On May 14, 1948, Israel declared itself an independent state and elected a provisional government.
Immediately after this, the country was attacked by neighboring Arab countries, which began the Arab-Israeli War (1948).
The creation of Israel has a long history, the beginning of which is in the birth of Zionism. The founding of the state of Israel is part of the thousand-year history of the Jews.
The semi-legendary Kingdom of David is the first unified state formation of the Jews. According to most historians, it existed between 1020 and 930 BC and was founded after the Jewish peoples in Eretz Israel, previously united in tribes of the so-called. By 930 BC however, it weakened and broke up into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. By 720 BC, Assyria conquered Israel, and Judah fell under Babylonian rule around 586. This marked the beginning of the so-called exile of the Jewish people to Babylon.
The Age of Enlightenment led to the granting of equal rights to Jews in Europe, with the more secular-minded among them subsequently adopting the ideas of rationalism, romanticism and nationalism. This phenomenon is known as the Haskalah and led to the emergence of the Zionist movement in 1897, aiming to create a “Jewish national home” (state). At the beginning of the 20th century, several proposals appeared for where the Jewish state should be founded.
After the end of World War I, the so-called British Mandate of Palestine, under which the territories of present-day Israel, Jordan, and part of present-day Iraq (until then provinces of the Ottoman Empire) were given to the British Empire. Between 1919 and 1923, 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine, mostly from Eastern Europe. The settlers of this wave were trained in agriculture and were able to develop an economy. Despite the emigration quota established by the British authorities, by the end of this period the Jewish population had grown to 90,000.
The British Mandate was terminated in 1948, and on May 14, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. It was immediately recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other countries, but not by neighboring Arab states. Over the next few days, nearly 700 Lebanese, 1,900 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian soldiers attacked the new state, marking the beginning of the Arab-Israeli Wars and the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.
The next day, the Arab League reiterated its opposition to the "two-state solution" in a letter to the United Nations. The following day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq attacked the territory designated for an Arab state, leading to the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The newly formed Israel Defense Forces pushed the Arab League states out of the occupied territories, thus increasing their territory.
By December 1948, Israel controlled most of Palestine west of the Jordan River. The rest of Palestine is the West Bank (controlled by Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Before and during the conflict, 713,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their homes and became refugees, partly because of promises by Arab leaders that they would be allowed to return after the war ended.