Israel
Coins of Israel Jerusalem Specimen Set 1970
Israel Government Coins and Medals Corporation
6 Coins in Presentation Album with Information about the Coins
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Israel,
is a
sovereign state in
Western Asia. The country is situated in the
Middle East at the southeastern shore of the
Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the
Gulf of Aqaba in the
Red Sea. It shares land borders with
Lebanon to the north,
Syria in the northeast,
Jordan on the east, the
Palestinian territories (which are claimed by
the
State of Palestine and are partially controlled
by Israel) comprising the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively,
and
Egypt to the southwest. It contains
geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel’s
financial and
technology center is
Tel Aviv while
Jerusalem is both the self-designated capital
and
most populous individual city under the
country’s governmental administration. Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is
internationally unrecognized.
On
29 November 1947, the
United Nations General Assembly recommended the
adoption and implementation of the
Partition Plan for
Mandatory Palestine. This UN plan specified
borders for new Arab and Jewish states and also specified an area of
Jerusalem and its environs which was to be
administered by the UN under an international regime. The end of the
British Mandate for Palestine was set for
midnight on 14 May 1948. That day,
David Ben-Gurion, the executive head of the
Zionist Organization and president of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine,
declared “the establishment of a
Jewish state in
Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of
Israel,” which would start to function from the termination of the mandate. The
borders of the new state were not specified in the declaration. Neighboring Arab
armies
invaded the former Palestinian mandate on the
next day and fought the Israeli forces. Israel has since fought
several wars with neighboring Arab states, in
the course of which it has
occupied the West Bank,
Sinai Peninsula (1956-57, 1967-82), part of
Southern Lebanon (1982-2000), Gaza Strip
(1967-2005; still considered occupied after
2005 disengagement) and the
Golan Heights. It extended its laws to the
Golan Heights and
East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank.
Efforts to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict have not resulted
in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both
Egypt and
Jordan have successfully been signed. Israel’s
occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is the world’s
longest military occupation in modern times.
The
population of Israel, as defined by the
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was
estimated in 2016 to be 8,476,600 people. It is the world’s only
Jewish-majority state, with 6,345,400 citizens,
or 74.9%, being designated as
Jewish. The country’s second largest group of
citizens are denoted as
Arabs, numbering 1,760,400 people (including
the Druze and most East Jerusalem Arabs). The great majority of Israeli Arabs
are Sunni
Muslims, with smaller but significant numbers
of
semi-settled
Negev Bedouins; the rest are
Christians and
Druze. Other far smaller minorities include
Maronites,
Samaritans,
Dom people and
Roma,
Black Hebrew Israelites, other
Sub-Saharan Africans,
Armenians,
Circassians,
Vietnamese boat people, and others. Israel also
hosts a significant population of non-citizen foreign workers and asylum seekers
from Africa and Asia.
In its
Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a
Jewish and democratic state. Israel is a
representative democracy with a parliamentary
system,
proportional representation and
universal suffrage. The
prime minister serves as head of government and
the
Knesset serves as the
legislature. Israel is a
developed country and an
OECD member, with the
35th-largest
economy in the world by nominal gross domestic
product as of 2015. The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is
among the most educated countries in the world with the one of the highest
percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has
the
highest standard of living in the Middle East
and the
fourth highest in Asia, and has
one of the highest life expectancies in the
world.
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