1) Israel is a nation, a country, a state — the three words all really mean the same thing. Here in the USA, the word “state” implies something smaller the word “nation”, but that’s only because of the name “United States of America”, which originally (in 1776) meant something like “United Nations of America” (the U.S.A. was originally conceived as a federation of independent states, and only gradually became a unified nation).

2) Palestine is also a nation as far as I’m concerned, although there is much political uncertaintly about whether it is a nation or not. The territory (roughly the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip) has only recently managed to put together a unified government. Historically, the term “Palestine” has always referred to the whole area that now includes both Israel and modern Palestine (thus, the war) and the original indigenous people of the region appears in the Bible as the “Philistines” (the original Philistines were neither Jews, Muslims nor Arabs).

3) Jerusalem is the city that Palestinians and Israelis fight over.