The region that is now Israel-Palestine has been ruled or partly ruled by a huge number of states and peoples. It sounds like you’re just looking for a list and some explanations of territorial changes so I will attempt to provide one.

The earliest agricultural settlements in the region belong to what archaeologists term the Natufian culture between 13,000 and 9,500 BC during the transition between the Pleistocene and Holocene. The type site for this culture is Shuqba Cave in the West Bank and the culture is found up north into Syria as well. The oldest known evidence of bread-making in the world is attributed to this culture via finds in Jordan. Keep in mind that archaeological cultures represent similarities in material goods and not any sort of political unity. It is followed by the Khiaman culture (9,700-8,600 BC) which is in turn followed by the material cultures of the blandly named “Pre-Pottery Neolithic” which it is considered an early part of. This period is divided into phases A, B, and C and is used to describe a large region from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Eventually with the invention of pottery, we transition into the Pottery Neolithic, one notable archaeological culture of this period in the north of Israel being the Yarmukian culture of 6400-6000 BC. Contemporaneously there was the Lodian culture to the south inland and the Nizzanim culture to the south towards the coast. From 4500 BC onwards, we enter the Chalcolithic when copper tools join stone ones, signifying the advent of metalworking in the region. The Ghassulian culture of 4400 to 3500 (or sometimes later) BC named for a type site in Jordan is perhaps the most notable here. This material culture is sometimes considered to extend into the early part of the Bronze Age and the metal artifacts from it are incredible and I recommend looking them up.

From 3500 BC onwards, the Bronze Age region becomes increasingly urbanized and scholars generally feel good unambiguously using the term “civilization.” The people of the region were “Canaanites,” a broad descriptor for West Semitic peoples who lived in a number of city-states that rose and fell. Writing was not developed as early in the region as in Mesopotamia and Egypt (and the earliest writing in the region would be in cuneiform and hieroglyphs as we’ll see) and so these early political histories have to be worked at archaeologically. Late in the Bronze Age, the region saw its first imperial takeover in the form of New Kingdom Egypt which was founded by Ahmose I (ruled 1550-1525 BC), who began Egyptian imperial expansion in the region (though I should clarify that there had been heavy interaction between Egypt and the Levant much earlier). Egypt’s rule over the region was often not absolute and involved tributary relations from local Canaanite rulers as we see in the Amarna letters (1360-1332 BC) and campaigns to solidify control in the region were not uncommon with instances like Thutmose III’s victory at the Battle of Megiddo. Egyptian rule in the Levant rapidly deteriorated during the Late Bronze Age collapse which took place between 1200 and 1150 BC. Egyptian garrison towns like Beth Shean were abandoned and many of the cities that enjoyed a patron-client relationship with the pharaohs were destroyed.

This transition marks the conventional shift to the Iron Age. Contrary to a lot of popular portrayals, in the wake of the collapse civilization did not temporarily end but gravity centers rapidly shifted. The rise of new independent Canaanite polities defined the period, Rehov in northern Israel being one of the most significant of the very early Iron Age. In the 900s BC, two major territorial kingdoms developed in the north and south, Israel and Judah respectively. And the cities of the Philistines, most notably Gath, became notable near the coast, early Phoenician culture like at Dor being significant more northward along the coast. The early Kingdom of Israel was something of an expansionist state and under the Omride and Nimshide Dynasties with lands on both sides of the Jordan River. The Kingdom of Judah, ruled by the House of David, was smaller but would be very historically significant. This is the one that was centered on Jerusalem and where the First Temple of the Bible was located. Following the invasion of Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus in modern Syria (who ruled around 842-796 BC), the Israelite kingdom was weakened as a significant power in the region and there is widespread destruction in archaeological sites from the period in the north of modern Israel. For quite some time, Israel had to contend with the incursions of the expanding Assyrian Empire to the Levant and around 720 BC it succumbed to Assyria in the reign of Sargon II. Sargon’s son Sennacherib attempted a conquest of Judah and destroyed major cities like Lachish but failed to breach Jerusalem itself, instead taking hefty tribute from King Hezekiah to go away. Judah was however within the looming Assyrian political sphere. This sphere collapsed when the Neo-Babylonian Empire overthrew the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC and the second Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II completed a conquest of Judah in 586 BC.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire itself was short-lived, conquered by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC. The region we are discussing today became the Persian province of Yahad. Another great conquered this empire and in 332 BC, Alexander of Macedon won the Battle of Gaza, solidifying control of the region under his growing empire. When he died and his empire was divided among his successors, it was originally the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt who got the land. After the Wars of the Diadochi (322-281 BC), however, it was the Seleucid Empire centered in Syria that became the ruler of the region. Jewish elites in Jerusalem were not always happy with Seleucid rule and the Maccabean Revolt broke out between 167 and 141 BC, leading to the establishment of an independent Hellenized Jewish kingdom of the Hasmonean Dynasty. The Hasmonean Dynasty fell to Roman rule in 63 BC and initially remained as client rulers until replacement by Herod the Great in 37 BC.

The Roman Empire would come after some time to fully incorporate the region. Several revolts tried unsuccessfully to unseat Roman power, most notably the Great Jewish Revolt (66-73 AD) and the Bar-Kochba Revolt (132-136 AD). Technically the next empire to rule the region was the short-lived Palmyrene Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century, a state which lasted only from 270 to 273. It was then brought back into the Roman Empire. From 395 onwards, the Roman Empire became permanently divided between west and east and the region became part of what we would come to think of as the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine rule lasted several centuries and was briefly interrupted by the advances of the Sassanid Persian Empire in the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. However the Eastern Romans reconsolidated by the end of this war and took the region back.