Levantine corridor in the context of "Out of Africa I"

Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. Israel occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the southwest, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights in the northeast. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, the southern tip reaches the Red Sea, and the east includes the Earth's lowest point near the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is the government seat and proclaimed capital, while Tel Aviv is Israel's largest urban area and economic centre.

The Land of Israel is synonymous with Palestine or the Holy Land. In antiquity it was home to the Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Its location at a continental crossroads brought demographic shifts under various empires. Nineteenth-century European antisemitism fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland. Britain endorsed this goal in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1920. Jewish immigration and British policies intensified Arab-Jewish tensions, and the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan led to a civil war.

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories. The territories share the vast majority of their borders with Israel, with the West Bank bordering Jordan to the east and the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its de facto administrative center. Gaza was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.

Situated at a continental crossroad, the Palestine region was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. It was treading ground for the Nile and Mesopotamian armies and merchants from North Africa, China and India. The region has religious significance. The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement, supported by the United Kingdom during World War I. The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. Increased Jewish immigration led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partitioning by the United Nations was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

The history of Israel covers the Southern Levant region also known as Canaan, Palestine, or the Holy Land, which is the location of modern Israel and Palestine. From prehistory, as part of the Levantine corridor, the area witnessed waves of early humans from Africa, then the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE. The region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before vassalization by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities central to the origins of the Jews and Samaritans, as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and other religious movements. The Land of Israel has seen many conflicts, come under the control of various polities and, as a result, it has hosted a variety of ethnic groups.

In the following centuries, the Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid, and Macedonian empires conquered the region. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids vied for control during the Hellenistic period. With the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, the local Jewish population maintained independence for a century before incorporation into the Roman Republic. As a result of the Jewish–Roman wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, many Jews were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Following the advent of Christianity, adopted by the Greco-Roman world under the influence of the Roman Empire, the region's demographics shifted towards newfound Christians, who replaced Jews as the majority by the 4th century. Shortly after Islam was consolidated across the Arabian Peninsula under Muhammad in the 7th century, Byzantine Christian rule over Israel was superseded in the Muslim conquest of the Levant by the Rashidun Caliphate, to later be ruled by the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, before being conquered by the Seljuks in the 1070s. Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, the Land of Israel became the centre for religious wars between European Christian and Muslim armies as part of the Crusades, with the Kingdom of Jerusalem overrun by Saladin's Ayyubids late in the 12th century. The Crusaders expanded from their remaining outposts, then hang on to their decreasing territories for another century. In the 13th century, the Land of Israel became subject to Mongol conquest, though this was stopped by the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule it remained until the 16th century. The Mamluks were defeated by the Ottoman Empire, and the region became an Ottoman province until the early 20th century.