On 12 June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped at the bus/hitchhiking stop at the Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion, in the West Bank, as they were hitchhiking to their homes. The three teens were Naftali Frenkel (16, from Nof Ayalon), Gilad Shaer (16, from Talmon), and Eyal Yifrah (19, from Elad).Gilad Shaer called a police emergency hotline to report the kidnapping. The emergency call recording, initially under a gag order, was leaked to the public. After Shaer's whispered message "They kidnapped me, the taped call also recorded shouting in Arabic from the kidnappers and several volleys of automatic gunfire. Within days, Israeli investigators, though lacking conclusive proof, strongly suspected the teenagers had been killed, and, if so, knew where the victims' bodies would probably have been dumped.

The Israel Defense Forces initiated Operation Brother's Keeper (Hebrew: , Mivtza Shuvu Ahim) in search of the three teenagers. As part of the operation, in the following 11 days Israel arrested around 350 Palestinians, including nearly all of Hamas's West Bank leaders. Five Palestinians were killed during the military operation.On 15 June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the teens had been kidnapped by Hamas, which Hamas denied. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas maintained that as of 22 June there was no evidence that Hamas was behind the kidnapping.On 25 July, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison tweeted that Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld stated that the kidnappings did not occur on the orders of, or with the knowledge of the Hamas leadership, and that the crime was the action of a "lone cell." Sheera Frenkel had reported similar views from Israel and Palestinian sources some ten days earlier. Rosenfeld later denied having used the words "lone cell."On 5 August, Israel said that it had arrested Hussam Qawasmeh, a cousin of Marwan Qawasmeh, on 11 July, who is suspected of having organized the killing of the three teenagers. According to court documents, Qawasmeh stated that Hamas members in Gaza financed the recruitment and arming of the killers. Hussam Qawasmeh's lawyers stated that he confessed under "heavy torture" from Israeli security services, Shin Bet. Qawasmeh's lawyer stated "What he said during interrogation was that he was responsible for ordering the kidnapping, and that "[t]he orders came from him personally."On 26 June, the Israel Security Agency released the identities of two Hamas suspects in the kidnapping. Both ISA and Palestinian authorities said that the two men have been missing since the night of the kidnapping, and the ISA stated that both had engaged in terrorism, been arrested, and served time in the past, and were considered suspects immediately after the kidnapping. A senior Palestinian intelligence official said off the record that their disappearance constituted clear evidence the two suspects have links with the abduction.On 30 June, search teams found the bodies of the three missing teenagers in a field north-west of Hebron. They had apparently been shot dead shortly after the abduction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a tough response to the killings.On 20 August 2014, a Hamas official Salah al-Arouri, who had been publicly identified as the mastermind of the operation several days after the kidnapping, on 19 June, said that the organization's armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was behind the kidnapping and murder. The Shin Bet had been investigating him in the belief that he ran a major Hamas network in the West Bank, headed by Riad Nasser of Deir Qadis, near Ramallah, and that he was behind the kidnapping. Following this line of investigation may have delayed the capture of Hussam al-Qarasme, who was only arrested on 10 July. al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas's military wing, made his comments at a conference in Istanbul, where he lives in exile. The Israeli Defense establishment thinks that Arouri is unconnected with the kidnapping, and was boasting. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal said that some Hamas members had kidnapped and murdered the Israeli teens but stated that they were not acting on orders from the Hamas leadership, which he said, were "not aware of this action taken by this group of Hamas members in advance" and the first he heard about it was through the Israeli investigation into the events. Meshaal, who has headed Hamas' exiled political wing since 2004, has denied being involved in the "details" of Hamas "military issues." He praised the kidnappers hoping the action could lead to the release of Palestinian prisoners. According to J.J. Goldberg, the military indictment contains no evidence of orders from Hamas itself and strengthens the thesis that the incident was organized by the Qawasmeh family alone from start to finish. According to Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson, the kidnappers planned to wait a few days, then contact senior Hamas operatives in the Hebron area, to manage the hostage and negotiate a prisoner swap with Israel. In their view it appears doubtful that any senior Hamas official would have been ready to accept that kind of risk.On 23 September 2014, after Israel killed the two suspects, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu-Isa (aka Amer Abu Aysha) in a shootout, IDF Chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz announced that Operation Brother's Keeper "has come to an end."On 6 January 2015, Hussam Qawasmeh, a member of Hamas, was jailed and sentenced to three life terms in prison for the murders. He must also pay $63,000 in compensation to the victims' families.

Israel (; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל, romanized: Yīsrāʾēl; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل, romanized: ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat ʾIsrāʾīl), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest; it is also bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.Israel has evidence of the earliest hominid migrations out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested in the region since the Middle Bronze Age, while the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age. The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE, and the Kingdom of Judah was incorporated into the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. Some of the Judean population was exiled to Babylon, only to return after Cyrus the Great conquered the region. The Maccabean Revolt against Seleucid rule led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE. The kingdom became a client state of the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, following which the Herodian dynasty was installed by 37 BCE, and in 6 CE, the former kingdom was finally incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea (Latin: Iudaea). A series of unsuccessful Jewish revolts against the Romans that broke out during the first and second centuries resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, the expulsion of many Jews, and the renaming of Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. In the 7th century CE, the Byzantine-ruled Levant was taken by Arab forces and incorporated into the Rashidun Caliphate. It remained in Muslim hands until the First Crusade of 1096–1099 re-established a Christian sovereign presence; Crusader control was partly dismantled by the Ayyubids in 1187, but ultimately lasted until 1291. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the region by the end of the 13th century until its defeat in 1516 to the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century, a national awakening among Jews led to the founding of Zionism, a movement that espouses the return of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, also known as the Land of Israel, which was followed by the immigration of diaspora Jews.

Following World War I, Britain controlled the entirety of the territory of what makes up Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan as a League of Nations mandate. After World War II, the newly formed United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency but rejected by Arab leaders. Following a civil war within Mandatory Palestine between Yishuv and Palestinian Arab forces, Israel declared independence at the termination of the British Mandate. The war internationalized into the 1948 Arab–Israeli War between Israel and several surrounding Arab states and concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements that saw Israel in control of most of the former mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by Jordan and Egypt respectively. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, and since the Six-Day War in June 1967 has occupied several territories, and continues to occupy the Golan Heights and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, though whether Gaza remains occupied following the Israeli disengagement is disputed. Israel has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, though these actions have been rejected as illegal by the international community, and established settlements within the occupied territories, which the international community also considers illegal under international law. Efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement, while Israel has signed peace treaties with both Egypt and Jordan, and more recently has normalized relations with a number of other Arab countries.

In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state, and as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The country is a liberal democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation, and universal suffrage. The prime minister serves as head of government and the Knesset is the unicameral legislature. Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, and has a population of over 9 million people as of 2021. It has the world's 31st-largest economy by nominal GDP, and is the most developed country that is currently in conflict. The standard of living in Israel is the highest in the Middle East, and the country ranks high on the global HDI list. Israel also ranks among the world's top countries by percentage of citizens with military training, percentage of citizens holding a tertiary education degree, research and development spending by GDP percentage, women's safety, life expectancy, innovativeness, and happiness.