[dagav]

More than half of Israel's land area is desert. It's quite hard to develop a nation in the desert.

[rowanseymour]

It's also part of mythology of Israel that it was built on an empty wasteland, and not on the ashes of Palestinian villages and farms.

[SuperCuber]

Yep. Population density map: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/maps/isr... almost all the population lives near the sea.