THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, 1948 Term paper

In 1947 Great Britain announced it was giving up its mandate to administer Palestine and requested that the United Nations (UN) devise a plan to bring peace to Palestine. On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly decreed that Palestine would be partitioned into Arab and Jewish states. On 14 May 1948, one day before the British mandate for governing Palestine expired, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, proclaimed the birth of the state of Israel. This announcement pitted 600,000 Jews against more than 1 million Arab Muslims and 149,000 Arab Christians residing in Palestine. Immediately the states of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt sent 18,000 Arab soldiers into Palestine to annihilate the new state of Israel. Initially, the Arab armies did well enough so that on 11 June the UN secured a four-week cease-fire. The cease-fire did not hold and by October 1948 the Arab armies were in full retreat. By January 1949 Israeli forces controlled 77 percent of Palestine and had signed armistices (but no peace treaties) with each Arab state. Israel did not control the Gaza strip and parts of the West Bank of the Jordan River. But it did control West Jerusalem and the key port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, thereby assuring access to the Red Sea.

Israel’s Proclamation of Independence (1948) explains that the establishment of an Israeli state was necessary because (1) the land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people; (2) the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the subsequent British mandate acknowledged the right of Israel to exist; (3) Hitler’s Holocaust proved anew that only an independent Israel could safeguard the Jewish people from annihilation; and (4) the UN Resolution of 29 November 1947 called for the establishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine. Although these justifications received widespread support in Europe and in the United States, Arab countries, and particularly Palestinians who fled Israel, have argued that the price of an Israeli state has been the denial of a homeland for the Palestinian people. In the course of the 1948 war more than 700,000 Palestinians sought refuge in other Arab lands. Between 1948 and 1999 there have been five major conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors and more than fifty years of bloody guerrilla warfare between Palestinians and Israelis.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Examine the debates on Palestine in the United Nations in 1947–1948 and write an analysis of why the UN plan for partition of Palestine failed.
2. Read the State of Israel “Proclamation of Independence” (see Suggested Sources) and write a paper analyzing and commenting on the historical, political, and religious arguments put forth in the document.
3. Investigate the strategy and tactics of the Israeli army in 1948 and evaluate its role in the establishment of the state of Israel.
4. What factors might explain why 700,000 Palestinians left their homes in 1948?
5. What role did the United States play in the establishment of Israel in 1948?
6. Use the State of Israel “Proclamation of Independence” (1948); the “Palestinian Declaration of Independence” (1988); and the “Wye River Memorandum” (1998), signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (see Suggested Sources) as the basis for a paper analyzing Israeli-Palestinian relations over the years.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The British Mandate of Palestine, 1922” (#13), “The Holocaust, 1941–1945” (#34), “Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Suez Crisis, 1956” (#52), and “The Six-Day War, 1967” (#66). Search under Menachem Begin, Count Folke Bernadotte, Exodus, Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Ben-Gurion, David. Memoirs: David Ben-Gurion. New York: World, 1970. Reflections on the struggle for independence by Israel’s first prime minister.

Dayan, Moshe. Story of My Life. London: Sphere Books, 1978. Important memoirs by one of the most accomplished Israeli soldiers of the fighting in 1948, 1956, and 1967.

Laqueur, Walter, and Barry Rubin, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. The most accessible collection of documents, including the State of Israel “Proclamation of Independence” (1948).

Palestinian National Council. “Palestinian Declaration of Independence.” Journal of Palestine Studies 18 (Winter 1989): 213–16. The key document for the dream of an independent Palestinian state.

Weizmann, Chaim. Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. New York: Harper, 1949. Autobiography of the first president of Israel.

“The Wye River Memorandum and Related Documents.” Journal of Palestine Studies 28 (Winter 1999): 135–46. The most recent effort by the United States to engage Israelis and Palestinians in a durable peace process.

Secondary Sources

Collins, Larry, and Dominique Lapierre. O Jerusalem! New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. A popular, well-written account of the summer of 1948.

Luttwak, Edward, and Dan Horowitz. The Israeli Army. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. A solid study with a good bibliography.

Ovendale, Ritchie. The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1992. The best short introduction to the fighting in 1948.

Reinharz, Jehuda. Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman.New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A useful biography of one of the founding fathers of Israel.

Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. New York: Knopf, 1979. A standard history with good coverage of the birth of Israel.
Troen, S. Ilan, and Noah Lucas, eds. Israel: The First Decade of Independence. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. A good overview of all aspects of Israeli life.

World Wide Web

“Department of History Map Library.” http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps//MapsHome.htm. Click on “Atlases” for United States Military Academy (West Point) maps for 1948.