The History of Israel

Although the state of Israel (Medinat Israel) declared its independence on May 14, 1948, its modern history begins with the Zionist movement started by Theodor Herzl at Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. Israel’s basic ideology, many of its contemporary political institutions and parties, and the individuals who established it came from the Zionist movement, which adopted as its goal the creation “for the Jewish people [ of] a home in Palestine secured by public law.” For previous history of the territory that is now Israel.

The number of Jews in Palestine was small in the early 20th century; it increased from 12,000 in 1845 to nearly 85,000 by 1914. Most people in Palestine were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians. Support for the Zionist movement came largely from Jews in Europe and North America.

By World War I the Zionist movement won backing from Great Britain, which wanted support from world Jewry for its struggle against Germany. The British government therefore issued the BALFOUR DECLARATION on Nov. 2, 1917, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

After World War I the terms of the Balfour Declaration were included in the mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922. The mandate entrusted Great Britain with administering Palestine and with assisting the Jewish people in “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Large-scale Jewish settlement and development of extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948. The Jewish community, or Yishuv, increased tenfold during this era. Tel Aviv became the country’s largest all-Jewish city, dozens of other towns and villages were founded, and hundreds of Jewish agricultural collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperatives were established.

Several Jewish political parties founded in Eastern Europe as part of the world Zionist movement developed bases in mandatory Palestine. They included labor, orthodox religious, and nationalist organizations whose leaders emigrated from Europe and after 1948 became political leaders and officials in the new Jewish state.

The Yishuv extended its democratic, representative institutions after World War I. Among these institutions was an elected assembly with a National Council that managed the community’s day-to-day affairs in education, health, social welfare, and other services. Jewish religious life was supervised by a Rabbinical Council that controlled marriage, divorce, and other family matters. Local government institutions were also developed to run the city of Tel Aviv and many smaller Jewish settlements. The educational system, cultivating Hebrew language and culture, expanded, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was founded. The World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Palestine assisted the Yishuv by raising funds abroad, recruiting Jewish immigrants, and seeking political support from Western governments.

British officials, under the high commissioner for Palestine appointed by the government in London, were responsible for defense and security, immigration, postal service, transportation, and port facilities. They were the highest authorities, ultimately responsible for governing the country.

The British attempted to maintain a delicate balance between the interests and demands of the Yishuv and those of the country’s predominantly Arab population. As Jewish immigration to Palestine increased and as Jewish settlement spread, Arab opposition to British rule and to Zionism grew. During the mandate several nationalist uprisings culminated in a general Arab revolt (1936–39) that was finally suppressed by British troops on the eve of World War II.

When the Zionist leaders realized the extent of Jewish persecution and liquidation by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler during World War II, their demands for self-government greatly intensified, as did their efforts to facilitate immigration to Palestine and land settlement there. In Palestine the Yishuv was galvanized in opposition to the British mandatory authorities to support illegal immigration of refugees from war-torn Europe. By the end of the war most of the Yishuv was in revolt against Great Britain.

Exhausted by seven years of war and eager to withdraw from colonial commitments, Great Britain in 1947 decided to leave Palestine and called on the UN to make recommendations. In response, the UN convened its first special session in 1947, and on Nov. 29, 1947, it adopted a plan calling for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone under UN jurisdiction; the Jewish and Arab states would be joined in an economic union. The resolution was passed by a vote of 33 to 13, supported by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The British abstained.

In Palestine, Arab protests against partition erupted in violence, with attacks on Jewish settlements that soon led to a full-scale civil war. The British generally refused to intervene, intent on leaving the country no later than Aug. 1, 1948, the date in the partition plan for termination of the mandate.

When it became clear that the British intended to leave by May 15, leaders of the Yishuv decided to implement that part of the partition plan calling for establishment of a Jewish state. In Tel Aviv on May 14 the Provisional State Council, formerly the National Council, “representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the World Zionist Movement,” proclaimed the “establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Medinat Israel (the State of Israel). . . open to the immigration of Jews from all the countries of their dispersion.”

On May 15 the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas who had been fighting Jewish forces since November 1947. The civil war now became an international conflict, the first Arab-Israeli war, called the War of Independence by Israel. The Arabs failed to prevent establishment of a Jewish state, and the war ended with four UN-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The frontiers defined in the armistice agreements remained until they were altered by Israel’s conquests during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The population balance in the new state of Israel was drastically altered during the 1948 war. The armistice Agreements extended the territory under Israel’s control beyond the UN partition boundaries from approximately 15,500 to 20,700 sq km (about 6,000 to 8,000 sq mi). The small Gaza Strip on the Egypt-Israel border was left under Egyptian occupation, and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan. Of the more than 800,000 Arabs who lived in Israeli-held territory before 1948, only about 170,000 remained. The rest became refugees in the surrounding Arab countries, ending the threat of an Arab majority in the Jewish state.

Israel’s Provisional State Council organized elections for the first Knesset (parliament) in 1949. Chaim Weizmann, the most prominent Zionist leader of the prewar period, became the country’s first president.

The first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Mapai (largest labor party), who had led the Yishuv during the last days of the mandate, exercised the strongest influence on Israel’s history during the first decade. He placed great emphasis on national security and development of modern armed forces. Both men and women were conscripted, and the army became a center for educating hundreds of thousands of new immigrants in the country’s Hebrew culture. Private military forces associated with different political movements were disbanded or integrated into the Israeli army.

Immediately after gaining independence Israel was opened to Jewish immigrants from all over the world; by 1952 the population had doubled. Most of the new citizens were survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps. During the 1950s, however, a shift occurred in immigration patterns, as increasing numbers of Jews came from the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. By the late 1960s Orientals (Jews from Asia and Africa) began to outnumber the Europeans. In three decades Israel’s population increased fivefold, and about two-thirds of that increase came from Jewish immigration.

Because many new immigrants came to Israel without skills or occupations required for development of the country and because of the heavy burdens of defense and the need to expand industry and agriculture more rapidly, the country was faced with serious economic problems. Recession and currency devaluations shook the economy in the early 1950s. World Jewry and the U.S. government provided extensive economic aid, and Ben-Gurion also negotiated agreements with West Germany, providing reparation payments to individual Jewish victims of the Nazis and to the Jewish state.

Attempts to convert the Israeli-Arab armistice agreements into peace treaties were unsuccessful. The Arabs insisted that the refugees be permitted to return to their homes, that Jerusalem be internationalized, and that Israel make territorial concessions before they entered peace talks. Israel charged that these demands would undermine its security and refused them. Frequent incursions by refugee guerrilla bands and attacks by Arab military units were made, which Israel answered with forceful retaliation. Egypt refused to permit Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal and blockaded the Strait of Tiran (Israel’s access to the Red Sea). Border incidents along the frontiers with Egypt escalated until they erupted in the second Arab-Israeli war in October and November of 1956.

Great Britain and France joined the attack because of their dispute with Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had just nationalized the Suez Canal. Israel scored a quick victory, seizing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula within a few days. As Israeli forces reached the banks of the Suez Canal, the British and French started their attack. The fighting was halted by the UN after a few days, and a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) was sent to supervise the cease-fire in the Canal zone. In a rare instance of cooperation, the U.S. and the Soviet Union supported the UN resolution forcing the three invading countries to leave Egypt and Gaza. By the end of the year their forces withdrew from Egypt, but Israel refused to leave Gaza until early 1957, and only after the U.S. had promised to help resolve the conflict and keep the Straits of Tiran open.

Israel continued to modernize its army, placing special emphasis on the air force, which received the latest French planes. The economic situation improved, and a national water distribution system was created to facilitate development of new settlements in the southern part of the country. Although immigration never reached the heights it had during the first four years, it increased substantially by the 1960s with a new wave of arrivals from Morocco. One of the major problems facing the country was the economic absorption and integration of newcomers from Muslim countries. The wide social and economic gap between them and the earlier settlers from Europe remained one of the country’s greatest dilemmas.

The major political movements were transformed during this era by party splits and reunifications. Ben-Gurion resigned in 1963 and was succeeded by Levi Eshkol (1895–1969). In 1965 the former prime minister left the Mapai party to help form an opposition group called Rafi. In the same year Mapai and other labor groups united to form the Labor Alignment, which controlled the government until 1977. The two largest opposition parties, Liberals and Herut, also merged during 1965 in the Gahal bloc led by Menachem Begin.

After the Suez-Sinai war Arab nationalism increased dramatically, as did demands for revenge led by Egypt’s president Nasser. The formation of a united Arab military command that massed troops along the borders, together with Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran and Nasser’s insistence in 1967 that the UNEF leave Egypt, led Israel to attack Egypt, Jordan, and Syria simultaneously on June 5 of that year.

The war ended six days later with a decisive Israeli victory. Israel’s French-equipped air force wiped out the air power of its antagonists and was the chief instrument in the destruction of the Arab armies.

The Six-Day War left Israel in possession of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, which it took from Egypt; Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which it took from Jordan; and the Golan Heights, taken from Syria. Land under Israel’s jurisdiction after the 1967 war was about four times the size of the area within its 1949 armistice frontiers. The occupied territories included an Arab population of about 1.5 million.

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