Editing Israelis (section)

==History==
{{Expand section|date=October 2009}}
[[File:Declaration of State of Israel 1948.jpg|thumb|[[David Ben-Gurion]] proclaiming the [[Israeli Declaration of Independence]] in 1948]]

The term "Israelite" refers to members of the Jewish tribes and polities of the Iron Age known from the [[Hebrew Bible]] and extra-biblical historical and archaeological sources. The term "Israeli", by contrast, refers to the citizens of the modern State of Israel, regardless of them being Jewish, Arabs, or of any other ethnicity.

The modern State of Israel revived an old name known from the Hebrew Bible and from historical sources, that of the Iron Age Kingdom of Israel. The Bible differentiates between a period of tribal rule among the "children of Israel"; a [[Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)|Kingdom of Israel]] uniting all twelve biblical Israelite tribes, with the common capital known as the [[City of David (historic)|City of David]] (Jerusalem); and a period in which the northern tribes split away to form an independent [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Kingdom of Israel]], while the southern tribes became part of the [[Kingdom of Judah]]. Archaeological research only partially agrees with the biblical narrative.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}

According to the biblical account, the United Monarchy was formed when there was a large popular expression in favour of introducing a monarchy to rule over the previously decentralised Israelite tribal confederacy.{{citation needed|date=December 2015}} Increasing pressure from the [[Philistines]]{{Citation needed|date=April 2011}} and other neighboring tribes is said by the Bible to have forced the [[Israelites]] to unite as a more singular state.{{citation needed|date=December 2015}}

The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed in {{circa|720 BCE}} by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its population was forcibly restructured through imperial policy. The southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE), inherited by the [[Achaemenid Empire]], conquered by [[Alexander the Great]] (332 BCE), ruled by the resulting Hellenistic empires, from which it regained authonomy and eventually independence under the [[Hasmoneans]], conquered by the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, ruled by the client kings of the [[Herodian dynasty]], and finally transformed into a Roman province during the first century CE. Two Jewish revolts, the second one ending in 135 CE, led to the large-scale decimation of the Jewish population in Judea and the end of any type of Jewish territorial self-rule in the [[southern Levant]] for many centuries to come.

Palestine was part of the [[Ottoman Empire]] from 1516 until it was [[Mandatory Palestine|taken by British forces]] in 1918. The British establishment of colonial political boundaries allowed the Jews to develop autonomous institutions such as the [[Histadrut]] and the Knesset.<ref>Migdal, p. 135</ref> The resulting influx of Jewish immigrants, as well as the creation of many new settlements, was crucial for the functioning of these new institutions in what would, on 14 May 1948, become the [[State of Israel]].<ref>Migdal, p. 136</ref> By 1960, 25% of Israelis were Holocaust survivors.<ref>{{Cite book |last= Patt |first= Avinoam J. |year= 2024 |title= Israel and the Holocaust |location= London |publisher= Bloomsbury Academic |isbn= 978-1-350-18834-1}} See p.&nbsp;44. Caution is needed, however, on the definition used here of ''survivor''; see the relevant endnote, n.17 on p.&nbsp;188.</ref>