Israel

Stamps issued: 1948-PRESENT

Republic in western Asia, comprising the former British mandated territory of Palestine. Under the British mandate, Jewish and Arab elements in Palestine came into bitter conflict over the future of the nation. The Jews wished to create a homeland for their people, while the Arabs advocated the creation of a secular Palestinian state in which the rights of the Jewish minority would be respected. On May 14, 1948, British troops were withdrawn from Palestine, and the Jewish National Council immediately proclaimed the state of Israel in areas of the country under Jewish control. Israel was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors but defeated their forces, emerging from the 1949 cease-fire with its territory approximately 50 percent larger than that initially allocated for it by the U.N. partition plan. In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and barred Israeli shipping. Israel invaded Egypt and occupied Gaza and the Sinai. After U.N. intervention, Israel withdrew. In 1967, after a year of Arab guerrilla raids from Jordan and bombardment of Israeli settlements from Syria, war again broke out. Israel defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War, occupying the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and Sinai and Gaza from Egypt.

Precedent Country:

PALESTINE BRITISH MANDATE
Stamps issued: 1880-1960

In 1918, British and Arab forces occupied the Turkish Asian provinces bordering on the eastern Mediterranean. Britain's military administration issued stamps inscribed "E.E.F." (Egyptian Expeditionary Forces) that were used in Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and in parts of Cilicia and northeast Egypt.

In 1920, British civil administration was established in Palestine, the southernmost of the formerly Turkish provinces bordering on the Mediterranean. In 1923, the League of Nations formally placed the territory under a British mandate. The Zionist Movement brought increasing Jewish immigration into Palestine, causing an increasingly bitter rivalry between Jewish Palestinians seeking to recreate the ancient Jewish homeland and Arab Palestinians, who wished to create an independent Arab Palestinian state. In 1948, Britain partitioned the country between the two groups and withdrew its forces, precipitating the first Arab-Israeli War.

Narrative by Linn's Stamp News