The creation of the State of Israel brings about the (first) Arab-Israeli war: early on May 15, units of the regular armies of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt cross the frontiers of Palestine.

Initially these forces consist of approximately eight thousand to ten thousand Egyptians, two thousand to four thousand Iraqis, four thousand to five thousand Transjordanians, three thousand to four thousand Syrians, one thousand to two thousand Lebanese, and smaller numbers of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni troops; about twenty-five thousand in all.

Goldie Myerson, a signatory of Israel's independence declaration and newly appointed minister to Moscow, had personally attempted to dissuade King Abdullah of Transjordan from joining the invasion of Israel decided on by other Arab states.

Israeli forces composed of the Haganah, such irregular units as the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and women's auxiliaries, number thirty-five thousand or more, armed with Czechoslovakian weapons sent at the behest of the Soviet Union.

Moshe Dayan commands the Jerusalem area; Yitzhak Rabin directs the defense of Jerusalem (and also fights the Egyptians in the Negev).

The invading Arab League forces occupy the areas in southern and eastern Palestine not apportioned to the Jews, then capture the small Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Israelis, meanwhile, win control of the main road to Jerusalem through the Yehuda Mountains (Judaean Hills) and successfully beat off Arab attacks.

The Arab League has fielded only a few well-trained units.

In addition, some Arab logistical lines are long, making resupply and communication difficult.

The most formidable Arab force is Transjordan's Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha, but Abdullah has secret relations with the Zionists and strongly opposes a Palestinian state led by his enemy al-Husseini.

Other states, such as Egypt and Iraq, also have different objectives, and this internal strife, disorganization, and military ineptitude prevents the Arabs from mounting a coordinated attack.

Abdullah's primary purpose, which he has spelled out in secret discussions with Jewish envoys, is to extend his rule to include the area allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947.

Accordingly, he engages his forces in the area of Palestine popularly known as the West Bank and expels Jewish forces from East Jerusalem (the Old City).

The British Mandate Authority had estimated in 1939 that about four hundred and forty-five thousand out of one-and-a-half million residents of the Mandate were Jews.

Israeli officials estimate that as of May 15, 1948, about six hundred and fifty thousand Jews live in the area scheduled to become Israel under the November 1947 UN partition proposal.

Ben-Gurion announces the formation of a Provisional Council of State, actually a transformed executive committee of the Jewish Agency with himself as prime minister.

Chaim Weizmann becomes president of the council, although Ben-Gurion is careful to make the presidency a distinctly ceremonial position.

The provisional government will hold elections no later than October 1948 for the Constituent Assembly to draw up a formal constitution.

The first legislative act of the Provisional Council of State is the Law and Administrative Ordinance of 1948 that declares null and void the restrictions on Jewish immigration imposed by British authorities.

Moshe Sharett, who in 1947 had successfully campaigned for the United Nations to adopt the Palestinian partition plan, is made the country's first foreign minister.

Shimon Peres, who had immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934, in 1947 had joined the Haganah under the direction of Ben-Gurion, who soon became his political mentor and, in 1948, appoints the twenty-four-year-old Peres head of Israel's navy.

A particularly vicious murder of a Jewish mother and her two infants in Yehud, east of Tel Aviv, on the night of August 13 by attackers believed to be from the Jordanian West Bank village of Qibya, northwest of Jerusalem, prompts retaliation against that specific village.

Jordan had condemned the murders and offered its cooperation to track down the criminals; the murderers had no known or suspected connection with Qibya.

Mr. Sharon's order, according to Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, was "to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants."

Seven hundred regular Israeli troops participate in the attack, using mortars, machine guns, rifles and explosives.

Sharon and his Unit 101 during the night of October 14-15, 1953, kill ten to twelve soldiers or guards and destroy forty-two buildings—including the school and the village mosque—in Qibya, firing into doorways and windows with automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades.

Also killed, perhaps inadvertently, are sixty-nine civilian inhabitants, two-thirds of them women and children, who had been hiding inside their destroyed homes unbeknownst to the Israeli soldiers.

The attackers later turn their fire on the cattle, killing twenty-two cows. (In Warrior, Sharon's autobiography, he will later write that he found out about the unfortunate civilian casualties only the next day, listening to Jordanian radio.)

According to the UN observer on the scene two hours later, however, "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." (Israel's foreign minister Moshe Sharett confides to his diary that the "stain" of the Qibya incident "would stick to us and not be washed away for many years.")

Israel is impoverished, and its economy emerges from severe austerity only after 1952 when the country begins to obtain substantial international aid, including grants from Jewish charities, revenue from the sale of bonds, and U.S. government assistance.

Beginning in 1953, Ben-Gurion secures economic aid from West Germany, a highly controversial act that is seen by many as reparations for the destruction of European Jewry.

This action brings about violent protests led by members of Begin's Herut Party, who feel that any such aid will be an abomination.

Ben-Gurion, exhausted by political struggles, tenders his resignation in November 1953, and the less militaristic Sharett takes over as prime minister.

Arab-Israeli tensions have mounted with Nasser's rise to power.

In Israel, the conflict between the old-guard Mapai leadership and Ben-Gurion's new technocratic elite festers openly under Sharett's weaker leadership.

This leads to a major scandal in the Labor Party called the Lavon Affair, a botched undercover attempt by Israeli intelligence to hurt Egypt's reputation in the United States by staging bomb attacks on American and British information offices in Egypt and blaming Arab extremists.

Newly-installed Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon, an important figure in the old guard, had authorized intelligence chief Benjamin Gibly to launch Israeli spy rings in Cairo and Alexandria in an attempt to embarrass Nasser.

The Egyptians, however, catch (and will later execute) the spies, and the affair proves to be a major embarrassment to the Israeli government.

Israeli military aircraft capture a Syrian civilian airliner in December 1954 to obtain hostages for exchange with Israeli soldiers who had been captured within Syria.

Of this first instance of politically motivated "skyjacking," Prime Minister Sharett will later state in his diary, "our action was without precedent in the history of international practice."

Three inquiries clear Lavon of guilt, but he has to resign from the government in February 1955.

He returns, however, to his former post as secretary-general of Histadrut.

Moshe Sharett has meanwhile continued the policy of rapid economic development and immigration, but his attempts to stabilize relations with the Arab world have often been criticized.

Some feel that he is too lenient in his response to border incursions and attacks on civilians.

David Ben-Gurion returns to the Ministry of Defense, and with the malleable Sharett still as prime minister is able to promote his hard-line defense policy.

This position results in a number of raids against the Egyptians in response to attacks on Israeli settlements originating from Egyptian-held territory.

Ben-Gurion is subsequently restored to leadership of the Mapai government.

However, conflict between him and Sharett leads to the latter's resignation as foreign minister.

Ben-Gurion's biggest concern is the rising power of Nasser.

By October 1955, Nasser has signed the agreement to buy arms from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, while U. S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses to supply Israel with weapons.

Sharett had hoped that vigorous international diplomacy might relieve Israel's insecurity.

It has not.

Ben-Gurion has a different approach, and he soon begins to plan a preemptive attack against Egypt before that country's new weaponry gives it strategic superiority.