised around fortified city-states linked by routes. The Via Maris was a major one. Together with the King's Highway, the Via Maris was one of the major trade routes connecting Egypt and the Levant with Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Its course ran along the coast and then split: one branch ran along the coast from Acre down to Ashkelon and Gaza, and the other took an inland route through the Sea of Galilee and Jezreel Valley, with the two reuniting at Megiddo. Megiddo's position made it a key stop, since it guarded a narrow pass. Further south, Lachish, Azekah, and Beth-shemesh sat astride natural routes through the Shephelah and toward the Judean hills. Controlling such roads brought revenue, because the states controlling the Via Maris were in a position to grant access for trade to their own citizens and collect tolls from the outsiders. Dating for the route is inconsistent: one encyclopaedic account says it was in use from the 6th century BC, until the end of the Mamluk Sultanate in the 16th century, which conflicts with the early Bronze Age origin given elsewhere.

Control of the land passed between successive powers. Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian rulers, and later Persian and Hellenistic administrations, each held parts of it at different times, and the Roman period brought new infrastructure. Trajan built a road in the province of Arabia Petraea from Aila (modern-day Aqaba) on the Red Sea to Bostra, and it was previously known as the King's Highway. At Jericho, the Herodian palace complex was an important late Hellenistic and early Roman site, and the administrative site moved to modern Jericho during the late Roman and Byzantine periods. Later periods brought Islamic rule from the seventh century, Crusader control, Mamluk rule, and Ottoman authority from 1516 until the First World War. Each of these powers reshaped the road network, the walled towns and the agricultural zones, often on the foundations of earlier sites.

The modern map was formed in the twentieth century. After the First World War, Palestine came under a British mandate administered under the League of Nations. In November 1947 the United Nations proposed partitioning the territory into Jewish and Arab states. One source estimates that Jews were to receive about 56% of the land (including much of the Negev and coastal plains) and Arabs about 44%. Arab leaders rejected the plan. A 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine followed, and the mandate ended on 14 May 1948, when Israel declared independence and neighbouring Arab states intervened. The dates for the end of the wider war vary by source: one places it at 10 March 1949, while another gives 20 July 1949, presumably for the last armistice.

The 1949 armistice agreements turned the front lines into the boundaries that shaped settlement patterns for nearly two decades. Between February and July 1949, Israel signed four separate armistice agreements – one each with Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan (Jordan), and Syria. These were military arrangements, and they explicitly deferred "ultimate settlement of the Palestine question". The lines generally followed earlier mandate borders, with exceptions. The line that came to separate the West Bank from Israel became known as the Green Line, and around Latrun, west of Jerusalem, as well as in small areas inside the city, a no man's land was established. Israel ended up holding more land than the 1947 plan had allotted, since Israel gained some territory formerly granted to Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations resolution in 1947. Gaza fell under Egyptian military rule, and Jordan officially annexed the West Bank in 1950, a move that was only recognized by Britain and Pakistan. Jerusalem was divided, and the new frontier separated villages from the towns and farmland they had served, which left a lasting imprint on the pattern of settlement.

Territorial status and disputed areas

Israel's control and sovereignty claims are contested in three main areas: Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Palestinian territories. The positions below are reported as documented claims. They are not endorsed here.

Jerusalem

Israel treats the whole city as its sovereign capital. Israel has held West Jerusalem since 1948 and the eastern part since the 1967 war, and it annexed the eastern part in 1980. The UN Security Council rejected that annexation in Resolution 478 and called on states to move their diplomatic missions out of the city. Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in 1980 in a move not recognised by the international community. The UN Security Council rejected the annexation in Resolution 478 and called on countries to withdraw their diplomatic missions from Jerusalem. Most governments still locate their embassies in Tel Aviv. Most countries refrain from recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, citing its contested status and both the UN Charter and international law.

Recognition is limited but not zero. The United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, and the reported number of embassies in the city changes with the date of each source. A 2023 report counted four, but a later report lists seven countries currently maintain embassies in Israel's capital: the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Several other governments have announced plans to relocate. Palestinian leaders regard East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Some states have adopted a divided formula. Russia has, for example, recognized East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Golan Heights

The Golan Heights, a basalt plateau that belonged to Syria since 1944, were seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981 the Knesset extended Israeli law to the area, and the Security Council responded in Resolution 497. That resolution declares that Israel's decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights has no legal validity under international law. Israel rejects this position and retains the territory, citing its strategic height over the Galilee and its security needs.

International positions diverge on this point. In 2019 the United States formally recognised Israeli sovereignty there. The UN, the EU and most other jurisdictions have not made the same recognition and continue to treat the area as occupied territory. In the UN's view, the status of the Golan has not changed as a result of the 2019 US step.

West Bank and Gaza

Since the 1995 Oslo II agreement, the West Bank has been divided into Areas A, B and C, with different levels of Palestinian and Israeli civil and security authority. Israel has administered most of the territory since 1967. Its settlements there have been the subject of repeated UN resolutions, including Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016), which states that they have no legal validity. Israel disputes that the territory is legally occupied and argues that its status is a matter for negotiation. The Palestinian side and most UN member states treat the territory as occupied.

In Gaza, the October 2025 ceasefire under a US-backed 20-point plan created what is known as the Yellow Line. The first phase of the ceasefire under President Donald Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan established a "yellow line" separating Israeli forces from Hamas-controlled territory. The line was intended as an initial withdrawal boundary, but it has moved since then. The United Nations' humanitarian office OCHA says the restricted zone expanded to cover 64.9 percent of the Gaza Strip by June 2026, up from 53 percent earlier in the year. Israeli leadership has given its own figures. In May 2026, Prime Minister Netanyahu said the military controlled 60 percent of the Strip and was directed to expand that to 70 percent. The two sets of figures use different methods and dates, and they should be read as reported claims. Under international law, Gaza is generally treated as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and Israel's own control arrangements there remain disputed by the Palestinian leadership and by many UN bodies.

Religious, cultural and heritage landscapes

Jerusalem is the country's most symbolically dense landscape. Its Old City is sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam at once: the Western Wall and the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif sit beside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Muslim sanctuaries of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, all within walking distance of one another. Pilgrimage, religious property and tourism therefore shape how the city is built, policed and visited. The Old City and its walls are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but UNESCO assigns the site to no state, a reflection of competing claims over East Jerusalem that are treated in the territorial status section below.

The Bahá'í Holy Places in Haifa and the Western Galilee form a second major religious landscape, and they are the only inscribed sites in the country tied to a faith that emerged in the nineteenth century. The property is serial and covers the two most sacred places of the Bahá'í Faith: the Shrine of the Báb on the northern slope of Mount Carmel in Haifa, where the Báb's remains were interred in 1909, and the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahjí near Acre. Surrounding gardens, administrative buildings and monuments at several locations in Haifa and the Western Galilee are included, and the terraced gardens on Mount Carmel are a defining feature of the city's skyline. The shrines are administered as part of the Bahá'í World Centre, and the Bahjí site is open free of charge to visitors of all faiths. Inscription in July 2008 was accompanied by a management plan prepared by the Bahá'í World Centre, which is a practical instrument for controlling development around the sites.

Israel's nine World Heritage properties are all cultural, and together they span several millennia of settlement. Masada, the Judean Desert mesa where Herod built palaces and where a Roman siege ended in 73 CE, and the Old City of Acre, a Crusader-era port with intact khans and halls, were both inscribed in 2001. The White City of Tel Aviv, valued for its concentration of early modernist architecture, was inscribed in 2003. The Biblical Tels of Megiddo, Hazor and Beer Sheba and the Negev "Incense Route" towns of Avdat, Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta, which were built by Nabataean and later Roman-era settlers along trade routes, were both inscribed in 2005. The Nahal Me'arot and Wadi el-Mughara caves on Mount Carmel, which hold evidence of human evolution, were added in 2012, the Maresha and Bet Guvrin caves in 2014, and the Bet She'arim necropolis, a major Jewish burial complex of the Roman period, in 2015. Each entry is a serial or single property that depends on archaeological research, conservation and interpretation, and many are managed as national parks by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Heritage designation and tourism are significant factors in land use. Protected zones and buffer areas limit construction near Masada, the Acre walls and the Carmel caves, and heritage protection can shape planning decisions in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Tourism concentrates visitors on a small number of sites, which creates pressure on access routes, parking and conservation budgets, while also generating income for local economies in the Galilee, the Negev and the Judean Desert. Israel also maintains a tentative list of additional candidate sites, including the Crusader fortresses, Caesarea, Timna and the Hula valley route, which indicates that heritage planning extends beyond the current inscriptions. Within the broader cultural heritage framework, these sites link religious identity, UNESCO recognition and the economic use of land, and their management reflects the same tensions over land, access and sovereignty that appear elsewhere in this article.

Environmental pressures and climate change

Dead Sea decline and sinkholes

The Dead Sea's surface has fallen sharply since the mid-twentieth century, and the rate has accelerated. Reported figures differ by source: one USGS summary gives a drop of about 45 metres over 50 years, while another study counts about 35 metres between 1960 and 2018. Recent estimates put the annual fall at roughly one to 1.2 metres. Researchers mainly attribute this to the diversion of freshwater from the Jordan River for irrigation and other upstream uses, together with the evaporation ponds maintained by the mineral industries of Israel and Jordan. Some analyses also give weight to rising evaporation under climate change.

The falling level drives a hazard that is largely specific to the lake's shores. As the water recedes, fresher groundwater moves toward the shrinking basin and dissolves ancient salt layers and other soluble minerals beneath the shoreline. The dissolution leaves underground cavities that can collapse without warning, and the resulting depressions are known as sinkholes. Sinkholes first appeared in 1980 and have since spread northward along the Israeli coast from the southern end of the lake. Some are narrow but deep, others wide but shallow, and their growth can continue for years, so filling them is often only possible after they stop expanding. Reported counts exceed 6,000 around the lake, and the collapses have closed beaches, roads and resorts, including the Ein Gedi area. Because the southern basin, where Israeli resorts are located, is an artificial evaporation pool, tourism and industry are directly exposed to the same process. Experts widely regard full restoration of earlier lake levels as unlikely, so policy debate has focused on stabilising the decline.

Air quality in industrial and urban zones

Air pollution is concentrated in a few places. Haifa Bay hosts refineries, chemical plants, metal works and power stations in a small area, and it was historically associated with high levels of emissions and a greater cancer burden in nearby communities. From the late 2000s the Environmental Protection Ministry, working with local industry, introduced a monitoring and reduction programme. Major plants began switching from heavy fuels to natural gas in 2013. The ministry's 2018 report recorded a 56% fall in volatile organic compound emissions compared with 2014, with smaller declines in nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and sulphur oxides. The same report acknowledged that targets for fine particles and sulphur dioxide were missed because some plants were connected to gas pipelines late. Civil-society groups questioned parts of the data. A government-commissioned study published in 2022 estimated that industrial pollution in the bay had raised cancer risk by roughly 7–16% over the period 1967–2012, and in March 2022 the government approved a decision to phase out petrochemical activity in Haifa Bay within a decade.

In the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and Gush Dan, the main sources are road traffic, buses and trucks stuck in congestion, and aviation near the airport. These emit nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone precursors, carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Air quality monitoring is therefore organised both by industrial district and by transport corridor.

Projected climate trends and water supply

Israel's climate is warming faster than its long-term average. The Israel Meteorological Service reports that temperatures have risen by about 0.6 °C per decade over the past thirty years, and its projections point to an average increase of about 3.5 °C by the end of the century. Heat extremes are expected to become routine: a peak above 45 °C could occur every one to three years by 2100, and temperatures above 50 °C every fifteen to 25 years. Estimates for the annual rainfall decline vary. The Meteorological Service projects a 20–25% drop in both total rainfall and the number of rainy days relative to the present, while an earlier ministry estimate was closer to 10% by the end of the century. Trends in the observed record are less conclusive, because the decline over the last three decades has not yet reached statistical significance in some analyses. Alongside lower totals, short intense rain events on the coastal plain are expected to become more frequent, which raises flood risk even as seasonal water supply shrinks.

These changes bear directly on water. Prolonged heat dries soils quickly, which can trigger rapid-onset drought affecting agriculture, water resources and energy supply. Projections for the Jordan River's flow suggest a substantial reduction, and the Water Authority has linked reduced rainfall to more frequent drought events and lower levels in the Sea of Galilee. Government-led updates to national climate risk assessments, which provide regional forecasts for sectors such as agriculture, energy and infrastructure, are intended to inform adaptation planning. Further details on future scenarios are discussed in the environmental section.

Coastal erosion, sea-level rise and regulation

Most of Israel's population and infrastructure lies on the Mediterranean coastal plain, so rising sea levels, beach retreat and storm-driven flooding would affect dense settlement, ports and major roads. Sea-level rise can also push salt water further into coastal aquifers, which compounds the groundwater pressures described above. The regulatory response is spread across the Environmental Protection Ministry, planning bodies responsible for coastal and national land-use plans, and the local authorities that enforce emission limits. Environmental rules in industrial zones increasingly combine emission permits, reporting obligations and phase-out decisions, as in the Haifa Bay case.

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