Names of the Levant homeland proper with the northwest coastal region of the Levant, centered at Phoenician cities such as Ugarit, Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Today, this place is usually equated with modern Lebanon and the coast of modern Syria. Also there is a modern town in Turkey called "Finike" which is thought to have derived by the Lycians who traded with Phoenicians in ancient times. Israel: Judea: The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were Iron Age Semitic nations spanning from Edom to Assyria. Today the modern State of Israel controls much of the former territory of the ancient Israelite/Judean kingdoms. According to the
History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel On 14 May 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel". The armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq marched into the territory of what had just ceased to be the British Mandate, thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israel Defense Forces repulsed the Arab armies, and extended Israel's borders beyond the original Resolution 181(II) boundaries for the proposed Jewish state. By