Galilee (Hebrew Galil) is the most northerly part of Israel. Bounded by the Mediterranean coast, the Lebanese frontier, the Jordan valley and the Jezreel plain, it consists of a western coastal strip and the hills of Upper Galilee round Safed and Lower Galilee round Nazareth. It is the rainiest part of the country, a factor beneficial to its agriculture. The northern part of the region, Upper Galilee, rises to a height of 1,208m/3,963ft in Mount Meron; the southern part, Lower Galilee, is lower (Mount Tabor, 562m/1,844ft). The boundary between Upper and Lower Galilee is the Bet Kerem plain.
History
When the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land the tribes of Naphtali, Zebulun and Asher settled in Galilee (Joshua 19), where they were later joined by the tribe of Dan (Judges 18). In the eighth century B.C. the country was occupied by the Assyrians; later came Babylonians, Persians and Greeks. After the Hasmonean conquest in 163 B.C. non-Jews lived in the coastal plain, Jews in the upland regions. When the Romans occupied Galilee it was ruled, along with Judaea, by the Hasmonean ruler Hyrcanus II and then by Herod the Great. Thereafter, in the lifetime of Jesus, it belonged to the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, who made Tiberias his capital, and then, until 44, to the kingdom of Herod Agrippa. In 66 Galilee was a stronghold of the Jewish uprising against the Romans, and after the Bar Kochba rising (135) it replaced Judaea as the center of Jewry, the towns of Bet Shearim, Sepphoris (Zippori) and Tiberias being of particular importance in this connection. In the 16th century Safed became the center of a religious revival.
From the seventh century onwards the Arab population of Galilee increased steadily. The first Jewish settlements of modern times were established at Rosh Pinna (1878) and Metulla, the most northerly village in Israel (1886). In 1948 Galilee became part of the newly founded state of Israel.
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