Israel Dossier
Since 1948, Israel has survived repeated wars — and signed peace every time a partner was willing. A factual, dated, sourced timeline.
Back to the Israel dossierEach event is summarized in two sentences, without polemics, with its source.
On May 14, 1948, immediately after Israel's declaration of independence, the armies of five Arab states invaded the territory of the former British Mandate. Fighting ended with the armistice agreements concluded between February and July 1949.
Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, « The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 » — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war (consulté le 2026-07-05)
In late October 1956, after the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the blockade of the Straits of Tiran, Israel entered the Sinai, followed by a Franco-British intervention. Under U.S. and Soviet pressure, Israel withdrew from Sinai in March 1957.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « Arab-Israeli wars » — https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars (consulté le 2026-07-05)
From June 5 to 10, 1967, after the blockade of the Straits of Tiran and the massing of Egyptian troops in Sinai, Israel fought Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In six days Israel captured the Sinai, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « Arab-Israeli wars » — https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars (consulté le 2026-07-05)
After 1967, Egypt waged a war of attrition along the Suez Canal through artillery duels and raids, most intense from March 1969 to mid-1970. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect in August 1970.
Source: Tsahal (IDF), « What Was the War of Attrition? (1967–1970) » — https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/wars-and-operations/the-war-of-attrition/ ; Encyclopaedia Britannica — https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-Attrition-1969-1970 (consultés le 2026-07-05)
On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur day, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack in the Sinai and on the Golan. After heavy losses and an Israeli military turnaround, a ceasefire took hold with UN Resolution 340 on October 25, 1973.
Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, « The 1973 Arab-Israeli War » — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/arab-israeli-war-1973 (consulté le 2026-07-05)
On June 6, 1982, after the attempted assassination of its ambassador in London and years of PLO attacks from Lebanon, Israel invaded southern Lebanon and besieged Beirut. Israel then maintained a security zone in South Lebanon until its withdrawal in May 2000.
Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, « The Reagan Administration and Lebanon, 1981–1984 » — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1981-1988/lebanon (consulté le 2026-07-05)
A Palestinian uprising that began in December 1987 in the Gaza Strip and then the West Bank: riots, stone-throwing, strikes and attacks, met with repression and a heavy human toll on both sides. It ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « intifada » — https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada (consulté le 2026-07-05)
Beginning in September 2000 after the failure of the Camp David II summit, it was marked by waves of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and large-scale Israeli military operations. It is generally considered to have ended in 2005, after the Sharm el-Sheikh summit (February 2005).
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « intifada » — https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada (consulté le 2026-07-05)
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah killed Israeli soldiers and abducted two in a cross-border raid, triggering 34 days of war. Hostilities ceased on August 14, 2006 under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (August 11, 2006).
Source: Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU, résolution S/RES/1701 (2006) — https://docs.un.org/en/S/RES/1701(2006) (consulté le 2026-07-05)
From December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, Israel conducted an air and then ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas rocket fire on its southern towns. An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting.
Source: RAND Corporation, « From Cast Lead to Protective Edge: Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza » — https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1888.html (consulté le 2026-07-05)
From November 14 to 21, 2012, eight days of Israeli strikes on Hamas rocket capabilities and of rocket fire on Israel, until an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on November 21, 2012.
Source: RAND Corporation, « From Cast Lead to Protective Edge: Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza » — https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1888.html (consulté le 2026-07-05)
From July 8 to August 26, 2014, fifty days of war between Israel and Hamas: airstrikes, rocket fire and a ground operation against attack tunnels. An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire was reached on August 26, 2014.
Source: RAND Corporation, « From Cast Lead to Protective Edge: Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza » — https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1888.html (consulté le 2026-07-05)
From May 10 to 21, 2021, eleven days of fighting: over 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel and Israeli strikes on Hamas infrastructure, until the ceasefire of May 21, 2021.
Source: American Jewish Committee (AJC), « Timeline: Key Events in the Israel-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict » — https://www.ajc.org/IsraelConflictTimeline (consulté le 2026-07-05)
War triggered by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the deadliest in Israel's history, followed by a major Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip against Hamas and for the release of the hostages. A ceasefire and hostage-release agreement took effect in October 2025.
Source: Gouvernement d'Israël, « Swords of Iron: War in the South – Hamas' Attack on Israel » — https://www.gov.il/en/pages/swords-of-iron-war-in-the-south-7-oct-2023 (référencé le 2026-07-05)
From October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened a front on Israel's north; over a year of cross-border fire displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides, before a major escalation in September-October 2024. A cessation-of-hostilities agreement took effect on November 27, 2024.
Source: Texte de l'accord du 26-27 novembre 2024 (PA-X, Univ. d'Édimbourg) — https://www.peaceagreements.org/media/documents/IL_LB_241126_Announcement_of_a_Cessation_of_Hostilities_and_Related_Commitments.pdf ; CNN, 27/11/2024 — https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hezbollah-ceasefire-deal-gaza-war-11-27-24-intl-hnk (consultés le 2026-07-05)
On April 13-14, 2024, Iran launched about 300 drones and missiles at Israel, 99% of which were intercepted by Israel and a coalition of partners; on October 1, 2024, about 200 Iranian ballistic missiles were fired. Israel responded with targeted strikes on April 19 and October 26, 2024.
Source: Al Jazeera, 14/04/2024 — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/14/iran-attacks-israel-with-over-300-drones-missiles-what-you-need-to-know ; CNN, 13/04/2024 — https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/13/middleeast/iran-drones-attack-israel-intl-latam (consultés le 2026-07-05)
From June 13 to 24, 2025, open war between Israel and Iran: Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, Iranian ballistic-missile retaliation against Israel. A ceasefire mediated by the United States and Qatar took effect on June 24, 2025.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « 12-Day War (June 2025) » — https://www.britannica.com/event/12-Day-War ; Al Jazeera, 24/06/2025 — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/24/israel-and-iran-agree-ceasefire-amid-waves-of-missiles (consultés le 2026-07-05)
The same timeline also contains peace: Egypt, Jordan, Oslo, the Abraham Accords.
Under UN auspices and the mediation of Ralph Bunche (1950 Nobel Peace Prize), Israel signed armistices with Egypt (Feb 24), Lebanon (Mar 23), Jordan (Apr 3) and Syria (Jul 20, 1949). These agreements set the "Green Line", the reference until 1967.
Source: Bibliothèque numérique de l'ONU, « Armistice agreements between Israel and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt 1949 » — https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/413258 (consulté le 2026-07-05)
The Camp David Accords, negotiated September 5-17, 1978 between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat under Jimmy Carter's auspices, led to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed on March 26, 1979 — the first peace between Israel and an Arab state. Begin and Sadat received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, « Camp David Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process » — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/camp-david (consulté le 2026-07-05)
On September 13, 1993, Israel and the PLO signed a Declaration of Principles in Washington establishing mutual recognition and interim Palestinian self-government. The Oslo II Agreement (Taba, September 28, 1995) divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C.
Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, « The Oslo Accords and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process » — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo (consulté le 2026-07-05)
On October 26, 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty at the Arava (Wadi Araba) border crossing, ending 46 years of formal state of war and settling border and water-sharing issues. It was Israel's second peace with an Arab state.
Source: ONU Peacemaker, « Treaty of Peace Between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 26 October 1994 » — https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/default/files/document/files/2024/05/il20jo941026peacetreatyisraeljordan.pdf (consulté le 2026-07-05)
On September 15, 2020, at the White House, Israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the Abraham Accords declaration, later joined by Morocco (December 2020) and Sudan (January 2021). The first Arab-Israeli normalizations since 1994.
Source: U.S. Department of State, « The Abraham Accords » — https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords ; texte signé du 15/09/2020 — https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Abraham-Accords-signed-FINAL-15-Sept-2020-508-1.pdf (consultés le 2026-07-05)
The signed agreements are not the whole story: there are also the territories handed back for nothing in return, and the offers that were never answered. Here is what was conceded or proposed, with the dates, the figures — and what followed.
Under the treaty with Egypt, Israel withdrew from the whole of Sinai — some sixty thousand square kilometres, three times its own area. The Etzion and Eitam airbases were dismantled, the Alma oil fields Israel had brought into production were handed back, and Yamit and the surrounding settlements were evacuated in April 1982. It is the largest territory Israel has ever given up, and that peace has held for more than forty years.
On 24 May 2000, after eighteen years, Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon with no agreement granted in return. On 16 June the United Nations Secretary-General certified that the withdrawal was complete behind the line the UN had drawn. Hezbollah stayed where it was, and armed.
Source: Nations unies — FINUL, historique du retrait israélien certifié le 16 juin 2000
At Camp David in July 2000 Ehud Barak put before Bill Clinton the first Israeli offer of a Palestinian state. On 23 December Clinton set out his parameters: a state on ninety-four to ninety-six per cent of the West Bank, with a land swap of one to three per cent, Palestinian sovereignty over the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and over the esplanade of the mosques. Israel accepted the framework. Clinton wrote in his memoirs that Yasser Arafat's reservations placed him outside it.
Source: Texte des paramètres Clinton, 23 décembre 2000 ; Bill Clinton, « My Life » (2004)
At Taba in January 2001 the Israeli negotiators went further still: all of the Gaza Strip and about ninety-two per cent of the West Bank, with a three per cent swap. Negotiators on both sides said it was the closest the two ever came. The Israeli election a month later ended it.
Source: « Non-paper » Moratinos sur les pourparlers de Taba, janvier 2001 (document ONU)
Ariel Sharon decided it alone, against much of his own camp. Between 15 and 22 August 2005 Israel evacuated twenty-one settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank: more than eight thousand people. Two thirds left with compensation; the rest were carried out, house by house, by fourteen thousand of their own soldiers and police. From 28 August the forty-eight graves of the Gush Katif cemetery were opened and the dead reburied in Israel, their families sitting a second day of mourning. The last soldier left the Strip on 12 September. The operation cost Israel about two billion dollars, of which 3.8 billion shekels went in compensation. Nothing was asked in return and no agreement was signed.
Source: Wikipedia — Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip ; Yeshivat Har Etzion, « 13 August 2005 »
Israel left the greenhouses standing. About three thousand of them were bought for fourteen million dollars by donors gathered by James Wolfensohn, the Quartet's envoy, who put in five hundred thousand of his own, and handed to Palestinian cooperatives so that production could go on without a break. They were stripped by looters within days, Palestinian police looking on and in places joining in. Israel had decided not to demolish the synagogues: crowds burned them, and Palestinian Authority bulldozers levelled what was left in under a day.
Source: NPR, 15 août 2005 ; NBC News, « Looters strip Gaza greenhouses », septembre 2005
Rocket and mortar fire from Gaza did not stop; it grew. Two thousand eight hundred and seven rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel in 2007, three thousand one hundred and three in 2008. On 25 June 2006 a squad came under the border at Kerem Shalom, killed two soldiers and took Gilad Shalit, held for five years; Israel answered inside Gaza with Operation Summer Rains, and in 2011 exchanged one thousand and twenty-seven prisoners for him. One necessary clarification: the war of the summer of 2006 that is usually remembered was a different front — Hezbollah, from Lebanon, from 12 July.
In September 2008 Ehud Olmert laid a map in front of Mahmoud Abbas: ninety-three point seven per cent of the West Bank, five point eight per cent of Israeli land in exchange, a corridor to Gaza for the rest, and the holy basin of Jerusalem under an international trusteeship. By Olmert's account, Abbas asked to take the map away to study it; Olmert would not let it leave the room. They never met again.
Source: Haaretz, 12 août 2008 ; The Media Line — carte dévoilée par Ehud Olmert
This list assigns no blame and concludes nothing about anyone's intentions. It establishes one thing, checkable line by line: what Israel gave back, dismantled or offered, and when. What others did with it is reported to the same standard of sourcing.
Diplomatic recognition is the other face of the peace agreements: what states say about Israel when they sign nothing.
169 of the other 192 UN member states recognise Israel, seven of them having severed or suspended diplomatic relations. Twenty-three do not recognise it. The denominator is 192, not 193: Israel cannot recognise itself.
Seven entities outside the UN also recognise Israel: Taiwan since 1949, the Holy See, the Cook Islands, Niue, Kosovo, Palestine since the 1993 Oslo letters, and Somaliland since 26 December 2025, Israel being the first state in the world to recognise it. A seat at the UN does not make a state: the 1933 Montevideo Convention holds that the political existence of a state is independent of recognition by the others.
The Comoros and the Maldives are counted but too small to be drawn at this resolution. The figures come from the data, never from the number of coloured shapes.
Source: Wikipedia — International recognition of Israel, 2026-08-14
Israel has never been the first to launch an attack or a war against a state that recognised it.
The reverse does not hold.
Israel has been attacked by states that recognised it, or that had severed relations with it. In October 1973 Cuba, which has recognised Israel since 1949 and has never withdrawn it, sent troops and equipment to Syria against Israel, one month after severing diplomatic relations. Iran had relations with Israel from 1950; it severed them and withdrew recognition in 1979, and has attacked Israel directly since. Recognition has therefore never protected anyone from Israel, having nothing to protect them from; nor has it stopped anyone from attacking Israel.
Checked conflict by conflict against the seventeen wars listed above, matching each state adversary to its status on the date of the fighting. Non-state adversaries fall outside the question: recognition is an act between states.
The case usually raised is Entebbe, the one time Israeli force reached the army of a state that recognised Israel: Ugandan soldiers killed, MiGs destroyed on the ground, 4 July 1976. It falls outside the test at both ends, and it was Uganda that struck first. Its soldiers guarded the hostages, and on 29 June it was they who opened the wall through which the Israeli passengers were separated from the rest: the armed forces of one state sorted the nationals of another. Uganda had severed diplomatic relations on 30 March 1972, four years earlier. And the sequence shows who started it: Air France Flight 139 was hijacked on 27 June by the PFLP-EO and the Revolutionary Cells, Uganda received the aircraft, its soldiers guarded the hostages, Amin visited them, and on 29 June it was Ugandan soldiers who opened the wall through which the Israeli passengers were separated from the rest. The hijackers threatened to start killing them on 1 July; Israel acted seven days after the hijacking. Also on the record: the UN Secretary-General called the raid a serious violation of the sovereignty of a member state, and the Security Council adopted no resolution.
This finding assigns no blame, and it is published without a conclusion about causes. Recognition often follows peace rather than preceding it: Egypt recognised Israel by signing, in 1979, Jordan in 1994, the Abraham Accords countries in 2020. Part of the correlation is therefore built in. Readers draw their own conclusions.
The established facts of the Hamas attack — the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Every fact is sourced.
About 1,200 people were killed in Israel on October 7, 2023, most of them civilians — the official figure given by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to AFP and Reuters in November 2023, after victim identification.
Source: MAE israélien via AFP/Reuters ; The Times of Israel, 12/11/2023 — https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-revises-death-toll-from-oct-7-hamas-assault-dropping-it-from-1400-to-1200/ ; NPR, 11/11/2023 — https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1212458974/israel-revises-death-toll-hamas-attacks-oct-7
251 people — men, women, children and the elderly, including many foreign nationals — were abducted and taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.
Source: Décompte officiel israélien repris par AFP, Reuters et The Washington Post — https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/hamas-hostages-israel-war-gaza/ (consulté le 2026-07-05)
At the Nova music festival near Re'im, Israeli police announced on November 17, 2023 a toll of 364 killed and 40 abducted; the IDF investigation published in 2025 raised the final toll to 378 killed, including 344 civilians.
Source: Police israélienne (17/11/2023) et enquête de Tsahal (2025) ; The Times of Israel — https://www.timesofisrael.com/death-count-from-music-festival-massacre-on-oct-7-up-to-over-360/ (consulté le 2026-07-05)
At Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the hardest hit, 101 civilians and 31 security personnel were killed and 32 people taken hostage — about one resident in ten died, according to the IDF investigation published in July 2024.
Source: Enquête de Tsahal (juillet 2024) ; The Times of Israel — https://www.timesofisrael.com/failure-and-slaughter-idfs-beeri-probe-shows-armys-colossal-errors-residents-bravery/ (consulté le 2026-07-05)
At Kibbutz Kfar Aza, about 62 people were killed and 19 abducted; at Kibbutz Nir Oz, 117 of roughly 400 residents were killed or abducted — nearly a quarter of the community.
Source: The Times of Israel, 06/10/2024 — https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-year-after-oct-7-kfar-aza-and-nir-oz-are-mostly-empty-with-residents-in-anguish/ (consulté le 2026-07-05)
About 6,000 attackers from Gaza, led by Hamas, breached the border fence at multiple points on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah — the first large-scale invasion of Israeli territory since 1948.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, « October 7 attack » — https://www.britannica.com/event/October-7-attack (consulté le 2026-07-05)
October 7, 2023 was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and the deadliest in Israel's history — a finding echoed notably by the USC Shoah Foundation, which is recording survivors' testimonies.
Source: CNN / USC Shoah Foundation, 09/11/2023 — https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/us/shoah-foundation-records-october-7-testimonies/index.html ; The Times of Israel — https://www.timesofisrael.com/was-hamass-attack-on-saturday-the-bloodiest-day-for-jews-since-the-holocaust/
On October 7, Hamas came to murder Jews: 1,195 people killed in a single day (non-Jewish victims were collateral) and 251 taken hostage. Measured against Israel's Jewish population (~7.2 million), that is 0.0166% of the targeted people killed in one day. Pick your country to understand what that represents, at equal population.
Method: the October 7 casualty ratios measured against Israel's JEWISH population (1,195 killed, 251 hostages, 7.18M Jews — Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, end 2023), applied to each country's total population (UN 2023 estimates). The attack targeted Jews; non-Jewish victims were collateral.
To go further, the official sites and reference documentation:
Gouvernement d'Israël — portail « Swords of Iron »
Official Israeli government portal on the Swords of Iron war: information, services and official communications.
Gouvernement d'Israël — « War in the South: Hamas' Attack on Israel »
Official page describing the October 7, 2023 attack and its aftermath.
Ministère israélien des Affaires étrangères
Official Ministry of Foreign Affairs site (mfa.gov.il), source of the official October 7 figures given to AFP and Reuters.
Nova Exhibition — « October 7th, 06:29 AM »
Official traveling memorial exhibition of the Nova festival community (Tribe of Nova Foundation), shown in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London…
Oct7Map — « Mapping the Massacres »
Interactive map documenting, site by site, the attacks of October 7, 2023.
Hamas-Massacre.net
Visual documentation database of the October 7 atrocities (Nova festival massacre, attacks on homes, abductions). Warning: extremely graphic content.
What eighty years of attacks have cost a country of ten million people. The tolls are the Israeli state's own — the National Insurance Institute for civilians, the Ministry of Defense for the military.
civilians murdered in hostile actions, counting back to 1851
A year later, on the eve of Memorial Day 2026, that total stands at 5,313. The count includes 934 killed since 7 October 2023, of whom 778 on the day itself.
civilians murdered since the founding of the State
The 726 deaths between this figure and the one before are those of the years 1851-1947, before there was a state to count them.
Source: Institut national d'assurance (Bituah Leumi), 29 avril 2025
fallen in the service of the country, counted from 1860
The Ministry of Defense states that this count includes all soldiers, police and members of the security services who died during the year, in action or through accident, illness or suicide. The military bereaved circle numbers 59,583 people, 7,165 of them added since 7 October 2023.
Source: Ministère israélien de la Défense, via The Times of Israel, 16 avril 2026
casualties of hostile actions recognised by the State
Of whom 75,995 since 7 October 2023 — more than four fifths of the whole total in under two years.
Source: Institut national d'assurance (Bituah Leumi), 29 avril 2025
disability pension claims filed
24,212 were recognised for psychological injury, 1,169 for physical injury and 1,048 for both. The invisible wound is twenty times more common than the other.
Source: Institut national d'assurance (Bituah Leumi), 29 avril 2025
Attacks in Israel, attacks on Jews elsewhere and the pogroms, in one chronology. Filter it, and the counter follows.
A selection, not a census: there have been thousands of attacks in Israel, and claiming to list them all would be false. What is kept here are the attacks with the heaviest tolls. The figure that truly answers "how many victims" is the state's own, given above: 4,503 civilians murdered and 89,712 recognised casualties.
These attacks struck Jews and Israelis outside Israel, because they were Jews or Israelis. The list is documented, not exhaustive: it keeps the best-established lethal attacks and leaves out those that killed no one. The pogroms sit in the same register under their own filter, so that they are visible without being conflated. The Shoah is not there: six million deaths in an industrial genocide are not a row in a list of attacks, and the Antisemitism dossier is given over to it.
including 1 episodes with no numeric toll, counted separately
The counter adds up the rows of this register, which is a selection and not a census.
There is no single official count since 1948, and this site does not manufacture one. Here are the documented tallies, each with its period and whoever established it.
rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza between the Israeli withdrawal and 7 October
≈ 2.7 a day, across the whole period — that is one projectile every 8.8 hours
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
projectiles fired at Israel in 2007, then in 2008 — two years with no declared war
≈ 8.1 a day, across the whole period — that is one projectile every 3 hours
projectiles fired at Israel in under three months
≈ 146.3 a day, across the whole period
Source: The New York Times
Hezbollah launches from Lebanon in the first three months, on a second front
≈ 16.5 a day, across the whole period — that is one projectile every 1.5 hours
Source: Centre BESA, 7 janvier 2024
11 September 2001 killed 2,977 people in the United States in one day. That is the benchmark everyone carries.
On that scale, Israel's toll since 1948 would be
151,214
And the single day of 7 October 2023 would be
40,297
that is 13.5 times 11 September
44 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants
Source: Bureau central des statistiques d'Israël, à la veille de Roch Hachana 2025 · U.S. Census Bureau, 1er juillet 2025 · Institut national d'assurance (Bituah Leumi), 29 avril 2025
The calculator does not compare one country's terrorism toll with another's: every state counts by its own definition, and a comparison of incompatible definitions falls apart in one sentence. It performs a single operation you can check in your head: Israel's toll multiplied by the ratio of the two populations. The denominator is Israel's total population, not its Jewish population alone, because the victims include Arab citizens, Druze, Bedouin and foreign workers. This page does not say what another country would have done in Israel's place: nobody can know that. It gives the order of magnitude and leaves the reader to conclude.
A single country — about 0.12% of humanity (~10 million people) — draws more condemnation from international institutions than any other nation on Earth. The figures below are dated and sourced.
In 2024 the UN General Assembly adopted 17 resolutions singling out Israel — versus 6 for the entire rest of the world combined. From 2015 to 2024 it passed 173 resolutions against Israel and 80 against all other countries together.
Source: UN Watch — décompte des résolutions de l'AGNU 2024 (unwatch.org, déc. 2024)
Israel is the only country in the world assigned a permanent standing item on the UN Human Rights Council's agenda (“Item 7”), debated at every single session — unlike Iran, Syria or North Korea. Since 2006 the Council has adopted about 85 resolutions against Israel, more than any other state. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself criticised this singling-out.
Source: UN Watch ; World Jewish Congress ; déclaration du secrétaire général de l'ONU (2016)
As of 2026, about 28 UN member states still do not recognise the very existence of the State of Israel — the large majority Muslim-majority countries (16 Arab League members and 10 other members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation).
Source: Wikipedia — International recognition of Israel (2026)
While international institutions focus overwhelmingly on Israel, far deadlier conflicts draw only a fraction of that scrutiny: Syria — 350,000 to over 600,000 dead since 2011; Yemen — about 377,000 dead since 2014; Sudan — from tens of thousands to an estimated 150,000 since 2023; Boko Haram in Nigeria — over 35,000 killed and more than 2 million displaced since 2009.
Source: ONU OHCHR ; Lancet / LSHTM (2024) ; ACLED ; Global Centre for R2P
About 21% of Israel's citizens are Arab (~2.1 million in 2024), a majority of them Muslim — full citizens who vote, sit in the Knesset and serve on the Supreme Court. And the Palestinian population has grown continuously: Gaza rose from roughly 240,000 in 1950 to over 2 million; some 15 million Palestinians live in the world today — a demographic trajectory hard to reconcile with the repeated charge of extermination.
Source: Bureau central des statistiques d'Israël (2024) ; Bureau central palestinien des statistiques (2024)
Israel's military issues advance warnings before strikes — phone calls, text messages, leaflets and non-lethal “roof-knocking” — and, through COGAT, has coordinated the entry of hundreds of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, food, water and medical supplies into Gaza. Few armies in the world take comparable steps to warn an enemy's civilians.
Source: Tsahal (idf.il) ; COGAT / Gaza Aid Data (gaza-aid-data.gov.il)
Israel is about 22,000 km² — the size of a handkerchief. Pick a country to see how many times larger it is than Israel.
Israel's area: ~22,072 km² (borders including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights). National areas: standard estimates, in km².
The world's only Jewish state occupies a tiny fraction of the land held by the Arab-Muslim and Christian worlds.
Israel is the only Jewish-majority state. The totals are the summed national land areas of the member states of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC); the Christian figure is an approximate sum of Christian-majority countries. Sources: Arab League (~13.15M km²) and OIC (~31.6M km²) — worlddata.info; national areas — standard estimates.
Every civilian death is a tragedy, whoever the victim. The point is not to rank suffering, but to document a measurable disproportion: the sheer volume of attention, condemnation and institutional machinery aimed at one small country, compared with conflicts many times deadlier.
Every statement below is attributed and sourced to a primary authority. Israel has signed peace whenever a partner was willing — see the peace agreements above.
On 14 May 1948 Israel declared independence; the next day, 15 May 1948, the regular armies of five Arab states — Egypt, Transjordan (Jordan), Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — invaded, having rejected the UN Partition Plan (General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947).
Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones (2020)
Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States (Foreign Terrorist Organization since 8 October 1997), the European Union (extended to the whole movement by Common Position 2003/651/CFSP of 12 September 2003), the United Kingdom (proscribed in its entirety on 26 November 2021, having earlier proscribed its military wing in 2001), and Canada (listed under the Criminal Code since 2002).
Source: U.S. Dept of State FTO list (1997); UK Home Office (2021); EU Council (2003); Public Safety Canada
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States since 8 October 1997, is listed on the European Union's terrorist list (since 27 December 2001), and is a listed terrorist entity in Canada.
Source: U.S. Dept of State FTO list (1997); EU Council (2001); Public Safety Canada
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States since 8 October 1997, appears on the European Union's terrorist list, and is a listed terrorist entity in Canada.
Source: U.S. Dept of State FTO list (1997); EU Council; Public Safety Canada
The Hamas Covenant issued on 18 August 1988 calls for the destruction of the State of Israel (its Article 7 states that the movement will fight until "Islam will obliterate" Israel) and contains explicitly antisemitic passages; a 2017 Hamas document restated rejection of the State of Israel while presenting its language in softer terms and did not revoke the 1988 charter.
Source: The Avalon Project, Yale Law School — Hamas Covenant 1988
In May 1967 Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled the UN Emergency Force from Sinai (19 May), massed troops in Sinai, and on 22–23 May closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping — an act Israel had declared would be a casus belli; in a 26 May 1967 speech Nasser stated that "our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel." Israel launched a preemptive strike on 5 June 1967, opening the Six-Day War.
Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones; Nasser speech, 26 May 1967
On 6 October 1973, during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, beginning the 1973 Arab–Israeli (Yom Kippur) War.
Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones
The 1968 Palestinian National Charter of the PLO declared the establishment of Israel "entirely illegal" (Article 19) and named armed struggle "the only way to liberate Palestine" (Article 9); in 1993 Oslo letters PLO chairman Yasser Arafat recognized Israel's right to exist and renounced terrorism, and the PLO stated the charter provisions inconsistent with that commitment were superseded. The slogan "from the river to the sea," understood by bodies such as the U.S. State Department and civil-rights groups as denying Israel's existence within any borders, has no single dated authoritative origin and is used by various parties with contested meanings.
Source: The Avalon Project, Yale Law School — Palestinian National Charter (1968)
This section documents who launched or provoked the wars and the aims stated by states, organizations and named leaders — not a claim about any people. The site's purpose is understanding through facts, to build bridges and reduce hatred.