Names of the Levant attributed to the region's easterly location on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The ancient Egyptians called the Levant "Reṯenu". Ancient Egyptian texts (c. 14th century BCE) called the entire coastal area along the Mediterranean Sea between modern Egypt and Turkey "rṯnw" (conventionally "Reṯenu"). Reṯenu was subdivided into four regions: "Kharu" ("ḥꜣ-rw"), North Syria, "Amurru", South Syria (the land of the biblical Amorites), "Rmnn", Lebanon, "Ysriar" ("ysrỉꜣr"), Israel, and "Ḏahy" ("ḏꜣhy";"Ṯahi", "Ḏahi"), the region of Palestine (comprising the southern and central Levant—west of the Jordan River and south of Lebanon—and all the kingdoms, territories, tribes, etc., that existed within that
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