LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Israel
built 297 days ago
Most Arabs fled the region when the state of Israel was declared, but those who remain now make up almost one-fifth of the population of Israel. They are about two-thirds Muslim, as well as Christian and Druze. Palestinians living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fomented the riots begun in 1987, known as the intifada. Violence heightened as Israeli police cracked down and Palestinians retaliated. Continuing Jewish settlement of lands designated for Palestinians has added to the unrest.
Source:
Commitment to Israel's security and well being has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East since Israel's founding in 1948, in which the United States played a key supporting role. Israel and the United States are bound closely by historic and cultural ties as well as by mutual interests. Continuing U.S. economic and security assistance to Israel acknowledges these ties and signals U.S. commitment. The broad issues of Arab-Israeli peace have been a major focus in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. U.S. efforts to reach a Middle East peace settlement are based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and have been based on the premise that as Israel takes calculated risks for peace the United States will help minimize those risks.
Source:
Israel has the most advanced nuclear weapons program in the Middle East. David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, clandestinely established the program in the late 1950s to meet the perceived existential threat to the nascent state. The program allegedly is centered at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, outside the town of Dimona. Based on estimates of the plutonium production capacity of the Dimona reactor, Israel has approximately 100-200 nuclear explosive devices. Officially, Israel has declared that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East; ... it has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and its policy of declaratory ambiguity have led to increased tensions in current Middle East peace discussions and arms control negotiations.
Source:
Despite its tourist glitter, now returning to some degree with a period of truce between Israelis and Palestinians, Jerusalem has problems more typical of poor countries than of the modern power that Israel believes itself to be. Jerusalem is growing quickly, with nearly 18,800 babies born here in 2004, more than the next three largest Israeli cities combined. It ... has Israel's youngest population - with 53 percent under the age of 25, compared with 30 percent in lively, beachfront Tel Aviv - and widespread underemployment. All these figures hint at Jerusalem's largest quandary: the sizable number of people who are not working. Its large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews includes many who study for a living and do not enter the work force; its many Palestinians from East Jerusalem have endemic problems of joblessness, made worse by security limitations on travel. And both of these communities have high birth rates.
Source:
For the first time, Christians United for Israel, CUFI, a lobbying group Hagee established nine months ago, presented the event. It was billed as the first "national" Night to Honor Israel, an event that CUFI directors are taking to other U.S. cities. Such evenings have already been held in Berkeley, Sacramento and Pasadena, Calif.; St. Louis; Arvada, Colo.; and Carlsbad, N.M., and are scheduled for several other cities. Continue.
Source:
Born in battle after the British left Palestine in 1948, Israel has fought six wars with its Arab neighbors. To secure peace, Israel in 1982 ended its 15-year occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, returning it to Egypt. The intifada, a Palestinian rebellion that began in 1987, took hundreds of lives before peace negotiations resulted in a 1993 accord that granted Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho. The Israeli military withdrew from all West Bank cities by 1997—and ... left southern Lebanon in 2000. However, peace talks stalled; a second intifada started in September 2000, and most of the West Bank was reoccupied by 2002. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 after capturing it in 1967—Syria still claims this territory.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Israel