Israel

The state of Israel was born on May 14, 1948, when the British Mandate on Palestine was terminated and political authority was transferred to a new Israeli government. Britain had been granted authority over the Palestinian region in the Middle East by the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War I and commenced its term as the governing power in September 1923. In the quartercentury of the mandatory regime, the Jewish population in Palestine grew due to consistent waves of immigration since the late 19th century to 650,000. During that period, which is called the Yishuv (Hebrew for “settlement”) in the Israeli historical chronology, the infrastructure for the future independent state had been built. It had a functioning government (Va'ad Leumi) and a vibrant parliament (Asefat Hanivharim), along with health, taxation, and banking systems; a national labor union; a paramilitary defense organization; and a foreign relations committee. This effective infrastructure was able to transform itself into an independent state virtually overnight once the British forces had left the country. It guaranteed a smooth transition to political sovereignty though it could not prevent the challenges and hardships accrued due to Israel's unique historical and geopolitical circumstances of inception.

The new state had to face tremendous tasks from the moment of its inception. First, there was the immediate concern of survival; Arab forces invaded the country the morning after the declaration of independence, resulting in the 1948 war. Second, there was the challenge of nation building in the midst of a hostile and uncooperative environment. The economy had to be reconstructed and revitalized in the face of a harsh climate, paucity of resources, and perennial insecurity. Third, the young state of Israel endeavored to realize the major goal of Zionism: the gathering in of Jews from all corners of the world. This moral obligation was a daunting and unprecedented undertaking for a fragile social and economic system, which had to absorb in a relatively short period three times the amount of its original population. Fourth, the influx of Jews of different cultures and languages, dissimilar political traditions and norms, and diverse preferences necessitated a complex and delicate process of assimilation and identity formation—the melting pot. This was not easy for a new state. Tensions and conflicts abound when the development of group cohesion pits contending ideologies, associations, and loyalties against each other to gain influence by forming a collective identity. Fifth, since Zionism's bases of recruitment consist of both secular and religious Jews from various diasporas, incompatibilities and disagreements between these two worlds were imported to Israel, which emphasized and extended the fault lines between them to the Israeli political agenda.