The term "Holy Land"[a] is used to collectively denote areas of the Southern Levant that hold great significance in the Abrahamic religions, primarily because of their association with people and events featured in the Bible. It is traditionally synonymous with what is known as the Land of Israel (Zion) or the Promised Land in a biblical or religious context, or as Canaan or Palestine in a secular or geographic context—referring to a region that is mostly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Today, it chiefly overlaps with the combined territory of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. Most notable among the religions that tie substantial spiritual value to the Holy Land are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
As a geographic term, the description "Holy Land" loosely encompasses modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, western Jordan and south-western Syria.
Historically, the Holy Land is notable for being the site of numerous religious wars. In the Middle Ages, the Christian pilgrimage, which involves visiting sites associated with Jesus or his disciples, contributed to the beginning of the Crusades, which were aimed at restoring Christian sovereignty in the region after it was lost to the early Muslim conquests. In the 19th century, the Holy Land again became the subject of international diplomatic wrangling as part of the "Eastern Question" with regard to the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Crimean War in the 1850s. Around the same period, the emergence of Zionism, a nationalist ideology that tapped into Jewish aspirations to recover the Land of Israel, spurred a sizable portion of the Jewish diaspora to begin working towards the development of the region as the Jewish homeland. Eventually, following numerous waves of Jewish immigration, the Zionist movement issued the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, triggering the First Arab–Israeli War. Since then, the Holy Land's religious and political atmosphere has been dominated by the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.