The geography of Israel is very diverse, with desert conditions in the south, and snow-capped mountains in the north. Israel is located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia. It is bounded to the north by Lebanon, the northeast by Syria, the east by Jordan and the West Bank, and to the southwest by Egypt. To the west of Israel is the Mediterranean Sea, which makes up the majority of Israel's coastline, and the Gaza Strip. Israel has a small coastline on the Red Sea in the south.
Israel's area is approximately , which includes of inland water. Israel stretches from north to south, and its width ranges from at its widest point to at its narrowest point. It has an Exclusive Economic Zone of .
The Israeli-occupied territories include the West Bank, , East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, . Geographical features in these territories will be noted as such. Of these areas, Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, an act not recognized by the international community.
Southern Israel is dominated by the Negev desert, covering some , more than half of the country's total land area. The north of the Negev contains the Judean Desert, which, at its border with Jordan, contains the Dead Sea which, at is the lowest point on Earth. The inland area of central Israel is dominated by the Judean Hills of the West Bank, whilst the central and northern coastline consists of the flat and fertile Israeli coastal plain. Inland, the northern region contains the Mount Carmel mountain range, which is followed inland by the fertile Jezreel Valley, and then the hilly Galilee region. The Sea of Galilee is located beyond this region and is bordered to the east by the Golan Heights, a plateau bordered to the north by the Israeli-occupied part of the Mount Hermon massif, which includes the highest point under Israel's control, a peak of . The highest point in territory internationally recognized as Israeli is Mount Meron at .
Location and boundaries
Israel lies to the north of the equator around 31°30' north latitude and 34°45' east longitude. It measures from north to south and, at its widest point , from east to west. At its narrowest point, however, this is reduced to just . It has a land frontier of and a coastline of . It is ranked 153 on the List of countries and outlying territories by total area.
Prior to the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine, there was no clear-cut definition of the geographical and territorial limits of the area known as "Palestine." On the eve of World War I it was described by Encyclopædia Britannica as a "nebulous geographical concept."An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917–1929, Gideon Biger, St. Martin's Press and Magnes Press, 1994, pp.40–41. The Sykes-Picot Treaty in 1916 divided the region that later became Palestine into four political units.An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917–1929, Gideon Biger, St. Martin's Press and Magnes Press, 1994, pp.46–52. Under the British Mandate for Palestine, the first geo-political framework was created that distinguished the area from the larger countries that surrounded it. The boundary demarcation at this time did not introduce geographical changes near the frontiers and both sides of the border were controlled by the British administration.An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917–1929, Gideon Biger, St. Martin's Press and Magnes Press, 1994, pp.67–69.
Modern Israel is bounded to the north by Lebanon, the northeast by Syria, the east by Jordan and the West Bank, and to the southwest by Egypt. To the west of Israel is the Mediterranean Sea, which makes up the majority of Israel's coastline and the Gaza Strip. Israel has a small coastline on the Red Sea in the south. The southernmost settlement in Israel is the city of Eilat whilst the northernmost is the town of Metula. The territorial waters of Israel extend into the sea to a distance of twelve nautical miles measured from the appropriate baseline.
The statistics provided by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics include the annexed East Jerusalem and Golan Heights, but exclude the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The population of Israel includes Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The route of the Israeli West Bank barrier incorporates some parts of the West Bank.
NameStatus Description Population (thousands) Area (km2) Israelis (incl. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs in Israel proper, and incl. Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied territories) Cumulative Total Palestinians (incl. non-Israeli Palestinians residing legally in Israel) Cumulative Total Area Cumulative Total Israel (Green Line) Area sovereign to Israel since 1948 6,674Figure calculated from other sourced figures in table 6,674 100–120 100–120 20,582 20,582 East Jerusalem Occupied and subject to Israeli law since 1967. Formal legislation on 1980 (see Jerusalem Law) 455 7,129 225 (double counted) 225 336 20,918 Golan Heights Occupied since 1967, subject to Israeli law since 1981 (see Golan Heights Law) 42 7,172 n.a. n.a. (Syrians) 1,154 22,072 Seam Zone (West Bank) Area between the Green Line and the Israeli West Bank barrier. Occupied in 1967 188 7,359 35 260 200 22,272 Other Israeli settlements and IDF Military Areas (West Bank Area C) Other Israeli settlements (not in East Jerusalem or the Seam Zone) and areas in the West Bank directly controlled by the IDF. Occupied in 1967 57 7,473 115 375 2,961 25,233 Palestinian civil control (West Bank Areas A+B) Palestinian National Authority civil controlled area. Subject to "joint" military control with the IDF. Occupied in 1967 0 7,473 2,311 2,686 2,143 27,376 Gaza Strip Palestinian governed area. Israel controls airspace, maritime border and its own border with Gaza. Occupied in 1967, unilaterally disengaged in 2005, declared a foreign entity in 2007. 0 7,473 1,552 4,238 360 27,736
Physiographic regions
Israel is divided into four physiographic regions: the Mediterranean coastal plain, the Central Hills, the Jordan Rift Valley and the Negev Desert.
Coastal plain
The Israeli Coastal Plain stretches from the Lebanese border in the north to Gaza in the south, interrupted only by Cape Carmel at Haifa Bay. It is about wide at Gaza and narrows toward the north to about at the Lebanese border. The region is fertile and humid (historically malarial) and is known for its citrus orchards and viticulture. The plain is traversed by several short streams. From north to south these are: Kishon, Hadera, Alexander, Poleg, and Yarkon. All of these streams were badly polluted, but in the last ten years much work has been done to clean them up. Today the Kishon, Alexander and Yarkon again flow year round, and also have parks along their banks.
Geographically, the region is divided into five sub-regions. The northernmost section lays between the Lebanese border, the Western Galilee to the east, and the sea. It stretches from Rosh HaNikra in the north and down to Haifa, Israel's third-largest city. It is a fertile region, and off the coast there are many small islands. Along the Mount Carmel range is Hof HaCarmel, or the Carmel Coastal Plain. It stretches from the point where Mount Carmel almost touches the sea, at Haifa, and down to Nahal Taninim, a stream that marks the southern limit of the Carmel range. The Sharon Plain is the next section, running from Nahal Taninim (south of Zikhron Ya'akov) to Tel Aviv's Yarkon River. This area is Israel's most densely populated. South of this, running to Nahal Shikma, is the Central Coastal Plain, also known as the Western Negev. The last segment is the Southern Coastal Plain, which extends south around the Gaza Strip. It is divided into two – in the north, the Besor region, a savanna-type area with a relatively large number of communities, and south of it the Agur-Halutza region, which is very sparsely populated.
Central hills
Inland (east) of the coastal plain lies the central highland region. In the north of this region lie the mountains and hills of Upper Galilee and Lower Galilee, which are generally in height, although they reach a maximum height of at Mount Meron. South of the Galilee, in the West Bank, are the Samarian Hills with numerous small, fertile valleys rarely reaching the height of . South of Jerusalem, also mainly within the West Bank, are the Judean Hills, including Mount Hebron. The central highlands average in height and reach their highest elevation at Har Meron, at , in Galilee near Safed. Several valleys cut across the highlands roughly from east to west; the largest is the Jezreel Valley (also known as the Plain of Esdraelon), which stretches from Haifa southeast to the valley of the Jordan River, and is across at its widest point.
Jordan Rift Valley
East of the central highlands lies the Jordan Rift Valley, which is a small part of the -long Syrian-East African Rift. In Israel the Rift Valley is dominated by the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee (an important freshwater source also known as Lake Tiberias and Lake Kinneret), and the Dead Sea. The Jordan, Israel's largest river (), originates in the Dan, Baniyas, and Hasbani rivers near Mount Hermon in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and flows south through the drained Hula Basin into the freshwater Lake Tiberias. Lake Tiberias is in size and, depending on the season and rainfall, is at about below sea level. With a water capacity estimated at , it serves as the principal reservoir of the National Water Carrier (also known as the Kinneret-Negev Conduit). The Jordan River continues its course from the southern end of Lake Tiberias (forming the boundary between the West Bank and Jordan) to its terminus in the highly saline Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is in size and, at below sea level, is the lowest surface point on the earth. South of the Dead Sea, the Rift Valley continues in the Arabah (Hebrew "Arava", Arabic "Wadi 'Arabah"), which has no permanent water flow, for to the Gulf of Eilat.
Negev Desert
The Negev Desert comprises approximately , more than half of Israel's total land area. Geographically it is an extension of the Sinai Desert, forming a rough triangle with its base in the north near Beersheba, the Dead Sea, and the southern Judean Mountains, and it has its apex in the southern tip of the country at Eilat. Topographically, it parallels the other regions of the country, with lowlands in the west, hills in the central portion, and the Arava valley as its eastern border.
Unique to the Negev region are the craterlike makhteshim cirques; Makhtesh Ramon, Makhtesh Gadol and Makhtesh Katan. The Negev is also sub-divided into five different ecological regions: northern, western and central Negev, the high plateau and the Arabah Valley. The northern Negev receives of rain annually and has fairly fertile soils. The western Negev receives of rain per year, with light and partially sandy soils. The central Negev has an annual precipitation of and is characterized by impervious soil, allowing minimum penetration of water with greater soil erosion and water runoff. This can result in rare flash floods during heavy rains as water runs across the surface of the impervious desert soil. The high plateau area of Ramat HaNegev stands between above sea level with extreme temperatures in summer and winter. The area gets of rain each year, with inferior and partially salty soils. The Arabah Valley along the Jordanian border stretches from Eilat in the south to the tip of the Dead Sea in the north and is very arid with barely of rain annually.
Geology
Israel is divided east–west by a mountain range running north to south along the coast. Jerusalem sits on the top of this ridge, east of which lies the Dead Sea graben which is a pull-apart basin on the Dead Sea Transform fault.