Most modern Israelis are a new people in a land as old as time.

For 100 years, Jewish immigrants have come from all the continents to claim a place in the land of biblical promise.

In recent years, nearly all of Ethiopia's Jews fled to Israel to escape civil war at home. Since the former Soviet Union collapsed, 800,000 Jews have gone to Israel. The country has drawn Moroccans, Indians, Europeans and Americans, along with a sizable number of Vietnamese boat people. Their faces have given Israel the look of racial, if not religious, diversity.

Over time, the Jews largely displaced Arab people who were already in the land called Palestine tilling fields, driving herds across the rolling wildernesses and trading goods in its ancient marketplaces.

Small numbers of European Jews began returning to Israel in the 19th century as part of the movement called Zionism. Most settled in the ancient cities along the Mediterranean and the green hills that rise up around the Sea of Galilee. The Zionists maintained they were claiming an "empty land."

The Arab nations did not exist as we know them today. The 25 million Arabs in the Near East lived in the loosely connected kingdoms of the Ottoman Empire, which ended with World War I in 1918. Most of the Arabs were fellahin, peasants who worked for wealthy Muslim landowners; some were Bedouin nomads who roamed large areas throughout the year.

But Zionism coincided with growing nationalism among Arabs -- a desire for nations and national boundaries to be recognized. Historians say almost no one outside the region recognized the Arabs' nationalist longings for nearly 50 years -- until the number of Jewish immigrants tipped the population balance.

By the time the Arabs began to push back, Jews were solidly settled and building a country for themselves.

Struggles over land between Arabs and Jews were intermittent in the early years but intensified in 1948, when the Jews declared independence for their portion of Palestine.

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