In 1917, towards the end of World War I, South Western Syria, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, was occupied by British forces. The United Kingdom was granted control of the area west of the River Jordan now comprising the
State of Israel, the
West Bank and the
Gaza Strip (
Mandatory Palestine), and on the east bank of what later became
Jordan (as a separate mandate) by the
Versailles Peace Conference which established the
League of Nations in 1919.
Herbert Samuel, a former
Postmaster General in the
British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the
Balfour Declaration was appointed the first
High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine, generally simply known as Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through
Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence, the British government expressed a wish to withdraw from Palestine. The proposed
plan of partition would have split Palestine into two states, an Arab state and a Jewish state, and the City of Jerusalem, giving slightly more than half the land area to the proposed Jewish state. Immediately following the adoption by the
United Nations General Assembly of a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the
Partition Plan (Resolution 181(II) ), and the subsequent declaration of statehood by the Jewish National Council,
civil war broke out between the Arab community and the Jewish community, as armies of the
Arab League, which rejected the Partition Plan which Israel accepted, sought to squelch the new Jewish state.
[131]
On 14 May 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister
David Ben-Gurion,
declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.
[132]
Western Wall in Jerusalem
The armies of
Egypt,
Lebanon,
Syria,
Jordan, and
Iraq marched into the territory of what had just ceased to be the British Mandate, thus starting the
1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent
Israel Defense Forces repulsed the Arab armies, and extended Israel's borders beyond the original Resolution 181(II) boundaries for the proposed Jewish state.
[133] By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the
Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate came to be called the
West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the
Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Prior to and during this conflict, 711,000
Palestinians Arabs[134] were expelled or fled their homes to become
Palestinian refugees.
[135]
After the establishment of Israel, immigration of
Holocaust survivors from Europe and a large influx of
Jewish refugees from Arab countries had doubled Israel's population within one year of its independence. Overall, during the following years approximately 850,000
Sephardi and
Mizrahi Jews fled or were expelled from Arab countries,
Iran and
Afghanistan. Of these, about 680,000 settled in Israel. Among the Arab population of the British Mandate of Palestine, many were displaced into Jordanian-controlled West Bank, Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and the surrounding countries, with about 15% becoming refugees in surrounding Arab countries.
Israel's Jewish population continued to grow at a very high rate for years, fed by waves of
Jewish immigration from round the world, including the massive immigration wave of Soviet Jews, who arrived in Israel in the early 1990s, according to the
Law of Return. Some 380,000 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union arrived in 1990–91 alone.
Since 1948, Israel has been involved in a series of major military conflicts, including the 1956
Suez Crisis, 1967
Six-Day War, 1973
Yom Kippur War,
1982 Lebanon War, and
2006 Lebanon War, as well as a nearly constant series of other conflicts, among them the ongoing
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Despite the constant security threats, Israel—a majorly Jewish state—has thrived economically. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s there were numerous liberalization measures: in monetary policy, in domestic capital markets, and in various instruments of governmental interference in economic activity. The role of government in the economy was considerably decreased. On the other hand, some governmental economic functions were increased: a national health insurance system was introduced, though private health providers continued to provide health services within the national system. Social welfare payments, such as unemployment benefits, child allowances, old age pensions and minimum income support, were expanded continuously, until they formed a major budgetary expenditure. These transfer payments compensated, to a large extent, for the continuous growth of income inequality, which had moved Israel from among the developed countries with the least income inequality to those with the most.
