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| Capital | Tel Aviv-Yafo | ||||
| Largest city | Jerusalem | ||||
| Other cities | Haifa, Ashkelon, Nazareth, Eilat, Acre, Tiberias, Jericho, Bethlehem | ||||
| Language official |
Hebrew, Arabic, English | ||||
| others | Russian, Armenian, Yiddish, German, Amharic, Polish, Spanish, French, Ladino | ||||
| Area | 28,165 km² | ||||
| Population | 14,020,000 | ||||
Israel is a partially recognised nation in Western Asia. It borders Syria and Lebanon to the North, the Suez Canal Zone and Mediterranean Sea to the West and Hejaz to the East.
History[]
Zionism and Aliyah[]
In 1897, an Austro-Hungarian journalist and playwright named Theodor Herzl founded a movement called Zionism. It advocated for Jews to recreate the nation of Israel. Despite its radical ideas combining religion and politics, it did not meet much opposition at the time. A few took the idea to heart and moved to the Turkish governorate of Palestine. They were actually welcomed as a new community. At this point most of the Jewish immigrants in Ottoman Palestine were elders who wanted to live out their final days in the Holy land. None made any contact with the preexisting Jewish population, called the Yishuv.
Then the first world war started. Most Jews at the time lived in Russia, which was at war with Germany. The British created the Jewish Legion: five divisions made of Jewish volunteers recruited to fight the Turkish. Many of them would give their lives during the Gallipoli campaign. They would have their time to shine during the Jordan valley campaign. After the battle of Jaffa they captured the city of Jerusalem from the Turkish, a strong symbolic victory for Zionism.
Middle East after Sykes-Picot
When world war one started, the major powers knew that they needed significant territorial gains after the war to justify it to their people. The Levant, with oil and holy sites, was a good possibility. After the war the British and French divided the Ottoman Empire with each other according to the Sykes-Picot agreement. The mandate of Palestine was created as a British territory. Jewish immigration continued to the point where the Arabs no longer saw them as pilgrims, but as an invading force. Most of the land was thinly populated land owned by Arab absentee landlords in Damascus or Beirut, and the Jews paid far more than it was worth for it. When the land was already inhabited the new Jewish owners evicted the Arab or Turkish peasants. The settlers began to irrigate the arid regions to create new agriculturally productive regions.
Some of the new arrivals were part of Socialist groups in Europe and created Socialist Communes called Kibbutzim (singular: Kibbutz). The Socialist Workers Party was formed by Jewish Communists from Poland and its members were mainly Soviet immigrants, members of trade Unions and the inhabitants of Kibbutzim. Some Arabs joined but soon left to form their own party. Gaza, Galilee, Hebron and Negev became major strongholds of Communism in Mandatory Palestine. When the British ceded nearby Transjordan to Hejaz, anti-British sentiment increased. Many of these people went on to join Communist groups.
In 1921, members of the Communist party had a street fight in Jaffa (1/3 Jewish) with members of another party. The fight happened near a Mosque so Arabs came to protect it just in case. The Arabs had strong anti-communist sentiment due to the fact that Communists push for State Atheism. When the two groups met they started to fight. By the end 95 people were dead. When the British created a report about the incident some Zionists saw it as pro-Arab so they began to arm themselves in preparation for an insurgency. The Irgun, Lehi and Haganah formed as anti-British rebel groups.
World War II[]
As the Nazis rose to power in Germany many people, especially Jews, saw what was coming. After Kristallnacht a large wave of Germans Jews made Aliyah. When World War Two broke out the British kept Israel open. In 1941 Turkey invaded the British mandate, quickly occupying the entire region. Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was highly anti-Semitic and a fanatical supporter of Turkish Islamofascism, combining Fascistic race war with Jihad. Al-Husseini became dictator of the Turkish puppet state of Palestine. Many Arabs, frustrated by Zionism, became collaborators, such as the Arab Higher Committee, Central Committee of National Jihad in Palestine, Society for the Defense of Palestine, Black Hand militia, Kataeb Party or the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. Soon they received orders from Ankara to "Cleanse the land of all who are not Mu`min (Sunni Muslims), Turks, Arabs, Bushnaks (Bosnians), or Cerkesleri (Circassians)". The Anti-British groups became Partisans after many settlers were massacred. The Communists formed their own Partisan group as well, the Maki. It is still useful to note that many Arab Muslims and Christians still strongly opposed the ideology of the Axis powers and many joined the new resistance groups, called fasa'il (الفصائل).
Despite tens of thousands of Turkish, Palestinian and other Axis troops, anti-partisan operations were mostly unsuccessful. Britain supported the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi while the Maki received support from the Soviets.
In 1944 British and Commonwealth forces liberated the region from Axis occupation.
First Arab-Israeli war and Palestine War[]
The Jewish Partisans still controlled the nation, the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi united to form the United Zionist Republic of Israel (UZRI) in 1945, while the Communist and Arab Christian Partisans still controlled Galilee, West Bank, Negev, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem. On top of that the Black Hand collaborators remained in control of some territory around Nazareth. Civil war seemed imminent until the Arab league invaded Israel in 1946.
Egypt advanced quickly, taking Gaza and they continued with the goal of taking Tel Aviv. In the east, the elite Hejazi troops beat every Israeli force that was sent against them, while the Knights of Saint Thomas (An Arab Christian partisan group) turned their rifles against the Jews that they had once fought alongside. After the Battle of Ramallah, the Hejazis and their Christian allies encircled Jerusalem and put it under siege, although they were defeated in a battle inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Jerusalem. The Egyptian and Hejazi armies then partitioned the Negev. While that was happening, Syria took the Galilee and Lebanon took a strip of land near its border. The Black Hand worked closely with Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi forces.
All Communist areas of Israel were now under Arab occupation and many Maki fighters fled to UZRI territory. The Maki were promised a position in the Knesset on the condition that they get Israel alliances with the Warsaw Pact members, notably Czechoslovakia and the USSR. New Soviet and Czech weapons allowed Israel to beat back the Egyptians despite heavy casualties. They recaptured the Negev by linking up with Maki partisans but failed to make many gains against Hejaz or Syria.
After the war the Israeli-Lebanese border was established at the Green Line. Israel came out of the conflict with less territory than OTL but more dead and a economy that collapsed soon after.
In 1948 Israeli forces sacked 600 Palestinian villages, forcing 700,000 Palestinians (80%) to flee. This event is known as the Palestine war, but in Arabic it is called "Al-Nakba" (النكبة), the catastrophe.
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| Anthem | "ולנין צעיר עד מאוד" | |||||||||
| Language | Hebrew, Arabic, Russian | |||||||||
| Government | Marxist-Leninist One-Party Socialist State | |||||||||
| Area | 954.10 km² | |||||||||
| Population | 574,820 | |||||||||
| Annexation | to Israel | |||||||||
| date | 1959? | |||||||||
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Communist Maki partisans eventually gained independence from Syria in 1954, following the assassination of Syrian president Adib Shishakli by Maki agents. They established the Galilee Soviet Republic (GSR) and soon received recognition from Israel and most Communist states.
Talks of reunification began almost immediately, with the issue turning into an intense debate. Some Israelis feared more Communist influence in Israel while some people in the GSR felt that Israel had betrayed them by letting Syria keep the territory.
Ultimately, two facts forced Israel to accept unification with the GSR. Warsaw Pact weapons won the war and the economy had collapsed, many saw the economic policies of Communism as worth a shot.
By this time many Mizrahi Jews had arrived in Israel following their expulsion from Arab/Muslim nations after the war.