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Ancient History:
Bible Story:
The Old Testament of the Bible (specifically the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, The Torah , namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) describe a history of Jews.
It was written 4-10 centuries after most of the events and based on oral tradition. Current scholarship and archeology has a more information based on recent research and archiology.

A series of events described in the Bible Story , includes.

• Around 2000 BCE God promises Abraham (Abram) who lived in Ur, 300 km southeast of Baghdad in lower Mesopotamia, the land of Cannan (Promised Land), which is where modern Israel is today.
  
• Abraham goes thru Syria,what is now Lebanon, down the River Jordan to Hebran.
• Abrham's descendants move to Egypt because of a famine (1876 BCE)
• Egyptian Slavery (1550)
• Moses leads them out of Egypt (1446 BCE - this date is debatable)
• Joshua takes Jericho, Cannan (1400 BCE)
  Canaan, Judea, Israel, Syria (of the Persian Empire) and Palestine are different names for overlapping territories which included Jerusalem and Samaria.
• David the king Begins rule (1010 BCE)
• Israel splits into 2 kingdoms (930 BCE)
  1. S. Kingdom, Judah, Jerusalem
  2. N. Kingdom, Israel, Samaria
• The Torah (or Pentateuch) was written by around 4 authors (Not Moses) in the 6th - 4th centuries BCE; (It was oral before then.)
• From here on history is pretty well documented.
• Babylonian exile (586 BCE)
• Jews Ruled by Ptolemies (A Egyptian dynasty with Greek rulers)(301 BCE)
• Roman Occupation of Palestine (64 BCE)
• First Jewish Revolt, Jerusalem destroyed ( 66-73 AD)
• Second Jewish Revolt, (132-135 AD)
  Romans responded by expelling most Jews from Judea. This expulsion marked the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, or the dispersion of Jews around the world.
  See Israel-Palestine Demographics

Since its declaration of independence in May 1948, the State of Israel has fought various wars with its neighbouring Arab states, and Palestinian Arab uprisings.

Brief History after WW I
The land which would become Israel was for centuries part of the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire. After World War One and the collapse of the empire, territory known as Palestine - the portion of which west of the River Jordan was also known as the land of Israel by Jews - was marked out and assigned to Britain to administer by the victorious allied powers (soon after endorsed by the League of Nations).

The terms of the mandate entrusted Britain with establishing in Palestine "a national home for the Jewish people", so long as doing so did not prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities there.

The 1930s - saw an escalation in Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine.

Britain handed the problem to the United Nations, which in 1947 proposed partitioning Palestine into two states - one Jewish, one Arab - with the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area to become an international city. The plan was accepted by Palestine's Jewish leadership but rejected by Arab leaders.

in May 1948 Israel declared independence. Five Arab armies attacked believing they could destroy the State. The UN had no troops and no plan to enforce its partition proposals. Israel fought back and survived a year of fighting with a larger area. Armistice lines were drawn up in 1949 on the assumption they would be temporary, leaving the West Bank under Jordanian occupation and Gaza occupied by Egypt.

The Jewish leadership in Palestine declared the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, the moment the British mandate terminated, though without announcing its borders.
The following day Israel was invaded by five Arab armies, marking the start of Israel's War of Independence. The fighting ended in 1949 with a series of ceasefires, producing armistice lines along Israel's frontiers with neighbouring states, and creating the boundaries of what became known as the Gaza Strip (occupied by Egypt) and East Jerusalem and the West Bank (occupied by Jordan).

in 1967, when the conflict known as the Six Day War left Israel in occupation of the Sinai peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and most of the Syrian Golan Heights - effectively tripling the size of territory under Israel's control.

Is Palestine a Country?:
Apparently Not. Its current (2023) status in the UN is a "non-member state".

Recent:
The US and occasionally Canada and Australia are the only UN members who consistently vote against raising Palestine's status.
In 2012, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine when it upgraded the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. observer status to non-member state.
The UN allowed the Palestinians to act more like a full U.N. member state during meetings in 2019 when they will chair the group of 77 developing nations. he United States, Israel and Australia voted against the move, which won 146 votes in favor. There were 15 abstentions and 29 countries didn’t vote.
"We cannot support efforts by the Palestinians to enhance their status outside of direct negotiations. The United States does not recognize that there is a Palestinian state,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen told the General Assembly."

The biggest change to Israel's frontiers came in 1967, when the conflict known as the Six Day War left Israel in occupation of the Sinai peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and most of the Syrian Golan Heights - effectively tripling the size of territory under Israel's control. Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem - claiming the whole of the city as its capital - and the Golan Heights.
Hamas in Gaza has increasingly been a source of conflict since the three-week armed conflict with Israel during the winter of 2008–2009.

Hamas, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 on three pillars: religion, charity and the fight against Israel – although arguably its earliest enemy was Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s rival Palestinian faction.
It is headquartered in Gaza.
After the 2006 Palestinian elections in which Hamas-backed candidates won the largest share of the vote, it seized power.
The United States and European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist organization because of its armed resistance against Israel, which has included suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
See "What is Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza?" | The Guardian

The border around the Gaza Strip has grown into a semi-permanent structure with security fences and concrete walls set deep into the ground to prevent tunnelling - after Hamas militants launched a series of raids from tunnels into Israel in 2014. However, Hamas militants again breached the security barriers above ground in the biggest attack of its kind on 7 October, 2023.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, using rockets, paragliders, motorboats, and ground infiltrators to target civilian and military sites across the country.
The massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli citizens the vast majority of them civilians. They also took hostiges.
It was the largest and most deadly attack by Hamas, a Palistian terrorist group, in it's history.
Israel formally declared war against Hamas as it battles to push militants off its soil.
They imposed a "complete siege" on the Gaza Strip, cutting off the water supply, food and electricity

As of December 5th the death toll reached 17,000 in Gaza .

The attack also sparked fears of a wider regional war, as Iran and Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, expressed their support for Hamas and threatened to join the fight if Israel expanded its attacks to Lebanon or Syria