The maps presented below are only a few that could be used in learning and teaching about Israel and the Middle East.
CIE wishes to thank Aliza Cramer Elias and her team at the
Institute for Curriculum Services for allowing CIE to promote the use of the maps that they produced, found here in English and in Spanish.
Diplomacy and war reflect the changing contours of states and borders along the evolution of Israel and the modern Middle East. We wish to thank the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs for allowing us to use some of their published maps. Others were made for CIE use.
Max Fisher has assembled
40 maps of the Middle East from ancient times to the present, each with a brief introduction. This is a first-rate collection with almost no noticeable bias and with a devotion to accuracy.
In addition, Michael Izady’s collection, the
Gulf2000 project, focuses on eight countries of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Izady also lists other map collections, including
the Library of Congress, rich in historical items.
The University of Texas also has a
fine collection of Middle East maps, most of them drawn from the public-domain collection
created by the CIA.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides
contemporary and historical maps of Israel and its neighborhood.
For Spanish-language maps, please click here.
For Hebrew-language maps, please click here.
With 20 maps and prose, trace the progression of Jewish physical and demographic growth toward state building from 1882 to 1948 (25,000 to 600,000), with two-thirds in place by 1940.
The region prior to the outbreak of World War I. After the war, modern Middle Eastern states had their borders arbitrarily drawn by European powers.
A map showing the Russian-French-English secret agreement that carved up the Middle East into future areas of interest.
The European agreement that identified the states of the Middle East, 1920.
As shown in this map, the British in 1921 separated a new emirate, Transjordan, from what officially became the Mandate for Palestine the next year. The British officially maintained political and military control of both areas until withdrawing in 1948.
When Britain controlled Palestine, she lopped off 80% of it and assigned it to the Hashemite family leader, Emir Abdullah. It became today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Stein, Kenneth W. The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 and 2003. Copyright, Ken Stein and the Center for Israel Education, 2024.
A map shows the partition of Palestine proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937.
The UN suggested partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an economic union between them and an internationalization of Jerusalem.
The United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 181 on Nov. 29, 1947, to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state along the lines in this map, with an international zone around Jerusalem.
The area of Israel expanded and the potential area for a Palestinian Arab state decreased because of the 1948-49 war, Israel’s War of Independence. The Arab rejection of the 1947 U.N. partition plan thus hurt the Arab side, as the maps demonstrate.
Drafted by Minister of Labor Yigal Allon after the June 1967 war, the plan envisages Israeli retention of a series of settlements and military installations along the Jordan Valley as buffers to a potential Arab land attack from the east.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that he will be putting forward his proposal for West Bank annexation as early as July 1. Yet uncertainties about his plans still abound, indicating that this timetable may not be met despite his assertions to the contrary.