Who ruled the Land of Israel: from Joshua to our days

Where the count begins. On 10 Nisan 2488 the people cross the Jordan, and the land promised to Abraham becomes the land of Israel in fact. There is no king: authority lies with the judges and the tribes, and so it will be for four hundred and forty years.

The people ask for a king 'like all the nations', and Samuel anoints Saul. From this year until the destruction of the First Temple the land is ruled by its own kings, four hundred and ten years, from 2964 as two kingdoms.

The first foreign rule. Nebuzaradan burns the Temple and carries the people off to Babylon; the land is left to Babylon and then to Persia, and most of the people live outside it. Seventy years, named in advance by Jeremiah.

Persia replaces Babylon, and the very first decree of Cyrus allows the return and the building. The land is under Persian rule, but the Temple stands, and this is the first case where foreign rule and one's own life on the land do not exclude each other.

Alexander enters the Land of Israel, and the High Priest goes out to meet him. So Greece replaces Persia: first the Egyptian Ptolemies, then the Syrian Seleucids. For a hundred and fifty years the land passes from hand to hand within a single Greek world.

A family of priests from Modiin rises in revolt, and Greek rule over the land ends not by treaty but by war. Chanukah is the festival of this step.

A state of one's own again, the last Jewish one until our time. It is ruled by priests who took the royal crown, and of this the sages spoke with bitterness; but the land is one's own.

Two brothers quarrel over the throne, both call in Rome, and Pompey enters Jerusalem. The longest foreign stretch begins: Rome, and after it Byzantium, seven and a half centuries.

On 9 Av the legions of Titus burn the Temple. Rule over the land does not change, it is Roman already, but everything else changes: from this day the land and the people are long apart.

The last attempt to take the land back by force. Three and a half years of victories, the fall of Beitar, and Rome renames the country to erase the name. From now on Jewish life in the land rests on communities, not on rule.

The empire becomes Christian, and rule over the land turns from Roman into Byzantine. For the Jews this is not a change of master but a change of attitude: the land is declared holy to another faith.

The Arabs take the land from Byzantium, and for four and a half centuries the caliphs stand over it: Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids. Jews are again allowed to live in Jerusalem.

The Crusaders take Jerusalem and slaughter both Jews and Muslims in it; on the land stands the Kingdom of Jerusalem, for almost two centuries. It is the only stretch when a foreign power came here for this land itself.

The Mamluks of Egypt drive out the Crusaders and rule the land until the Ottomans. Under them Jerusalem is a provincial town, and Jewish life is small and poor.

In half a year the Ottomans defeat the Mamluks, and the land passes for four hundred years under the hand of Istanbul. For the Jews it is a change for the better: the Ottoman Empire receives the exiles from Spain, and the Land of Israel is now inside it.

What Ottoman rule gave: the exiles from Spain gather in Safed and in a single generation make it a capital of Torah. Here too are the walls of Jerusalem raised by Suleiman.

Britain takes the land in the First World War and in a letter of three paragraphs recognises the right of the Jews to a national home. The Mandate of the League of Nations will fix it on paper; for thirty years the land will be British.

5 Iyar 5708, eight hours before the end of the Mandate. For the first time since the Hasmoneans, Jewish rule over the land. The track on the timeline runs to the year 6000 not as a prediction, but because the count of years runs to 6000.