United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, called for the exchange of land for peace. Since then, many of the attempts to establish peace in the region have referred to 242. The resolution was written in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter, under which resolutions are recommendations, not orders.

A coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, fought Israel in the Yom Kippur or October War in October 1973. The conflict eventually led to the secret peace talks that yielded two agreements after 12 days. This picture from March 26, 1979, shows Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, his US counterpart Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after signing the accords in Washington.

The US and the former Soviet Union came together to organize a conference in the Spanish capital. The discussions involved Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians — not from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) — who met with Israeli negotiators for the first time. While the conference achieved little, it did create the framework for later, more productive talks.

The negotiations in Norway between Israel and the PLO, the first direct meeting between the two parties, resulted in the Oslo I Accord. The agreement was signed in the US in September 1993. It demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from West Bank and Gaza Strip and a self-governing, interim Palestinian authority be set up for a five-year transitional period. A second accord was signed in 1995.

US President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to the retreat in July 2000 to discuss borders, security, settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Despite the negotiations being more detailed than ever before, no agreement was concluded. The failure to reach a consensus at Camp David was followed by renewed Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada.

The Camp David negotiations were followed first by meetings in Washington and then in Cairo and Taba, Egypt — all without results. Later the Arab League proposed the Arab Peace Initiative in Beirut in March 2002. The plan called on Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders so that a Palestinian state could be set up in the West Bank and Gaza. In return, Arab countries would agree to recognize Israel.

The US, EU, Russia and the UN worked together as the Middle East Quartet to develop a road map to peace. While Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas accepted the text, his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon had more reservations with the wording. The timetable called for a final agreement on a two-state solution to be reached in 2005. Unfortunately, it was never implemented.

In 2007, US President George W. Bush hosted a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to relaunch the peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took part in talks with officials from the Quartet and over a dozen Arab states. It was agreed that further negotiations would be held with the goal of reaching a peace deal by the end of 2008.

In 2010, US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to and implement a 10-month moratorium on settlements in disputed territories. Later, Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to relaunch direct negotiations to resolve all issues. Negotiations began in Washington in September 2010, but within weeks there was a deadlock.

A new round of violence broke out in and around Gaza in late 2012. A ceasefire was reached between Israel and those in power in the Gaza Strip, which held until June 2014. The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014 resulted in renewed violence and eventually led to the Israeli military operation Protective Edge. It ended with a ceasefire on August 26, 2014.

Envoys from over 70 countries gathered in Paris, France, to discuss the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu slammed the discussions as "rigged" against his country. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the summit. "A two-state solution is the only possible one," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at the opening of the event.

Despite the year's optimistic opening, 2017 brought further stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. A deadly summer attack on Israeli police at the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, sparked deadly clashes. Then US President Donald Trump's plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem prompted Palestinian leader Abbas to say "the measures ... undermine all peace efforts."

US President Donald Trump presented a peace plan that freezes Israeli settlement construction but retains Israeli control over most of the illegal settlements it has already built. The plan would double Palestinian-controlled territory but asks Palestinians to cross a red line and accept the previously constructed West Bank settlements as Israeli territory. Palestinians reject the plan.

Plans to evict four families and give their homes in East Jerusalem to Jewish settlers led to escalating violence in May 2021. Hamas fired over 2,000 rockets at Israel, and Israeli military airstrikes razed buildings in the Gaza Strip. The international community, including Germany's Foreign Ministry, called for an end to the violence and both sides to return to the negotiating table.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, future first prime minister of Israel, declares the state's independence, outlining the Jewish story: "The people kept faith with (the land) throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." It was the birth of an internationally recognized Jewish homeland.

While the controversial idea of a God-given land for Jews has biblical roots, the Holocaust was a close, powerful backdrop for the significance of Israel's founding. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews across Europe, and those who survived the concentration camps endured expulsion and forced labor. The above photo shows survivors of the Auschwitz camp following liberation.

Directly after Israel's founding, it was attacked by troops from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq - among others. Israel pushed back and expanded its control over 77% of Palestinian territory. Some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. "Nakba" is what Palestinians call this event. The war encapsulated the still unresolved Mideast conflict sparked in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration.

These land collectives, known as kibbutzim in the plural, were established across Israel following independence. Many were run by secular or socialist Jews in an effort to realize their vision of society.

Tensions with its Arab neighbors erupted in the Six-Day War in June 1967. With a surprise attack, Israel is able to swiftly defeat Egypt, Jordan and Syria, bringing the Arab-populated areas of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights under Israeli control. Victory leads to occupation — and more tension and conflict.

Israel's settlement policy worsens the conflict with Palestinians. Due to development and expansion of Jewish areas on occupied Palestinian land, the Palestinian Authority accuses Israel of making a future Palestinian state untenable. Israel has largely ignored the international community's criticism of its settlement policy, arguing new construction is either legal or necessary for security.

In winter 1987, Palestinians begin mass protests of Israel's ongoing occupation. Unrest spreads from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The uprising eventually wound down and led to the 1993 Oslo Accords — the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the representative body of the Palestinian people.

With former US President Bill Clinton as a mediator, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat hold peace talks. The result, the Oslo I Accord, is each side's recognition of the other. The agreement leads many to hope that an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict is not far off, but peace initiatives suffer a major setback when Rabin is assassinated two years later.

A right-wing Jewish fanatic shoots and kills Rabin on November 4, 1995, while he is leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin's assassination throws the spotlight on Israel's internal social strife. The divide is growing between centrist and extremist, secular and religious. The photo shows Israel's then-acting prime minister, Shimon Peres, next to the empty chair of his murdered colleague.

Nazi Germany's mass murder of Jews weighs on German-Israeli relations to this day. In February 2000, Germany's then-President Johannes Rau addresses the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in German. It is a tremendous emotional challenge for both sides, especially for Holocaust survivors and their descendants, but also a step towards closer relations after unforgettable crimes.

In 2002, amid the violence and terror of the Second Intifada, Israel starts building a 107-kilometer-long (67-mile-long) barrier of barbed wire, concrete wall and guard towers between itself and Palestinian areas of the West Bank. It suppresses the violence but does not solve the larger political conflict. The wall grows in length over the years and is projected to reach around 700 kilometers.

Germany's current foreign minister, Heiko Maas, steps decisively into an ever closer German-Israeli relationship. His first trip abroad as the country's top diplomat is to Israel in March 2018. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, he lays a wreath in memory of Holocaust victims.