For the Jewish people the tiny sliver of land between the Jordan River and the eastern Mediterranean coast has always been their nation’s birthplace and homeland, the fountainhead of the Hebrew language and Jewish civilisation, thought and culture. It is from this land that the Jews were dispersed among the nations and, as enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Jewish people, ‘impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland.