Bio
Thomas L. Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist; the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes; and the author of five best-selling books: From Beirut to Jerusalem; The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization; Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11; The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century; and Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution – And How It Can Renew America. His foreign affairs column in the Times, which appears twice a week, reports on US domestic politics and foreign policy, Middle East conflict, international economics, environment, biodiversity, and energy.
Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier is literary editor of The New Republic, a post he's held since 1983. He is the author of Kaddish, among other books. His essays on political, literary, and religious subjects have appeared in many publications. He was educated at Columbia College, Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows. His small acting career has included a part on "The Sopranos."
Encyclopædia Britannica Articles
- Arab
Any member of the Arabic-speaking peoples native to the Middle East and North Africa. Before the spread of Islam in the 630s, the term referred to the largely nomadic Semitic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula; it came to apply to Arabic-speaking peoples from Africa's Mauritanian and Moroccan coasts east to Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and south to The Sudan after their acceptance of Islam. Traditionally, some Arabs are desert-dwelling pastoral nomads (see Bedouin), whereas others live by oases and in small, isolated farming villages. While most Arabs are Muslims, some are Christian. The term has also been used in a political sense by Arab nationalists to describe a greater sociolinguistic or ethnic ideal (“the Arab nation”). See also Pan-Arabism.
- Arab on britannica.com
- Israel
Country, Middle East, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Area: 8,357 sq mi (21,643 sq km). Population (2009 est.): 7,128,000 (includes population of Golan Heights and east Jerusalem; excludes population of the West Bank). Capital (proclaimed): Jerusalem (the city's status as capital has not received wide international recognition). Jews constitute some four-fifths of the population and Arabs about one-fifth. Languages: Hebrew, Arabic (both official). Religions: Judaism; also Islam, Christianity. Currency: new Israeli sheqel (NIS). Israel can be divided into four major regions: the Mediterranean coastal plain in the west; a hill region extending from the northern border into central Israel; the Great Rift Valley, containing the Jordan River, in the east; and the arid Negev, occupying nearly the entire southern half of the country. Its major drainage system is the interior basin formed by the Jordan River; Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) provides water to much of the country's agricultural land. Israel has a mixed economy based largely on services and manufacturing; exports include machinery and electronics, diamonds, chemicals, citrus fruits, vegetables, and textiles. Its population is nine-tenths urban and is concentrated largely in the Mediterranean coastal plain and around Jerusalem. It is a multiparty republic with one legislative house, the Knesset; its head of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. The record of human habitation in Israel (see Palestine) dates to the Paleolithic Period. Efforts by Jews to establish a national state there began in the late 19th century. Britain supported Zionism and in 1923 assumed political responsibility for what was then called Palestine. Migration of Jews to Palestine, which increased during the period of Nazi persecution, led to deteriorating relations with Arabs. In 1947 the UN voted to partition the region into separate Jewish and Arab states. The State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, and Egypt, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq immediately declared war on it. Israel won that war (see Arab-Israeli wars) as well as the 1967 Six-Day War, in which it occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and east Jerusalem. Another war with its Arab neighbours followed in 1973, but the Camp David Accords led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from that country, and in late 1987 an uprising broke out among Palestinians of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (see intifadah). Peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states and Palestinians began in 1991. Israel and the PLO agreed in 1993 to a five-year plan to extend self-government to the Palestinians of the occupied territories. Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. Israeli soldiers and a Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, clashed throughout the 1990s. Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down amid violence that claimed hundreds of lives. In an effort to stem the fighting, Israel in 2005 withdrew its soldiers and settlers from parts of the West Bank and from all of the Gaza Strip, which came under Palestinian control.
- Israel on britannica.com
© 2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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