I am a high school student who goes to a christian school. Thus, I am required to take a bible course every year and we are studying the history of Israel. My teacher told me that under King David circa 1,000 B.C.E. Israel was the most dominate force in the middle east. I openly questioned him because I thought someone like Egypt, Babylon, or the Hittites of Anatolia were much stronger than Israel. However, he responded by saying Israel could have easily destroyed these nations at that time. If a historian is out there can you settle this disagreement between my teacher and I. Thank You!
I'm not one for getting into the middle of these kinds of debates (i.e., answering a question asked by someone who just wants to win an argument, because I view the motive behind these kinds of questions to be rather petty)--but your teacher is patently wrong in this instance.
Amelie Kuhrt's The Ancient Near East, c. 3000-330 BC has all the info you need on Near Eastern hegemony and powers during the Iron I period. Suffice it to say for now, we have little evidence that Israel was much of anything other than some kind of early tribal confederacy or infant-stage state in the Central Highlands at this point. The Assyrians could have easily swept into Israel at this point to wipe the Davidides off the map. Even the Philistines to the south were likely more powerful. Egypt was still playing a role as well, as they had significant contact with Byblos and the Phoenician kings of the 11th-10th c. BCE.
Clearly, your teacher is favoring the biblical account. However, the biblical account of this period is largely propagandistic in nature with historical kernels embedded within the text.
For one, there is no evidence for a unified state comprising Israel and Judah prior to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. The Kingdoms of David and of Saul were two separate entities that did not have any form of unity prior to the Northern refugees arriving in Judah following the collapse of the Omrides at the hands of the Assyrians.
Two, the population of the northern kingdom of Israel even at its height in the 8th century BCE was never more than 50,000, and its raison d'être appeared to be its function as a trade route buffer at an important choke point between the Assyrians and the Egyptians (the Jezreel Valley). It had no power of its own, and the second that it attempted to exploit what its rulers saw as a power vacuum between the Egyptians and the Assyrians, it was crushed like a bug.
Three, the population of the southern kingdom of Judah at the time of David was no more than 5,000. There were perhaps 250 or so tiny villages in the spectacularly non-productive hill country, a place that was virtually ignored due to its complete and total lack of conceivable wealth. There isn't even any evidence of literacy in Judah prior to the 8th century BCE. It was a worthless, powerless backwater. Once it absorbed the refugees from the north following the Assyrian conquest of Israel, it expand a little until it too was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE.
Four, as far as dominance goes... the Egyptians and the Assyrians and then the Neo-Babylonians are in a class by themselves. Prior to the Persians, the Greeks and Rome, no one else compares. Back in 1000 BCE, after you've considered the regional powers, then you have the coastal city states which were mostly under Egyptian influence. Coming in second to last was Israel and coming in dead last was Judah. A less useful and influential kingdom would be difficult to imagine.
Sources:
Dever, William G. Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. New York: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008.
Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? NY: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2006.
Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman. David and Solomon: In Search of the bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of Western Tradition.
Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman. The bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. The Bible with the Sources Revealed. New York: HarperOne, 2005.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. The Hidden Book in the Bible. New York: HarperOne, 1999.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: HarperOne, 1997.
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: YHWH and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. New York: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.
Smith, Mark S. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. NY: Oxford, 2003.
Thompson, Thomas L. The Mythic Past: biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel.
Israel Finkelstein is on academia.edu and you can find some of his relatively approachable articles there. He is an amazing scholar.
That said... your teacher sounds like he'd probably fail you.