Israel
country in West Asia
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, its southern tip reaches the Red Sea, and to the east is 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, also called Palestine or the Holy Land, was home to the ancient Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and Hasmonean Judea. Located near continental crossroads, its demographics shifted under various empires. 19th-century Jewish nationalism, alongside European antisemitism, fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with an overwhelming Arab majority. The movement gained British support with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. After World War I, Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine. British rule and Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust intensified Arab-Jewish tensions with Arab opposition to Zionism driven largely by concerns of displacement and dispossession.
“Israel” enters the record as country in West Asia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Israel, country and West can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Israel” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Israel, country and West provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q801. VIAF identifies the subject as 146498911. The Library of Congress control number is n79003285. Authority coordinates are 31.000, 35.000. 3 of 11 selected statements include explicit references; 8 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Israel”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Israel primary sources, Israel archive and Israel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Israel”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Israel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.