Israel lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in the Southern Levant, between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Egypt and the Gaza Strip, with a short shore on the Red Sea at Eilat. Within the 1949 armistice lines it covers about 20,770 km², or 22,072 km² if East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are counted, both annexed by Israel in moves that most of the world does not recognise. Geographers divide it into four physiographic regions: the Mediterranean coastal plain, the central hills, the Jordan Rift Valley and the Negev Desert. The highest point in internationally recognised Israel is Mount Meron in Upper Galilee, 1,208 m; the Israeli-occupied part of the Mount Hermon massif, north of the Golan Heights, rises to 2,224 m. The lowest is the Dead Sea shore, about 440 m below sea level in 2025 and the lowest land on Earth. The main river is the Jordan, roughly 320 km long, which feeds the Sea of Galilee. The country is 424 km from north to south but only 114 km across at its widest, so all four regions sit within a few hours’ drive of each other.
The Coastal Plain, from the Rosh HaNikra Cliffs to the Besor
The coastal plain is where most Israelis live. It runs from the Lebanese border south to Gaza, broken only where Mount Carmel pushes almost to the sea at Haifa. At its northern end it is barely 5 km wide; by Gaza it has widened to about 40 km. Its northern tip is the white chalk cliff of Rosh HaNikra, where the sea has cut a line of grottoes into the rock right on the border.
Geographers split the plain into five strips. The first runs from Rosh HaNikra to Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. The Carmel Coastal Plain, Hof HaCarmel, follows the foot of the Carmel range south to the stream of Nahal Taninim. The Sharon Plain then continues to the Yarkon River at Tel Aviv and is the most densely populated part of the country. South of it the Central Coastal Plain runs to Nahal Shikma, and the Southern Coastal Plain curves round the Gaza Strip, from the savanna-like Besor area to the almost empty sands of Agur-Halutza.
The plain is crossed by short streams that rise in the hills and reach the sea within a day’s walk: from north to south, the Kishon, Hadera, Alexander, Poleg and Yarkon. All were badly polluted in the late twentieth century; after clean-up work, the Kishon, Alexander and Yarkon flow year-round again with parks along their banks. The plain was humid and malarial before drainage. Its fertile soils became known for citrus orchards and vineyards. Offshore, the Tamar gas field, found in 2009 about 90 km west of Haifa, has since turned Israel into a natural gas exporter, with flow on the Arish–Ashkelon pipeline reversed to send gas to Egypt.
Upper Galilee, Mount Carmel and the Jezreel Valley
Inland of the coast, a spine of limestone hills runs the length of the country, averaging about 610 m in height. Its northern section, the Galilee, is the greenest and highest part of Israel proper. Lower Galilee is a country of rounded hills and basins, and the hills of both Lower and Upper Galilee are generally 500–700 m high; Upper Galilee peaks at Mount Meron, 1,208 m, near the hill town of Safed. Rainfall here is the heaviest in the country, more than 900 mm a year in the far north, and snow falls on the summits in some winters.
Mount Carmel branches off the hills towards the north-west. The Carmel range is about 39 km long if its south-eastern extension to Jenin is included, and its steep north-eastern face rises to 546 m above Haifa. It is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and its mix of limestone and flint, mostly laid down in the Cretaceous, is riddled with caves.
Between Carmel and the Galilee lies the broadest break in the highlands, the Jezreel Valley, also called the Plain of Esdraelon or, in Arabic, Marj Ibn Amir. It stretches about 48 km from the Haifa area south-east to the Jordan Valley and is up to 19 km wide, bounded by Mount Gilboa to the south. Afula is the largest town on its floor. Because it is the one easy east–west passage through the hills, the valley has been a corridor for armies and traders since antiquity; today it is one of the most intensively farmed landscapes in Israel.
The Samarian and Judean Hills around Jerusalem
South of the Jezreel Valley the central highlands continue as the Samarian Hills and then the Judean Hills, most of which lie in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians for a future state. The Samarian Hills are cut by small, fertile valleys and rarely reach 800 m. The Judean Hills, including Mount Hebron, are higher and rockier. Jerusalem sits on the watershed of this ridge, where winter snow is uncommon but not rare.
The hills are built of limestone and sandstone layers that act as aquifers. Rain falling on the western flank soaks in and moves eastwards underground, emerging in springs along the Dead Sea shore. The oases of Ein Gedi and Ein Bokek grew up around those springs. Where the limestone has dissolved, the hills have karst landscapes and caves, used for thousands of years as shelters, storerooms and meeting places.
East of the watershed, the land falls steeply into the rain shadow of the Judean Desert. Over a few tens of kilometres, the landscape drops from wooded hills around Jerusalem to bare, chalky badlands and then to the Dead Sea, more than 1,000 m lower. That fall explains why Jerusalem sees occasional winter snow while the Dead Sea basin below it is hot desert.
The Jordan Rift: Hula Valley, Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea
East of the hills, the land drops into the Jordan Rift Valley, part of a fault system that runs about 6,500 km from Syria to East Africa. The rift follows the Dead Sea Transform, the boundary between the African Plate, which carries the Galilee, the coastal plain and the Negev, and the Arabian Plate, which carries the Golan Heights and Jordan. The fault has ruptured in destructive earthquakes in 31 BCE and in 363, 749 and 1033 CE, and it is still active.
The Jordan River forms from three spring-fed streams near Mount Hermon: the Dan, inside Israel; the Hasbani, from Lebanon; and the Banias, from the Golan. The joined river flows south through the Hula Valley, once a lake and malarial marsh that was drained in the 1950s. A small part has since been reflooded, and the valley is now a major stopover on the flyway between Europe, Asia and Africa. An estimated 500 million birds pass over it each year.
Below the Hula the river enters the Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberias. This pear-shaped freshwater lake is about 23 km long and 13 km wide, covers some 166 km², and reaches 46 m deep. Its surface lies around 210 m below sea level, varying with rainfall. With a volume of about 3 km³, it has long been the main reservoir of the National Water Carrier that pipes water south towards the Negev. Above its eastern shore rise the basalt slopes of the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
From the lake’s southern end, the Jordan winds down to the Dead Sea, forming the border with Jordan and then the boundary between Jordan and the West Bank. The Dead Sea has no outlet. In 2025 its surface was about 440 m below sea level, its salinity in 2011 was 34.2 percent, and its northern basin reaches 304 m deep. It is shrinking fast as upstream water is diverted: from about 1,050 km² in 1930 to about 605 km² today, a story told in more detail in our guide to the Dead Sea.
The Negev and the Erosion Cirque of Makhtesh Ramon
The Negev covers more than half of Israel’s land area, a rough triangle with its base along a line from Beersheba to the Dead Sea and its apex at Eilat. It is a continuation of the Sinai Desert and mirrors the country in miniature, with lowlands in the west, hills in the middle and the Arava rift on its eastern edge. Rain falls steeply away to the south. The northern Negev gets around 300 mm a year and can be farmed; the central Negev gets about 200 mm on soil so impervious that a rare storm runs off as flash floods; the high plateau of Ramat HaNegev, 370–520 m up, gets about 100 mm.
The Negev’s signature landforms are its makhteshim, steep-walled erosion cirques found mainly here and in Sinai: Makhtesh Gadol, Makhtesh Katan and the largest, Makhtesh Ramon. Ramon is about 40 km long, 2–10 km wide and 500 m deep, and it is neither an impact crater nor a volcano. As the Arava rift formed about five million years ago, streams began draining towards it. They cut through a hard cap of limestone into soft sandstone beneath, hollowing out the interior faster than the walls retreated. Rocks on its floor are up to 200 million years old, and the spring of Ein Saharonim is its only natural water. The town of Mitzpe Ramon stands on the northern rim, and the depression forms Israel’s largest national park.
The Arava Valley to Eilat on the Red Sea
South of the Dead Sea the rift continues as the Arava (Arabic Wadi Araba), about 166 km long, shared with Jordan, and with no permanent stream. From the Dead Sea basin the floor climbs steeply, then rises gently to a low divide about 230 m above sea level. That divide separates water draining north to the Dead Sea from water draining south to the Red Sea. The Arava gets barely 50 mm of rain a year, and its farms survive on groundwater and greenhouses.
The valley ends at Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel’s only Red Sea port and its southernmost town, where summer days can reach 44–46 °C. From the Dead Sea shore to the 2,224 m Hermon high point, the land under Israeli control spans about 2,660 m of elevation and runs from a Mediterranean climate in the north to hot desert in the south. That compactness has made the land a crossroads and a contested territory for millennia, and the lines that cut across these regions are traced in our article on Israel’s borders. For how the seasons play out across them, from coastal humidity to desert heat, see the climate of Israel.