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The History of the Jews in the Land of Israel begins with the ancient Israelites (also known as Hebrews), who settled in the land of Israel. The Israelites traced their common lineage to the biblical patriarch Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. Jewish tradition holds that the Israelites were the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons (one of which was named Judah), who settled in Egypt. Their direct descendants respectively divided into twelve tribes, who were enslaved under the rule of an Egyptian pharaoh. In the Jewish faith, the emigration of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan (the Exodus), led by the prophet Moses, marks the formation of the Israelites as a people.
Throughout the centuries, in spite of oppression, banishment, and slaughter, there was an uninterrupted continuity of Jewish life in the country. The Jewish community in the land of Israel has always played a unique role in Jewish history.
This article refers to the history in the Land of Israel in the boundaries defined by Canaan or as the region later also known by the Roman name of Palestina.

Early times
The kingdom of Judah was conquered by a Babylonian army in the early 6th century BCE. The Judahite elite was exiled to Babylon, but later at least a part of them returned to their homeland, led by prophets Ezra and Nehemiah, after the subsequent conquest of Babylonia by the Persians. Jews were allowed to return with the Temple vessels that the Babylonians had taken. Construction of the Second Temple was completed under the spiritual leadership of the Prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
At this point there was the formation of Jewish political-religious factions, the most important of which would later be called Sadduccees and Pharisees.

Fall of the Kingdom of Judah
After the Persians were defeated by Alexander the Great, his demise, and the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, the Seleucid Kingdom was formed. A deterioration of relations between hellenized Jews and religious Jews led the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to impose decrees banning certain Jewish religious rites and traditions. Consequently, the orthodox Jews revolted under the leadership of the Hasmonean family, (also known as the Maccabees). This revolt eventually led to the formation of an independent Jewish kingdom, known as the Hasmonaean Dynasty, which lasted from 165 BCE to 63 BCE. The Maccabees purified the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, an event that to this day is celebrated on by Jews on Chanukkah. The Hasmonean Dynasty eventually disintegrated as a result of civil war between the sons of Salome Alexandra, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II. The people, who did not want to be governed by a king but by theocratic clergy, made appeals in this spirit to the Roman authorities. A Roman campaign of conquest and annexation, led by Pompey, soon followed.
Judea under Roman rule was at first an independent Jewish kingdom, but gradually the rule over Judea became less and less Jewish, until it became under the direct rule of Roman administration (and renamed the Iudaea Province), which was often callous and brutal in its treatment of its Judean subjects. In 66 CE, Judeans began to revolt against the Roman rulers of Judea. The revolt was defeated by the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus. The Romans destroyed much of the Temple in Jerusalem and, according to some accounts, stole artifacts from the temple, such as the Menorah. Altogether, 1,100,000 Jews perished during the revolt and another 97,000 were taken captive.
Major battles were in Masada and in Gamla. Gamla was the district capital of the Golan Heights first established by the last king of the Hasmonean dynasty. Gamla's citizens saw their battle as directly connected to Jerusalem and fiercely defended their stronghold. Eventually, all of the 9000 city's residents were killed. Both historical sites of Masada and Gamla have been excavated and are frequently visited in the modern State of Israel.
Judeans continued to live in their land in significant numbers, and were allowed to practice their religion, until the 2nd century when Julius Severus ravaged Judea while putting down the Bar Kokhba revolt. 985 villages were destroyed. Banished from Jerusalem, the Jewish population now centred on Galilee.
This was also the time of Schism between Judaism and Christianity. Many Christians considered the new religion to supersede Judaism. See also Council of Jamnia.

Late Roman period
Jews at this time in Israel were living under the oppressive rule of the Byzantines under whom there were two more Jewish revolts and three Samaritan revolts. Under the oppression, Jews still lived in at least forty-three Jewish communities in Israel: twelve towns on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan, and thirty-one villages in Galilee and in the Jordan valley.
In 438, The Empress Eudocia removed the ban on Jews' praying at the Temple site and the heads of the Community in Galilee issued a call "to the great and mighty people of the Jews": "Know that the end of the exile of our people has come"!
In about 450, the Jerusalem Talmud is completed.
In 613, a Jewish revolt against the Byzantine Empire coming into aid of the Persian invaders erupted. The Jews gained autonomy in Jerusalem for 5 years but were frustrated with its limitations. At that time the Persians betrayed the agreements with the Jews and Jews were again expelled from Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius then managed to overcome the Persian forces with the aid of Jewish leader Benjamin of Tiberias. Nevertheless, he betrayed the Jews too and put thousands of Jewish refugees to flight from Israel to Egypt.

Byzantine period
In 638 CE, the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Mideast. The Arab Islamic Empire under Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem and the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palaestina, and Egypt. Under the various rules, Jews suffered and moved from driven from villages, to towns to coastal towns being reduced in numbers due to massacres. Nevertheless, the Jews still controlled much of the commerce in Israel. The Jews worked as assayers of coins, dyers, tanners and bankers in the community.
Professor Moshe Gil Maimonides established a yearly holiday for himself and his sons, the 6th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he went up to pray on the Temple Mount, and another, the 9th of Cheshvan, commemorating the day he merited to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
In 1141 Yehuda Halevi issued a call to the Jews to emigrate to the land of Israel and took on the long journey himself. After a stormy passage from Córdoba, he arrived in Egyptian Alexandria, where he was enthusiastically greeted by friends and admirers. At Damietta, he had to struggle against the promptings of his own heart, and the pleadings of his friend Ḥalfon ha-Levi, that he remain in Egypt; which also was Jewish soil, and free from intolerant oppression. He, however resisted the temptation to remain there, and started on the tedious land route, trodden of old by the Israelite wanderers in the desert. Again he is met with, worn-out, with broken heart and whitened hair, in Tyre and Damascus. Jewish legend relates that as he came near Jerusalem, over-powered by the sight of the Holy City, he sang his most beautiful elegy, the celebrated "Zionide," "Zion ha-lo Tish'ali." At that instant, he was ridden down and killed by an Arab, who dashed forth from a gate.

Islamic and Crusader periods
In the years 1260-1516, Palestine was part of the Empire of the Mamluks who ruled first from Turkey, then from Egypt. War and uprisings, bloodshed and destruction followed. Jews suffered persecution and humiliation but the surviving records cite at least 30 Jewish urban and rural communities at the opening of the 16th century.
A notable event during the period was the settlement of Nachmanides in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1267 which since then a continuous Jewish presence existed in Jerusalem until modern day occupation of Jordan in 1948. Nahmanides then settled at Acre, where he was very active in spreading Jewish learning, which was at that time very much neglected in the Holy Land. He gathered a circle of pupils around him, and people came in crowds, even from the district of the Euphrates, to hear him. Karaites were said to have attended his lectures, among them being Aaron ben Joseph the Elder, who later became one of the greatest Karaite authorities. Shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem he addressed a letter to his son Nahman, in which he described the desolation of the Holy City, where there were at that time only two Jewish inhabitants — two brothers, dyers by trade. In a later letter from Acre he counsels his son to cultivate humility, which he considers to be the first of virtues. In another, addressed to his second son, who occupied an official position at the Castilian court, Nahmanides recommends the recitation of the daily prayers and warns above all against immorality. Nahmanides died after having passed the age of seventy-six, and his remains were interred at Haifa, by the grave of Yechiel of Paris. Yechiel emigrated to Acre in 1260, along with his son and a large group of followers[1][2] There he established the Tamudic academy Midrash haGadol d'Paris.[3] He is believed to have died there between 1265 and 1268.
In 1488 Obadiah ben Abraham, commentator on the Mishnah, arrived in Jerusalem and marked a new epoch for the Jewish community in The Land.

Mamluk period
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa estimates the Jewish population of the Palestine region at "approximately 10,000 during the first half-century of Ottoman rule. Bold development projects for reviving the Holy Land were conceived by Jewish courtiers in Constantinople, such as Don Garcia Mendes and Don Joseph Nasi. Jerusalem, Tiberias and above all, Safad, became centres of Jewish spiritual and commercial activity... Many of the gains achieved by Islamic Jewry during the 16th century were lost over the next 200 years ... as Ottoman rule became more inefficient, corrupt and religiously conservative."

Ottoman period

20th Century
Between 1882 and 1948, a series of Jewish migrations to what is the modern nation of Israel, known as Aliyahs commenced. These migrations preceded the Zionist period.
For full article, see Aliyah.
In 1917, at the end of World War I, Israel (known at the time as Palestine) changed hands from the defeated Ottoman Empire to the occupying British forces. The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.
For full article, see British Mandate of Palestine.

British Mandate
In 1947 Britain announced its intention to withdraw from Palestine, and on 29 November the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state (with Jerusalem becoming an international enclave). The Jewish Agency accepted the plan, while the Arabs of Palestine and the neighboring countries rejected it and commenced to use force to abort the establishment of a Jewish state in the area allotted to it by the UN.
Having developed since the 18th century, the political movement to establish an autonomous Jewish state in Israel, known as Zionism, reached its pinnacle on May 14, 1948, when the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by prime minister Ben-Gurion, made a declaration of independence, and the state of Israel was established.
For full article, see Zionism.

War of Independence
Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956 Suez War, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, as well as a nearly constant series of ongoing minor conflicts to preserve its national interests.
Since 1977, an ongoing and largely unsuccessful series of diplomatic efforts have been initiated by Israel, it's neighbors, and other parties, including the United States and the European Union, to bring about a peace process to resolve conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, mostly over the fate of the Palestinian people.

Present day