Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. Israel occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the southwest, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights in the northeast. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, the southernmost point reaches the Red Sea, and the east includes part of the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is the government seat and proclaimed capital, while Tel Aviv is the country's largest urban area and economic centre.

The Land of Israel is synonymous with Palestine, Judaea, or the Holy Land. In antiquity it was home to the Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Its location at a continental crossroads brought demographic shifts under various empires. Nineteenth-century European antisemitism fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland. Britain endorsed this goal in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1920. Jewish immigration and British policies intensified Arab-Jewish tensions, and the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan for Palestine led to a civil war.

Israel declared independence at the end of the British Mandate on 14 May 1948, and neighbouring Arab states invaded the next day. A 1949 armistice left Israel with territory beyond the UN plan; no Arab state was created, as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank came under Egyptian and Jordanian control. Most Palestinian Arabs fled or were displaced during the conflict, with those who stayed becoming Israel's main minority. The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world, in which the number of Jews who fled or were expelled, increased the country's population in subsequent decades. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Egyptian Sinai, and the Syrian Golan Heights, later annexing East Jerusalem and the Golan—actions that, along with settlement expansion, are considered violations of international law. Peace was signed with Egypt in 1979 (Sinai returned in 1982) and with Jordan in 1994. The 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinians established mutual recognition and limited self-rule, and the 2020 Abraham Accords normalised ties with more Arab states. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, with wars and clashes with Palestinian militant groups. Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism—along with accusations that it has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza—from human rights organisations and UN officials.

The Basic Laws of Israel establish the Knesset, a parliament elected by proportional representation. It shapes the government, led by the prime minister, and elects the largely ceremonial president. Israel has one of the Middle East's largest economies, one of Asia's highest living standards, and globally ranks 26th in nominal GDP and 14th in nominal GDP per capita. Technologically advanced, Israel allocates a larger share of its economy to research and development than any other state and is believed to possess nuclear weapons. The culture of Israel combines Jewish traditions, including those of the diaspora, with Arab influences.

The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively. The name Israel (Hebrew: Yīsrāʾēl; Septuagint Ancient Greek: Ἰσραήλ, Israēl, "El (God) persists/rules") refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he successfully wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. The earliest known archaeological artefact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late-13th century BCE).

Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the entire region was known as Palestine. Upon establishment in 1948, the country formally adopted the name State of Israel (Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el^ⓘ [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel]; Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]) after other proposed names including Land of Israel (Eretz Israel), Ever (from ancestor Eber), Zion, and Judea, were considered but rejected. The name Israel was suggested by David Ben-Gurion and passed by a vote of 6–3. In the early weeks after establishment, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of the state.

The Ubeidiya prehistoric site in northern Israel shows the presence of archaic humans around 1.5 million years ago. The second-oldest evidence of anatomically modern humans outside Africa is a 200,000-year-old fossil from Misliya Cave on Mount Carmel. The Natufian culture (c. 10,000 BCE) may be linked to the Proto-Afroasiatic language and is notable for adopting sedentism before the advent of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution.

Early references to "Canaan" and "Canaanites" appear in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian texts (c. 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as politically independent city-states. During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), large parts of Canaan formed vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt. As a result of the Late Bronze Age collapse, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control over the region collapsed. Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area. Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centered on Yahweh. They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew, known as Biblical Hebrew. Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain.