Israel is narrow, and Jerusalem stands in this atlas as the capital

Israel is geographically narrow, and the question of the capital is not. Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan rift the distance is short. Jerusalem is named the capital in the country figures and in Israeli law. That does not close the status of the city.

The Mediterranean coast is one edge, the Jordan rift with the Dead Sea the other. Between them lie the coastal plain and the hills. In the south the Negev fills the area, in the north the highlands reach toward Lebanon and Syria. The Dead Sea lies below sea level, with shores in Israel, in Jordan and in the territory this atlas lists as Palestine. The country figures give 20,770 square kilometres and a population of 10,122,800. Both are the statement of this atlas, not a ruling on contested lines.

Little land between sea and rift

The neighbours in the country figures are Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. Egypt lies across the Sinai on the southwestern land boundary and opposite on the Gulf of Aqaba. Jordan shares the rift and the Dead Sea. Lebanon and Syria lie to the north. Palestine is not a margin note. It is a separate entry in this atlas, and it stands on the neighbour list. Draw Israel without leaving that entry and you have drawn past the data.

Narrow means this: from the coast at Tel Aviv into the hills and on into the rift is not a continent. The Negev stretches the state southward without making it wide in the middle. The capital does not sit on the coast. It sits in the hills, on the watershed between the Mediterranean and the rift. That position explains why Jerusalem is geographically the middle of the narrow country and politically still not a neutral point.

Jerusalem in the law and in the dispute

An Israeli basic law names Jerusalem the capital. The country figures of this atlas take that name. The political question is not settled by that. Numerous states keep their embassy in Tel Aviv; others have moved it to Jerusalem. The United Nations have not treated the claim to the whole city as closed. This text repeats that situation. It invents no border and no quarter of the city that it assigns to one side or the other.

Palestine therefore remains its own country in this atlas, not a footnote under Jerusalem. Read the capital line and you are reading Israeli law and the data row. Read the neighbour list and you are reading that the atlas does not make the other side disappear. Holding both side by side is the honest map. A smooth capital without a dispute would be a different one, and it would not stand in these sources.

The geography is narrow. The capital is unsettled.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Hebrew in office, Arabic with special status

The basic law on the nation-state makes Hebrew the state language and gives Arabic a special status. That special status does not simply cancel earlier use, but it is not the same as a second state language of equal rank. The summary therefore says both, in that order. Hebrew is the language of the state's law, offices and schools. Arabic is the language of a large part of the citizens and the language of the neighbours, and the law does not drop it.

The new shekel of the Bank of Israel is the shared money of this currency area, whatever language is on the bakery sign. That too is not a solution of the capital question. It is the daily life of a small state that carries a currency, a state language and a disputed capital line at the same time. The 10,122,800 people in the figures are the people of that line, not a statement about who lives on which side of a contested boundary.

Israel can be drawn as a narrow strip between sea and rift. The capital cannot be drawn that way. Jerusalem stands in the law and in the atlas, the dispute stands beside it, and Palestine remains a separate entry. The honest map has all three statements.