- published: 20 Aug 2015
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; Hebrew: צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל Tzva Hahagana LeYisra'el (help·info), lit. "Defensive Army for Israel"; Arabic: جيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي, Jaish Al-Difaa Al-Isra'ili), commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal (צה"ל), are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel. The IDF is headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Defense Minister of Israel; Rav Aluf Benny Gantz has served as Chief of Staff since 2011.
An order of Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion on 26 May 1948, officially set up the Israel Defense Forces as a conscript army formed out of the paramilitary group Haganah, incorporating the militant groups Irgun and Lehi. The IDF served as Israel's armed forces in all the country's major military operations—including the 1948 War of Independence, 1951–1956 Retribution operations, 1956 Sinai War, 1964–1967 War over Water, 1967 Six-Day War, 1968 Battle of Karameh, 1967–1970 War of Attrition, 1973 Operation Spring of Youth, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1976 Operation Entebbe, 1978 Operation Litani, 1982 Lebanon War, 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict, 1987–1993 First Intifada, 2000–2005 Second Intifada, 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, 2006 Lebanon War, 2008–2009 Gaza War and others. The number of wars and border conflicts in which IDF was involved in its short history, makes it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world. While originally the IDF operated on three fronts—against Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Egypt in the south—after the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, it has concentrated its activities in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, including the First and the Second Intifada.
The Palestinian people, (Arabic: الشعب الفلسطيني, ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī) also referred to as Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون, al-Filasṭīniyyūn), are descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine over the centuries. Today, Palestinians are largely culturally and linguistically Arab. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. In this combined area, as of 2004, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.6 million), the majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2.3 million versus close to 500,000 Jewish Israeli citizens which includes about 200,000 in East Jerusalem), and 16.5% of the population of Israel proper as Arab citizens of Israel.
Throughout the aforementioned combined area, many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, three-quarters of a million in the West Bank,, and about a quarter of a million in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, making up what is known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half of these are stateless refugees lacking citizenship in any country. About 2.6 million of the diaspora population live in neighboring Jordan where they make up approximately half the population, 1.5 million live between Syria and Lebanon, a quarter of a million in Saudi Arabia, with Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the Arab world.