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Current Weather
in Israel:
General: The State
of Israel (Hebrew: (help·info), Medinat
Yisra'el; Arabic: , Dawlat Isra'il) is a country
in the Western Asian Levant, on the southeastern
edge of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon
on the north, Syria and Jordan on the east, and
Egypt on the south-west. It has a population of
over seven million people. Israel declared independence
in 1948 and is the world's only Jewish state,
although its population includes citizens of many
ethnic and religious backgrounds. It is the Middle
East's only liberal democracy.
Israel has a vibrant
cultural life and a technologically and industrially
advanced economy. In 2006, Israel was ranked 23rd
out of 177 countries in the United Nations Human
Development Index, the highest ranking in the
Middle East and third highest in Asia.
Currency: The new sheqel
- (Hebrew: sheqel khadash, , abbr. NIS; symbol:
; also spelled shekel; pl. sheqalim or shekalim
- ) is the currency of Israel. It replaced the
sheqel in 1985 at a rate of 1000 sheqels = 1 new
sheqel. The ISO 4217 code is ILS. The new sheqel
is divided into 100 agorot (sing. agora, Hebrew:)
In Hebrew the new sheqel is
usually abbreviated to ?"? (pronounced sha?).
The symbol for the new sheqel, ?, is a combination
of the first Hebrew letters of the words sheqel
(?) and khadash (?).
Since January 1, 2003,
the NIS has been a freely convertible currency.
Language: Hebrew
is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language
family spoken by more than seven million people
in Israel and Jewish communities around the world.
In Israel, it is the de facto language of the
state and the people, as well as being one of
the two official languages (together with Arabic),
and is spoken by a majority of the population.
Arabic is the largest living
member of the Semitic language family in terms
of speakers. Classified as Central Semitic, it
is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. Modern
Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27
sub-languages in ISO 639-3. These varieties are
spoken throughout the Arab world, and Standard
Arabic is widely studied and known throughout
the Islamic world.
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