Ministry of Interior (Israel) in the context of "African immigration to Israel"

The Russian language is spoken natively by a considerable proportion of the population of Israel, mostly by immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union from 1989 onwards. It is a major foreign language in the country, and is used in many aspects of life. Russian is the third most common native language in Israel after Modern Hebrew and Arabic. Government institutions and businesses often also provide information and services in Russian, and has effectively become semi-official in some areas with high concentration of Russian-speaking immigrants. The Russian-speaking population of Israel is the world's third-largest population of Russian native-speakers living outside the former Soviet Union territories after Germany and the United States, and the highest as a proportion of the population. As of 2013, 1,231,003 residents of the Post-Soviet states have immigrated to Israel since the fall of the Soviet Union. As of 2017, there are up to 1.5 million Russian-speaking Israelis out of total population of 8,700,000 (17.25%).

This article lists the 78 localities in Israel that the Israeli Ministry of Interior has designated as a city council. It includes occupied East Jerusalem but excludes the four Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are designated as cities.

The list is based on the current index of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Within Israel's system of local government, an urban municipality can be granted a city council by the Interior Ministry when its population exceeds 20,000. The term "city" does not generally refer to local councils or urban agglomerations, even though a defined city often contains only a small portion of an urban area or metropolitan area's population.

In Israel, marriage can be performed only under the auspices of the religious community to which couples belong, and inter-faith marriages performed within the country are not legally recognized. However, marriages performed abroad or remotely via videoconference must be registered by the government. Matrimonial law is based on the millet or confessional community system which had been employed in the Ottoman Empire, including what is now Israel, was not modified during the British Mandate of the region, and remains in force in the State of Israel.

Israel recognizes only marriages under the faiths of Jewish, Muslim, and Druze communities, and ten specified denominations of Christianity. Marriages in each community are under the jurisdiction of their own religious authorities. The religious authority for Jewish marriages performed in Israel is the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical courts. The Israeli Interior Ministry registers marriages on presentation of the required documentation. Israel's religious authorities — the only entities authorized to perform weddings in Israel — are not permitted to marry couples where both partners do not have the same religion or if they have the same sex; the only way for people of different (or no) faith to marry is by converting to the same religion. However, civil, interfaith, and same-sex marriages entered into abroad are recognized by the state; as a consequence Israeli residents not permitted to marry in Israel sometimes marry overseas, often in nearby Cyprus, or since 2022, remotely via videotelephony with an officiant in Utah, which a lower court and subsequently the Supreme Court de facto recognized in 2023.

In Israel, Arabic is spoken natively by over 20 percent of the Israeli population, predominantly by Arab citizens of Israel, but also by Jews who arrived in Israel from Arab countries. Some refer to the modern Hebrew-influenced Levantine Arabic vernacular as the "Israeli Arabic dialect" or colloquially as Aravrit, a portmanteau of the Hebrew words Ivrit (lit. 'Hebrew') and Aravit (lit. 'Arabic').

Among Israeli Arabs in central Israel, the vernacular spoken is similar to Palestinian Arabic, while the Negev Bedouin traditionally speak their own dialect of Arabic. The dialects in the northern part of the country merge with southern Lebanese Arabic. Many first-generation Mizrahi Jews and Maghrebi Jews (i.e. those who made aliyah to Israel from the Arab world) can still speak Judeo-Arabic dialects, while their Israel-born descendants have overwhelmingly adopted Hebrew as their first (or sole) language.