Israel

THE MODERN HISTORY of the state of Israel began on November 29, 1947. The United Nations had been debating for months on the question that would likely lead to war: the partition of Palestine, which would give birth to the state of Israel. Then, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted on the momentous issue. The Palestine Broadcasting System recorded the decision: “the General Assembly of the United Nations, by a vote of 33 in favor, 13 against … has voted to partition Palestine.” On May 13, 1948, the British evacuated Jerusalem, having governed Palestine as a League of Nations Mandate territory since the end of World War I. On May 14, eight hours before the British Mandate officially ended, David ben-Gurion, the head of the governing Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. Fittingly, the historic meeting was held in the Tel Aviv Museum, where over 3,000 years of history looked down upon ben-Gurion and the other delegates assembled there. The delegates were drawn from the socialist Zionist movement, which had begun to settle in Palestine around 1904 to build the country based on socialism that the Zionist philosopher Moses Hess had envisioned in the 1840s.

At the same time, the Arab nations who had sworn to oppose the creation of Israel—Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan (now Jordan)—invaded the new nation. The Israeli Army, or Defense Force, had its origins in the militia of the labor movement Achdut Ha-Avodah, or Unity of Labor. The militia's name was the Haganah. On May 31, 1948, ben-Gurion, now Israel's first prime minister and minister of defense, issued the proclamation establishing the Israeli Defense Force (IDF): “with the establishment of the state of Israel the Haganah has left the underground to become a regular army.”

The decisive factors were the centralized administration and combat experience of the forces of the Israeli Defense Force, drawing on its nearly 30 years (from 1920) of concerted action defending the Jewish agricultural settlements, or kibbutzim, from Arab attack. Finally, by January 1949, the fighting drew to a close. Israel signed an armistice with Egypt on February 24, 1949. Similar agreements were made with Lebanon on March 23, Jordan on April 3, and with Syria on July 29, 1949. Only Iraq, which contributed the least to the fighting, did not sign an armistice with the new Jewish State.

Within Israel, the socialist wing of the Zionist movement, the leftist side, maintained its sense of solidarity. Yossi Beilin writes in Israel: A Concise Political History, how “the left wing party workers … prided themselves on their agricultural past, however brief.” Until 1991, in fact, the Marxist hymn The Internationale would be sung at the convening of each congress of the Labour Party. Indeed, much of the internal history of Israel has really been the history of the Histradut, the Zionist labor group that had been founded in 1920. Beilin states that the Histradut was “devoted to the enhancement of Zionist goals through the infusion of Jewish labor and ownership of the land.” The allied Mapai political party, formed in 1930, became the basis of power for David ben-Gurion. The Histradut still serves as the main force for labor in Israel and continues, in keeping with its socialist roots, to press for progressive social service programs within the nation.

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